PHILOSOPHERS from Saudi Arabia

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Saudi Arabian Philosophers of all time. This list of famous Saudi Arabian Philosophers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792)

With an HPI of 74.74, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab is the most famous Saudi Arabian Philosopher.  His biography has been translated into 55 different languages on wikipedia.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Sulaymān al-Tamīmī (1703–1792) was a Sunni Muslim scholar, theologian, preacher, activist, religious leader, jurist, and reformer, who was from Najd in central Arabia and is considered as the eponymous founder of the Wahhabi movement. His prominent students included his sons Ḥusayn, Abdullāh, ʿAlī, and Ibrāhīm, his grandson ʿAbdur-Raḥman ibn Ḥasan, his son-in-law ʿAbdul-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, Ḥamād ibn Nāṣir ibn Muʿammar, and Ḥusayn āl-Ghannām. The label "Wahhabi" is not claimed by his followers but rather employed by Western scholars as well as his critics. Born to a family of jurists, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's early education consisted of learning a fairly standard curriculum of orthodox jurisprudence according to the Hanbali school of Islamic law, which was the school most prevalent in his area of birth. He promoted strict adherence to traditional Islamic law, proclaiming the necessity of returning directly to the Quran and ḥadīth literature rather than relying on medieval interpretations, and insisted that every Muslim – male and female – personally read and study the Quran. He opposed taqlid (blind following) and called for the use of ijtihad (independent legal reasoning through research of scripture). Being given religious training under various Sunni Muslim scholars during his travels to Hejaz and Basra, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab gradually became opposed to certain rituals and practices such as the visitation to and veneration of the shrines and tombs of Muslim saints, which he condemned as heretical religious innovation or even idolatry. While being known as a Hanbali jurist, Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab minimized reliance on medieval legal manuals, instead engaging in direct interpretation of religious scriptures, based on the principles of Hanbali jurisprudence. His call for social reforms was based on the key doctrine of tawhid (oneness of God), and was greatly inspired by the treatises of classical scholars Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728 A.H/ 1328 C.E) and Ibn Qayyim (d. 751 A.H/ 1350 C.E). Despite being opposed or rejected by some of his contemporary critics amongst the religious clergy, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab charted a religio-political pact with Muhammad bin Saud to help him to establish the Emirate of Diriyah, the first Saudi state, and began a dynastic alliance and power-sharing arrangement between their families which continues to the present day in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Al ash-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia's leading religious family, are the descendants of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, and have historically led the ulama in the Saudi state, dominating the state's clerical institutions.

2. Hasan al-Basri (642 - 728)

With an HPI of 68.17, Hasan al-Basri is the 2nd most famous Saudi Arabian Philosopher.  His biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Abu Sa'id ibn Abi al-Hasan Yasar al-Basri, often referred to as Hasan of Basra or Hasan al-Basri, was an ancient Muslim preacher, ascetic, theologian, exegete, scholar, and judge. Born in Medina in 642, Hasan belonged to the second generation of Muslims, all of whom would subsequently be referred to as the tābiʿūn in Sunni Islamic piety. He became one of "the most celebrated" of the tābiʿūn, enjoying an "acclaimed scholarly career and an even more remarkable posthumous legacy in Islamic scholarship." Hasan, revered for his austerity and support for "renunciation" (zuhd), preached against worldliness and materialism during the early days of the Umayyad Caliphate, with his passionate sermons casting a "deep impression on his contemporaries." His close relationships with several of the most prominent companions of Muhammad only strengthened his standing as a teacher and scholar of the Islamic sciences. The particular disciplines in which he is said to have excelled included exegesis (tafsīr) of the Quran, whence his "name is invariably encountered in" classical and medieval commentaries on the scripture, as well as theology. Hasan became an important figure to the later founders of Sufism with his name occurring "in many mystical silsilas (chains of teachers and their disciples) going back to Muḥammad" in the writings of Sunni mystics from the ninth-century onwards. Scholars have said that very few of Hasan's original writings survive, with his proverbs and maxims on various subjects having been transmitted primarily through oral tradition by his numerous disciples. While fragments of his famed sermons do survive in the works of later authors, the only complete manuscripts that bear his name are apocryphal works such as the Risālat al-qadar ilā ʿAbd al-Malik (Epistle to ʿAbd al-Malik against the Predestinarians), a pseudopigraphical text from the ninth or early-tenth century, and another letter "of an ascetic and hortatory character" addressed to Umar II (d. 720), which is likewise deemed spurious. Traditionally, Hasan has been commemorated as an outstanding figure by all the Sunni schools of thought, and was frequently designated as one of the well respected of the early Islamic community in later writings by such important Sunni thinkers as Abu Talib al-Makki (d. 996), Abu Nu`aym (d. 1038), Ali Hujwiri (d. 1077), Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201), and Attar of Nishapur (d. 1221). In his famed Ḳūt al-ḳulūb, the most important work of Basran mysticism, Abu Talib al-Makki says of Hasan: "Ḥasan is our Imām in this doctrine which we represent. We walk in his footsteps and we follow his ways and from his lamp we have our light".