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| (lived during 6th century) Pre-Islamic Arabic poet and adventurer whose best poem is contained in the Mu’allaqat. |
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| (570-629) Widely traveled pre-Islamic Arabic poet whose nickname was given to him for his blindness and whose poem is sometimes included in the Mu’allaqat. |
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| (642-728) Muslim theologian, scholar and teacher who believed that humans have free will and that one cannot judge the grave sinner (instead one must leave that job to God). |
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| (704-c.768) Early historian and Muslim-convert who first gathered stories into a narrative about Muhammad’s life and who had a tendency to invent miraculous stories about Muhammad in order to demonstrate that he should be the last Prophet. As someone of non-Arab descent, his tales are reminiscent of the pre-Islamic literary form. |
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| (d. 767) Early Persian Qur’anic exegete whose work has not been so highly regarded by the Islamic tradition, perhaps because it was written before the stringent requirements of isnad were created, thus failing to meet the criteria of later generations. |
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| (sermon from 747) Kharijite rebel who briefly took Mecca and Medina in 747. |
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| (737-819) Arab scholar and historian who established a genealogical link between Ishmael and Muhammad and put forth the idea that all Arabs descended from Ishmael. |
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| (767-820) Muslim jurist and founder of the Shafi’i school who believed that the hadith should play a more central role in Islamic law. |
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| (810-870) Sunni hadith scholar most known for compiling a collection of ahadith, called Sahih Bukhari, which is regarded by Sunnis as one of the six most important hadith collections. |
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| (817-888) Sunni hadith scholar most known for compiling a collection of ahadith, called Sunan Abu Dawud, which is regarded by Sunnis as one of the six most important hadith collections. |
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| (838-923) One of the earliest and most prominent Persian historians and interpreters of the Qur’an. |
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| (c.858-922) Persian Sufi mystic and teacher who was executed for his view of the unity of God and man which was perceived as heretical. |
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| (908-996) Iraqi Mu’tazilite thinker who put forth one of the first literary arguments for the inimitability of the Qur’an; this effort to demonstrate the status of the Qur’an as a miracle was perhaps in response to Christian polemical pressures. |
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| (979-1037) Persian polymath who, having mastered all of the problems and questions of his time, worked as a court official and financier by day and a teacher by night. His most known works are his Canon of Medicine, which continued to be a standard medical in the Middle Ages, and Shifa, a scientific and philosophical encyclopedia. |
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| (?) Disciple of Avicenna who finished writing Avicenna’s biography. |
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| (1058-1111) Persian theologian, jurist, Sufi mystic and philosopher who spent much of his life teaching and is now regarded as one of the most influential Sunni scholars. |
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| (?) French chronicler who traveled with a Christian army on the Crusades. His description of the siege of Jerusalem is among the most detailed and controversial accounts of the Crusades. |
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| (c.1105-1185) Andalusian court official and polymath most famous for writing the first philsophical novel, Haay the Son of Yaqzan, an allegory of a man who grows up in isolation and reaches the highest level of knowledge and religious understanding through a process of reason completely independent of other people. |
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| (first half of the 14th century) Ibadi sheik from the island of Jarba who translated an important Ibadi creed originally written in the 9th or 10th century. |
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| (1301-1373) Syrian historian, exegete and one of the most respected preachers and teachers in Damascus whose most popular work, Tafsir al-Qur’an, included a summary of earlier material in an accessible form. |
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| (1332-1406) North African polymath whose work, the Muqaddimah, was originally intended as an introduction to another book and is considered one of the earliest comprehensive historical studies of the world. |
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| (1904-1996) Italian historian. |
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| (1915-1993) Prominent British-born Lebanese historian whose most popular work, A History of the Arab Peoples, is an easy-to-read account of Middle Eastern history. |
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| (1940-) Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist whose work concerns the role of women in Islam and challenges popular stereotypes of Muslim women as submissive. |
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| (1949-) Renowned Lebanese novelist. |
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| (c.821-875) Sunni hadith scholar most known for compiling a collection of ahadith, called Sahih Muslim, which is regarded by Sunnis as the second most important hadith collection. |
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