al-Basrī. The same applies to the theologians of the Kullābī and Ash'arī schools, such as 'Abd Allāh ibn Sa'īd ibn Kullāb, Abū al-Hasan al-Ash'arī, his associate Abū al-Hasan al-Bāhilī, Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-Bāqillānī, and others.
Likewise, the books of “the Sufis and those who combined Sufism with hadith and speculative theology” originated there, such as the works of al-Hārith ibn Asad al-Muhāsibī, Abū al-Hasan ibn Sālim, Abū Sa'īd al-A'rābī, and Abū Tālib al-Makkī. Many people from Baghdad, Khurasan, and Syria shared in their pursuits, but the point is that the origins lay there.
Similarly, “prophetic knowledge”—faith and the Quran, together with the jurisprudence, hadith, and acts of the heart that follow from them—originated only in the centres where the majority of the Companions of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, lived: the two Holy Sanctuaries, the two Iraqi cities, and Syria—that is, Medina, Mecca, Kufa, Basra, and Syria. All other centres followed their lead.
The seven Quran reciters came from these centres, as did the leading scholars of hadith. The most reliable among the latter were those of Medina and Basra, such as al-Zuhrī, Mālik, Qatāda, Shu'ba, Yahyā ibn Sa'īd, and 'Abd al-Rahmān ibn Mahdī.