ShaykhHasan al-Attar (Arabic:حسن العطار; 1766–1835)[1] was aSunniShafi'i scholar,[2]Grand Imam of al-Azhar from 1830 to 1835.[3] A "polymathic figure", he wrote ongrammar,science,logic,medicine andhistory.[4] Hassan al-Attar was appointed Sheikh of al-Azhar in 1830 and became one of the earliest reformist clerics inOttoman Egypt.[5] He was a forerunner of Egypt's national revival, and his legacy was a generation ofEgyptianmodernists like his discipleRifa al-Tahtawi. He advocated the introduction of sciences such aslogic and modernastronomy, and wrote the first modern history ofMohammed's tribe, theQuraish. He was to suffer greatly for his modernizing beliefs.[6]
His first contact with foreign (non-Muslim) knowledge came during the French occupation of Egypt (1798–1801). Fearing for his safety after the French withdrawal, he left Cairo forIstanbul. There he studied and read voraciously, from 1802 through 1806, when he continued his studies in Alexandretta (todayİskenderun),İzmir andDamascus, returning to Egypt in 1815. He was the first director of the new medical college, defending the necessity of corpsedissection, which he had observed in the Cairo veterinary college, against the non-experimental, theoretical teachings of eleventh-centuryAvicenna, discarded centuries ago in Christian Europe. While he was a successful lecturer atal-Azhar University, his time there was marked by continual conflict withulemas opposing Western influences, leading him at times to conduct classes in his home. The tensions only became worse with his appointment as rector. He died within four years.[7]
According to Peter Gran, professor of history atTemple University, his first phase, as anAsh'ari, ended early in his stay inTurkey. Thereafter, his study oflogic and other rational science drew him toward aMaturidite position. During the 1830's, he wrote onijtihad from a Maturidite outlook.[8]
Hassan al-Attar ... was born in Cairo in around 1766
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