Sufyan al-Thawri
716 CE–778 CE · Kufa
Sufyan ibn Saʿid al-Thawri (c. 97/716 - 161/778) was one of the foremost religious scholars of early Iraq: a jurist (faqih), a transmitter of hadith (reports of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds), and a renowned ascetic (zahid, one who renounces worldly comfort). His birthplace is uncertain in the sources - Khurasan, Qazvin or the Jurjan region are variously named - but his family settled in Kufa, and he is remembered above all as a Kufan, formed by that city's distinctive legal and traditionist circles.
He gave his name to the Thawri madhhab, a school of law that flourished briefly among his students but did not endure; it is today extinct, surviving only as opinions quoted within the surviving Sunni schools. Tradition holds that he ordered his writings burned at his death.
Sufyan is portrayed as fiercely independent of rulers. Reports state that he refused appointment as a judge (qadi) and fell into conflict with the early Abbasid caliphs, and that he spent his final years in hiding. He died at Basra, where he had taken refuge.
Later piety counts him among the early ascetics and Sufi tradition claims him as a forerunner. Some sources give his death as 167/783 rather than 161/778, and many incidents of his life come from devotional biography (manaqib) rather than strictly documented record; these are reported here as tradition, not established fact.
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Kufa
What they did here
Sufyan is remembered first and foremost as a Kufan, formed in that city's legal and hadith circles and active there for most of his life as a jurist and traditionist. Tradition reports that the caliph al-Mansur pressed him to accept the Kufan judgeship on condition he not rule against state policy, that he refused (one account has him tearing up the appointment letter), and that he then left Kufa. The dating of this departure is approximate and the episode is traditional.
About Kufa
Kufa, on the Euphrates in central Iraq near Najaf, was a garrison-town (misr) founded by the Muslims around 638 during the conquest of Iraq. It became a major centre of early Arabic grammar, jurisprudence, and Shi'i scholarship, and for a time the capital of the caliph Ali; the traditionist Ibn Abi Shayba (d. 849) and the Twelver scholar Ibn Babawayh al-Saduq (d. 991) are among those connected to it.
The world in their lifetime
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Works
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