- Al-Muḥāsibī – Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Baghdādī
The ascetic, the knower of God, the shaykh of the Sufis—Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Baghdādī, known as al-Muḥāsibī (1), author of numerous works on renunciation.
He transmitted a small number of reports from Yazīd ibn Hārūn.
Among those who narrated from him are: Ibn Masrūq, Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim, al-Junayd, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan the Sufi, Ismāʿīl ibn Isḥāq al-Sarrāj, and Abū ʿAlī ibn Khayrān the jurist—if that attribution is sound.
Al-Khaṭīb said: “He produced many books on asceticism, on the fundamentals of the religion, and in refutation of the Muʿtazilah and the Rāfiḍah.”
Al-Junayd reported: “His father left him a great deal of wealth, but he abandoned it, saying, ‘People of two different religions do not inherit from one another.’ ”
His father had been a Wāqifī (2).
Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Miqsam said: Abū ʿAlī ibn Khayrān informed us, saying, “I saw …”
(*) Tabaqat al-Sufiyya, pp. 56, 60; Hilyat al-Awliya, vol. 10, pp. 73, 109; Al-Fihrist, p. 236; Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 8, pp. 211, 216; Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya, p. 15; Al-Ansab, folio 509b; Safwat al-Safwa, vol. 2, pp. 207-208; Al-Lubab, vol. 3, p. 171; Wafayat al-Aʿyan, vol. 2, pp. 57-58; Tahdhib al-Kamal, p. 215; Tadhhib al-Tahdhib, vol. 1, p. 113/2; Mizan al-Iʿtidal, vol. 1, pp. 430-431; Al-ʿIbar, vol. 1, p. 440; Mirʾat al-Janan, vol. 2, p. 142; Al-Subki, Tabaqat al-Shafiʿiyya, vol. 2, pp. 275, 284; Ibn Kathir, Tarikh, vol. 10, p. 345; Tabaqat al-Awliya, pp. 175, 177; Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, vol. 2, pp. 134, 136; Al-Nujum al-Zahira, vol. 2, p. 316; Khulasat Tadhhib al-Kamal, p. 67; Al-Shaʿrani, Tabaqat, vol. 1, p. 64; Shadharat al-Dhahab, vol. 1, p. 103; Al-Kawakib al-Durriyya, vol. 1, pp. 218-219.
(1) The word is pronounced with a dumma on the mim, a fatha on the ha, a kasra on the sin, and ends with a plain ba; he received this epithet because he used to hold himself strictly to account.
(2) That is, he remained neutral on the question of the createdness of the Quran, asserting neither that it was created nor that it was uncreated. The report is found in Hilyat al-Awliya, 10/75, and in Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 2/57, which adds: this was because his father espoused the doctrine of qadar (human free choice).