Al-Allama al-Hilli

Al-Allama al-Hilli, born Jamal ad-Din al-Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn Ali ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli in Hillah, Iraq, in December 1250, was an Iraqi Arab scholar of Twelver Shia Islam known as the Sage of Hillah. He was one of the most influential Twelver Shia scholars of his time and an early mujtahid, a jurist qualified for independent legal reasoning within Shia jurisprudence; later sources retrospectively applied to him the title Ayatollah, a title that originated centuries after his death. He is credited with roughly 120 documented works, with some sources attributing him more than a thousand, on Islamic law, theology and Quranic commentary. Around 1305 he moved to the Ilkhanate court in Persia, where he promoted Twelver Shiism and is credited with persuading the Ilkhan ruler Oljaitu to convert to it around 1309 to 1310, a conversion that raised Twelver Shiism's standing until the Safavid dynasty made it the state religion in 1501. He died in Hillah in December 1325.