Shaykh Hasan al-Attar was a Sunni Shafi'i scholar, Grand Imam of al-Azhar from 1830 to 1835. A "polymathic figure", he wrote on grammar, science, logic, medicine and history. Hassan al-Attar was appointed Sheikh of al-Azhar in 1830 and became one of the earliest reformist clerics in Ottoman Egypt. He was a forerunner of Egypt's national revival, and his legacy was a generation of Egyptian modernists like his disciple Rifa al-Tahtawi. He advocated the introduction of sciences such as logic and modern astronomy, and wrote the first modern history of Mohammed's tribe, the Quraish. He was to suffer greatly for his modernizing beliefs.