Hasan al-Attar

{{Short description|Egyptian scholar}}

Shaykh Hasan al-Attar ({{langx|ar|حسن العطار}}; 1766–1835){{Cite book |last=De Bellaigue |first=Christopher |title=The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason 1798 to Modern Times |publisher=Liveright Publishing Corporation |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-87140-373-5 |location=New York |pages=17 |chapter=1: Cairo |quote="Hassan al-Attar.. was born in Cairo in around 1766"}} was a Sunni Shafi'i scholar,{{cite web|url=https://www.islamist-movements.com/26558|title=الشيخ حسن العطار.. شيخ الأزهر المجدد|website=islamist-movements.com|publisher=بوابة الحركات الإسلامية|language=ar|archive-url=https://archive.today/20150613010047/http://www.islamist-movements.com/26558|archive-date=13 Jun 2015}} Grand Imam of al-Azhar from 1830 to 1835.{{cite book|last=Goldschmidt, Jr.|first=Arthur|title=Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p3J6IS8t74QC&pg=PA25|access-date=26 March 2013|year=2000|publisher=Lynne Rienner Publishers|isbn=978-1-55587-229-8|page=26}} A "polymathic figure", he wrote on grammar, science, logic, medicine and history.{{cite book|author=Peter Gran|editor=Roger M. A. Allen |editor2=Terri DeYoung|title=Essays in Arabic Literary Biography: 1350–1850|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ds4IFuJDl-QC&pg=PA56|access-date=27 March 2013|year=2009|publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag|isbn=978-3-447-05933-6|pages=56–68|chapter=Ḥasan al-ʻAṭṭār}} Hassan al-Attar was appointed Sheikh of al-Azhar in 1830 and became one of the earliest reformist clerics in Ottoman Egypt.{{Cite book |last=Bacik |first=Gokhan |title=Contemporary Rationalist Islam in Turkey |publisher=I.B. Tauris |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-7556-3674-7 |location=50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK |pages=1 |chapter=Introduction}} He was a forerunner of Egypt's national revival, and his legacy was a generation of Egyptian modernists like his disciple Rifa al-Tahtawi. He advocated the introduction of sciences such as logic and modern astronomy, and wrote the first modern history of Mohammed's tribe, the Quraish. He was to suffer greatly for his modernizing beliefs.{{Cite book |last=De Bellaigue |first=Christopher |title=The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason 1798 to Modern Times |publisher=Liveright Publishing Corporation |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-87140-373-5 |location=New York |pages=36–37 |chapter=1: Cairo}}

His first contact with foreign (non-Muslim) knowledge came during the French occupation of Egypt (1798–1801). Fearing for his safety after the French withdrawal, he left Cairo for Istanbul. There he studied and read voraciously, from 1802 through 1806, when he continued his studies in Alexandretta (today İskenderun), İzmir and Damascus, returning to Egypt in 1815. He was the first director of the new medical college, defending the necessity of corpse dissection, which he had observed in the Cairo veterinary college, against the non-experimental, theoretical teachings of eleventh-century Avicenna, discarded centuries ago in Christian Europe. While he was a successful lecturer at al-Azhar University, his time there was marked by continual conflict with un-Westernized (?) ulemas, leading him at times to conduct classes in his home. The tensions only became worse with his appointment as rector. He died within four years.Christopher de Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment. The Struggle between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times (New York, Liveright, 2017), {{ISBN|9780871403735}}, 26-33.