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Ibn Hazm

Ibn Hazm

994 CE–1064 CE · Cordoba

Ibn Hazm (Abu Muhammad 'Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Hazm, 384-456 AH / 994-1064 CE) was one of the towering minds of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus): a jurist, theologian, historian, poet, and writer on comparative religion. He was born in Cordoba into a high official's family during the last years of the Umayyad caliphate of the West. When that order collapsed into civil war, his fortunes rose and fell with it. He was a partisan of the Umayyad cause and reportedly served briefly as vizier (chief minister) to the short-lived caliph 'Abd al-Rahman V in 1023, after whose murder he was imprisoned; he was jailed more than once on suspicion of Umayyad loyalism. These reversals pushed him through exile in Almeria, Aznalcazar, and Xativa, where around 1027 he composed Tawq al-Hamama ("The Ring of the Dove"), a celebrated meditation on love. In jurisprudence (fiqh) he first followed the Maliki and then the Shafi'i schools before becoming the foremost exponent of the Zahiri school, which held that law should rest on the plain ("zahir") sense of Qur'an and hadith rather than on analogy. His combative writings, especially against the dominant Maliki establishment, made enemies: the ruler al-Mu'tadid of Seville had his books publicly burned. Withdrawing to his family estate near Huelva, he wrote prolifically until his death in 1064. Tradition credits him with some 400 works.

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Stop 1 of 2994–1013Born

CordobaקורדובהAl-Andalus, Spain

What they did here

Born in Cordoba on 7 November 994 (384 AH) into a family of high officials of the Umayyad caliphate; he grew up there during the caliphate's civil war and political collapse. Biographical tradition reports that he held high office (the sources are not uniform on whether the title was formally 'vizier') under the short-lived Umayyad claimants, including 'Abd al-Rahman V al-Mustazhir around 1023, and that he was imprisoned more than once on suspicion of Umayyad loyalism. He continued to return to and depart from Cordoba as its fortunes shifted.

About Cordoba

The Rambam's birthplace (1138). Medieval Cordoba was a leading center of Sephardi philosophy and Talmud under the Caliphate of Cordoba.

Across the traditions, in Cordoba at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Ibn Hazm’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Ibn Hazm’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(32)