Shaykh Hasan al-Attar ( ar, حسن العطار) (1766–1835) was an Islamic scholar,

Grand Imam of al-Azhar The Grand Imam of al-Azhar ( ar, الإمام الأكبر), also known as Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar ( ar, links=no, شيخ الأزهر الشريف), currently Ahmed el-Tayeb, is a prestigious and a prominent official title in Egypt. He is conside ...

from 1830 to 1835. A "polymathic figure", he wrote on

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

. Hassan al-Attar was appointed Sheikh of al-Azhar in 1830 and became one of the earliest reformist clerics in Ottoman Egypt. He was a forerunner of Egypt's national revival, and his legacy was a generation of

Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...

modernists Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

like his disciple Rifa al-Tahtawi. He advocated the introduction of sciences such as

and modern

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

, and wrote the first modern history of Mohammed's tribe, the

Quraish The Quraysh ( ar, قُرَيْشٌ) were a grouping of Arab clans that historically inhabited and controlled the city of Mecca and its Kaaba. The Islamic prophet Muhammad was born into the Hashim clan of the tribe. Despite this, many of the Qu ...

. He was to suffer greatly for his modernizing beliefs. 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 for

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

. There he studied and read voraciously, from 1802 through 1806, when he continued his studies in Alexandretta (today Iskenderum), Izmir and Damascus, returning to Egypt in 1815. He was the first director of the new medical college, defending the necessity of corpse dissection, which he had observed in the Cairo veterinary college, against the non-experimental, theoretical teachings of eleventh-century Avicenna, discarded centuries ago in Christian Europe. While he was a successful lecturer at al-Azhar University, his time there was marked by continual conflict with un-Westernized (?)

ulema In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...

s, 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.Christopher de Bellaigue, ''The Islamic Enlightenment. The Struggle between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times'' (New York, Liveright, 2017), , 26-33.

References

External links

Rediscovering Al-'Attar
* Dunne, Bruce William. ''Sexuality and the 'Civilizing Process' in Modern Egypt'. ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 1996. Asharis Shafi'is Grand Imams of al-Azhar Egyptian Sunni Muslims Muslim writers Egyptian people of Moroccan descent 1766 births 1835 deaths {{Islam-bio-stub

References

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