al-Bustī, Abū l-Qāsim - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Walker, Paul E.
Leiden
Brill
(659 words)
Abū l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad al-Jīlī al-Bustī (active late fourth/tenth and early fifth/eleventh centuries) was an important Zaydī Muʿtazilī author. We know hardly anything about his life, although his name suggests that he came from Bust, in Sīstān (southeastern Iran), and may have later acquired an affiliation with Gīlān, on the southwest coast of the Caspian Sea, where he seems to have lived and where he became a follower of the major Zaydī Shīʿī school in the region. In the year 389/999, he travelled