Ibn Hazm

Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm was an Andalusian Muslim polymath, historian, jurist, philosopher, and theologian, born in the Caliphate of Córdoba, present-day Spain. Described as one of the strictest hadith interpreters, Ibn Hazm was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought and produced a reported 400 works, of which only 40 still survive. In all, his written works amounted to some 80 000 pages. The Encyclopaedia of Islam refers to him as having been one of the leading thinkers of the Muslim world, and he is widely acknowledged as the father of comparative religious studies alongside al-Biruni.