ḤILLĪ, AL- (AH 648–726/1250–1326 CE), more fully Jamāl al-Dīn Abū Manṣūr al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Muṭahhar, known as ʿAllāmah ("great scholar" or "sage") al-Ḥillī after Hillah, a great center of Shīʿī learning in southern Iraq; hence, a number of famous scholars are known as al-Ḥillī.

Al-Ḥillī studied first with his father and then with his famous maternal uncle, Najm al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim Jaʿfar ibn Saʿīd al-Ḥillī, known as "the Foremost Scholar" (al-Muḥaqqiq al-Awwal), as well as with a number of other Shīʿī and Sunnī scholars. His mentor in philosophy and theology was the controversial astrologer, theologian, and philosopher Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274).

Al-Ḥillī wrote in all the religious and rational sciences, as well as in biography, Arabic grammar...