Authorities.—W. G. Palgrave, Central and Eastern Arabia (London, 1865); L. Pelly, Journal R.G.S. (1866); S. M. Zwemer, Geog. Journal (1902); G. F. Sadlier, Diary of a Journey across Arabia (Bombay, 1866); V. Chirol, The Middle East (London, 1904).
(R. A. W.)
ḤASAN and ḤOSAIN (or Ḥusein), sons of the fourth Mahommedan caliph Ali by his wife Fatima, daughter of Mahomet. On Ali’s death Ḥasan was proclaimed caliph, but the strength of Moawiya who had rebelled against Ali was such that he resigned his claim on condition that he should have the disposal of the treasure stored at Kufa, with the revenues of Darabjird. This secret negotiation came to the ears of Ḥasan’s supporters, a mutiny broke out and Ḥasan was wounded. He retired to Medina where he died about 669. The story that he was poisoned at Moawiya’s instigation is generally discredited (see [Caliphate], sect. B, § 1). Subsequently his brother Ḥosain was invited by partisans in Kufa to revolt against Moawiya’s successor Yazid. He was, however, defeated and killed at Kerbela on the 10th of October (Muharram) 680 (see [Caliphate], sect. B, § 2 ad init.). Ḥosain is the hero of the Passion Play which is performed annually (e.g. at Kerbela) on the anniversary of his death by the Shi’ites of Persia and India, to whom from the earliest times the family of Ali are the only true descendants of Mahomet. The play lasts for several days and concludes with the carrying out of the coffins (tabūt) of the martyrs to an open place in the neighbourhood.
See Sir Wm. Muir, The Caliphate (1883); Sir Lewis Pelly, The Miracle Play of Hasan and Hosein (1879).
ḤASAN UL-BAṢRĪ [Abū Sa‘ūd ul-Ḥasan ibn Abī-l-Ḥasan Yassār ul-Baṣrī], (642-728 or 737), Arabian theologian, was born at Medina. His father was a freedman of Zaid ibn Thābit, one of the Anṣār (Helpers of the Prophet), his mother a client of Umm Salama, a wife of Mahomet. Tradition says that Umm Salama often nursed Ḥasan in his infancy. He was thus one of the Tābi‘ūn (i.e. of the generation that succeeded the Helpers). He became a teacher of Baṣra and founded a school there. Among his pupils was Wāṣil ibn ‘Atā, the founder of the Mo‘tazilites. He himself was a great supporter of orthodoxy and the most important representative of asceticism in the time of its first development. With him fear is the basis of morality, and sadness the characteristic of his religion. Life is only a pilgrimage, and comfort must be denied to subdue the passions. Many writers testify to the purity of his life and to his excelling in the virtues of Mahomet’s own companions. He was “as if he were in the other world.” In politics, too, he adhered to the earliest principles of Islam, being strictly opposed to the inherited caliphate of the Omayyads and a believer in the election of the caliph.
His life is given in Nawāwī’s Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1842-1847). Cf. R. Dozy, Essai sur l’histoire de l’islamisme, pp. 201 sqq. (Leiden and Paris, 1879); A. von Kremer, Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge, p. 5 seq.; R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, pp. 225-227 (London, 1907).
(G. W. T.)