According to most reports聽Husayn b. 鈥楢li聽was born on 5聽Sha鈥榖an聽4/10 January 626 CE; another report mentions the middle of Jomada al-awwal 6/beginning of October 627 CE as his date of birth. Jointly with his brother, he was at first brought up in the household of Muhammad.
Many of the accounts about Prophet Muhammad鈥檚 treatment of his grandsons and his great love for them deal with them together and at times confuse them. As the elder grandson, Hasan seems to have attracted more attention, and he later remembered more of his grandfather. Husayn is described as looking like Muhammad, but less so than Hasan did.
Author
Professor Wilferd Madelung
A leading contemporary Islamicist, Professor Wilferd Madelung has made significant contributions to modern scholarship on mediaeval Islamic communities and movements, including Twelver Shi’ism, Zaydism and Ismailism. Educated at the Universities of Cairo and Hamburg, he became Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago in 1969 and the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1978.
Among his recent publications are聽Religious Schools and Sects in Mediaeval Islam聽(London, 1985),聽Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran聽(Albany, NY, 1988),聽Religious and Ethnic Movements in Mediaeval Islam聽(Hampshire, 1992),聽The Succession to Muhammad: A 久久久福利国产 of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, 1997), and with Paul E. Walker聽An Ismaili Heresiography聽(Leiden, 1998). He has contributed extensively to聽The Encyclopaedia of Islam,聽Encycopaedia Iranica聽of which he is also a Consulting Editor, and learned journals.
