[6] Described as one of the strictest hadith interpreters, Ibn Hazm was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence,[3] and produced a reported 400 works, of which only 40 still survive.

[3][9] Ibn Hazm's grandfather Sa'id and his father, Ahmad, both held high advisory positions in the court of Umayyad Caliph Hisham II.

'"[12] Having been raised in a politically and economically important family, Ibn Hazm mingled with people of power and influence all his life.

After the death of the grand vizier, al-Muzaffar, in 1008, the Caliphate of Iberia became embroiled in a civil war that lasted until 1031 and resulted in the collapse of the central authority of Córdoba and the emergence of many smaller independent states, the taifas.

[7][6] By 1031, Ibn Hazm retreated to his family estate at Manta Lisham and had begun to express his activist convictions in the literary form.

[7][6][14] His political and religious opponents gained power after the collapse of the caliphate and so he accepted an offer of asylum from the governor of the island of Majorca in the 1040s.

[15] Contemporaries coined the saying "the tongue of Ibn Hazm was a twin brother to the sword of al-Hajjaj", an infamous 7th century general and governor of Iraq.

His surviving works, while criticised as repetitive, didactic and abrasive in style,[20] also show a fearless irreverence towards his academic critics and authorities.

[23] In Fisal (Detailed Critical Examination), a treatise on Islamic science and theology, Ibn Hazm promoted sense perception above subjectively flawed human reason.

He concludes that reason is not a faculty for independent research or discovery, but that sense perception should be used in its place, an idea that forms the basis of empiricism.

[24] Perhaps Ibn Hazm's most influential work in the Arabic, selections of which have been translated into English, is now The Muhalla (المحلى بالأثار), or The Adorned Treatise.

One of the main points that emerges from the masterpiece of jurisprudencial thought is that Ibn Hazm rejects analogical reasoning (qiyas قياس) in favor of direct reliance on the Quran, sunnah, and ijma.

[27] The work was first republished in Arabic by Ihsan Abbas in 1959 and most recently by Abu Abd al-Rahman Ibn Aqil al-Zahiri in 2007.

Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed.

So, some of their people accepted Islām only to turn towards Shī'ism, with the claim of loving Ahl al-Bayt (the family of the Prophet) and abhorrence to the oppression against 'Alī.

[38]Ibn Hazm states in no uncertain terms that homosexual acts between men constitute a sin, since they are expressly condemned in the Quran and the Sunna.

[41] The punishment prescribed by him is therefore not that which is incurred by zina, (stoning or intensive flogging) but a maximum of ten lashes and imprisonment with the aim of bringing about the reformation of the sinner.

And whoever listens to music seeking entertainment to give him strength in obeying God the Exalted and motivating him to pious acts, is good, obedient and his deed is lawful.

Yemeni preacher Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi'i was one of Ibn Hazm's admirers in recent times, holding the view that no other Muslim scholar had embodied the prophetic tradition of the Muhammad and the Sahaba.

[51] Similarly, Pakistani cleric Badi' ud-Din Shah al-Rashidi taught Ibn Hazm's book Al-Muhalla to students in Masjid al-Haram, while living in Mecca.

[53] Modernist revival of Ibn Hazm's general critique of Islamic legal theory has seen several key moments in Arab intellectual history, including Ahmad Shakir's re-publishing of Al-Muhalla, Muhammad Abu Zahra's biography of Ibn Hazm, and the re-publishing of archived epistles on legal theory by Sa'id al-Afghani in 1960 and Ihsan Abbas between 1980 and 1983.