Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi

Ali ibn Mohammed ibn Abbas
TitleAbū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī
Personal life
Born923CE
Died1023CE
EraIslamic golden age
(4th Islamic century)
RegionIraq
Main interest(s)Literature, and philosophy
Notable work(s)Al-Imtāʿ wa al-Mu’ānasa (Enjoyment and Conviviality)
Religious life
ReligionIslam (Shafi'i)
Senior posting
Influenced by

Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (Arabic: أبو حيان التوحيدي) (923–1023), full name ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbbās al-Baghdadi (Arabic: علي بن محمد بن العباس التوحيدي البغدادي), was an Arab or Persian intellectual, writer, and philosopher of the 10th century. He is widely regarded as one of the most original and influential thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age. The biographer Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī famously described him as "the philosopher of litterateurs and the litterateur of philosophers." Despite his intellectual stature, al-Tawḥīdī was largely neglected by contemporaneous historians and biographers until Yāqūt documented his life in Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ (معجم الأدباء), relying primarily on al-Tawḥīdī’s own autobiographical writings.