al-Iji

Adud ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman ibn Ahmad al-Iji (680-756 AH / 1281-1355 CE) was a major Ash'ari theologian and Shafi'i jurist from Ij (in modern Fars province, Iran). He served as a judge (qadi) under the Ilkhanid rulers of Persia and was a leading scholar of his era in both rational and transmitted sciences.

Al-Iji's most important work is al-Mawaqif fi Ilm al-Kalam (The Positions/Stations in the Science of Theology), a comprehensive systematic treatise on Ash'ari Islamic theology. This work covers the full scope of theological discussion: epistemology, ontology, the divine attributes, prophethood, the afterlife, and the imamate. It is written at a high level of technical sophistication and became one of the standard advanced texts in the Islamic theological tradition, generating important commentaries by scholars such as al-Jurjani (whose commentary ash-Sharh al-Mawaqif became a standard text in its own right).

He also authored ar-Risalah al-Adudiyyah fil-Wad' (on linguistic convention and the science of semantics), which became a standard introductory text on the philosophy of language in the Islamic rational sciences tradition. His Jawami' al-Ulum (Comprehensive Survey of the Sciences) is an encyclopedic introduction to the Islamic sciences. He contributed to juristic theory through his Sharh Mukhtasar Ibn al-Hajib in usul al-fiqh.

Al-Iji was imprisoned and died in captivity under the Muzaffarid rulers in approximately 756 AH. His al-Mawaqif remains one of the most technically comprehensive works of Ash'ari theology and continues to be studied in advanced Islamic learning circles.