Shahrastani, Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Karim Al-

Born 1086 in Shahrestan, in eastern Iran; died 1153. Muslim theologian and philosopher who wrote in Arabic.

Al-Shahrastani was the author of a collection of biographies of philosophers and scholars. His most significant work, Religious Communities and Sects, provides information about Islam and other religious and philosophical doctrines and about sects of antiquity and the Middle Ages, including schools of Greek philosophy, the Gnostics, the pagan beliefs of Iran and Central Asia, Judaic and Christian sects, and Indian religious and philosophical systems.