Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

Essentialism can be defined as a metaphysical theory according to which things have essential and accidental properties. In this paper, I will address Avicennian essentialism, that is, essentialism as we find it in Avicenna’s own writings and the writings of the immediate post-Avicennian philosophical tradition of the Islamic world. I will consider a number of primary sources, summarize the state of recent scholarship regarding Avicennian metaphysics of attributes, and I will draw comparisons between Avicennian essentialism and modern essentialism. As a result, I will show that Avicennians endorse two different types of essentialism: conceptualist essentialism and de re essentialism. Avicennian conceptualist essentialism only applies to kinds, while Avicennian de re essentialism only applies to particular individuals.

The article aims to demonstrate that Avicenna’s (d. 428/1037) centrality in Islamic intellectual history is not restricted to the branches of theoretical philosophy; rather, he also has had a deep and strong influence on the conception of practical philosophy until modern times. I will discuss the impact of Avicenna’s view of practical philosophy by analyzing his different classifications of practical philosophy throughout his career and the factors behind his disregard for practical philosophy in his philosophical summas on the basis of his view of the relationship between philosophy and šarī‘a. To demonstrate my argument regarding Avicenna’s influence on the conception of practical philosophy in Islamic tradition, I will refer to major works on the classification of sciences, and the commentaries (šurūḥ) and glosses (ḥāwāšī) on the two most important and widely circulated philosophical summas in the post-Avicennan philosophy, including al-Abharī’s (d. 663/1264) Hidāyat al-ḥikma and al-Kātibī’s (d. 675/1276) Ḥikmat al-‘ayn.

Best known as a jurist of the Shâfiî school and a scholar of Logic, Sirâj al-Dîn al-Urmawî lived much of his life in Ayyubid-era Cairo before moving to Konya (in 655/1257), where he served as the “Chief Kâdî” for the rest of his life. He was also an important figure within the “mutaakhkhirîn”-era Islamic thought, whose fundamental phisolophical framework had been established by Fakhr al-Dîn al-Râzî (d. 606/1210), after Avicenna (d. 428/1037) and al-Ghazâlî (d. 505/1111). Philosophically, al-Urmawî was known to have been influenced by two particular figures: his mentor Kamâl al-Dîn ibn Yûnus (d. 639/1241), and his colleague and friend Afdal al-Dîn al-Hûnajî (d. 646/1249). An important work to resort to for understanding Urmawi’s philosophical views is his Latâ’if al-hikma, which he wrote in Persian and dedicated to the Anatolian-Seljukid Sultan Izz al-Dîn Kaykâvus II (r. 1246-1257). Written in a complementary manner to Fakhr al-Dîn al-Râzî’s incomplete al-Latâif al-ghiyâthiyya, this book also contains autobiographical information about the author. Though the book consists of two main parts, including “theoretical wisdom” and “practical wisdom,” it represents a new genre that is a kind of “mixture” of philosophy and theology (kalâm). This article examines al-Urmawî’s philosophical views in the context of the intellectual tradition that he inherited and with a focus on his Latâ’if al-hikma.

Urolithiasis is a common worldwide problem with high recurrence. This review covers forty four (44) families starting from alphabet A to L and includes Bignoniaceae (05) Juglandaceae (01) plant used globally in different countries. The plants of three families Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Lamiaceae are revisited to provide updated information. This review will not only be useful for the general public but also attract the scientific world for antiurolithiatic drug discovery.

Özet 
İnşirâh Sûresi, İslâm’ın ilk dönemlerinde Hz. Peygamber’in mâruz kaldığı psikolojik ve sosyolojik sıkıntılar karşısında kendisini ve fakirlikten dolayı aşağılananları teselli etmek amacıyla nâzil olduğu düşünülmektedir. Sûrenin başında Hz. Peygamber’e, “Senin göğsünü açıp genişletmedik mi?” şeklinde hitap edilerek kendisine sıkıntı veren maddî ve manevî ağır yükün üzerinden kaldırıldığı bildirilir. Daha sonra şanının yüceltildiği vurgulanıp her güçlükle birlikte bir kolaylığın bulunduğu iki defa zikredilir. En sonunda Hz. Peygamber üzerinden bütün mü’minlere boş kaldığı zamanlarda psiko-sosyal işlerde bulunmaları, çaba sarf etmeleri ve Rabbe yönelmeleri emredilir. Bu makalede Fahreddin Râzî’ye (ö. 606/1210) göre İnşirâh Sûresi’nde inanç problemlerine çözüm arayışlarında İnşirah Sûresi’nin psiko-sosyal imânî hakikatleri incelenmekte ve değerlendirilmektedir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: İnşirâh Sûresi, İmân, Psiko-Sosyal, Fahreddin Râzî

INSHIRAH (THE EXPANSION) SURAH’S PSYCHO-SOCIAL TRUTHS OF FAITH ACCORDING TO FAHREDDIN RAZI
Summary
Inshirah (The Expansion) Surah, in early Islam that happened to the Prophet in the face of difficulties psychological and sociological itself, and the comfort of those who were mistreated by poverty, it is believed that in order to was revealed. At the beginning of the period of The Prophet, “Have We not expanded thee thy breast?” that beset himself by being addressed in the form of financial and moral from the heavy load that has been removed, be informed. Then you are exalted, where are highlighted, and with every hardship comes ease two times where it is mentioned. Finally, all the believers through the prophet in his spare time, psycho-social movements are found in the fact that, to try to turn to Allah and ordered. This article examined and evaluated, in search of solutions to the problems of faith psycho-social signs leading to faith in Inshirah (The Expansion) Surah, according Fahreddin Razi (d.606/1210).
Keywords: Inshirah (The Expansion) Surah, Faith, Psycho-Social, Fahreddin al-Razi

A re-contruction of Fakhr al-Din's life based on the available sources in Arabic and Persian. I look particularly into his relationship to the ruling dynasties of his time (the Khwarezmshahs, the Ghurids, and the Ayyubids) and find that they competed to become his patons. This should revise an earlier view (which goes back to Ignaz Goldziher) that the kind of rationalism Fakhr al-Din represented was under thread by “an orthodoxy entrenched in the spirit of persecution [that] terrorized all free intellectual mind.” Quite the opposite, Fakhr al-Din's kind of philosophical inspired Ash'arism would conquer the madrasa curricula of his day and become the leading direction in Sunni theology for at least until the 14th century.

This article investigates the intellectual production of the celebrated scholar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) during the decade or so he spent in the service of the Ghūrid sultans, from ca. 591/1195 to 602/1206. Operating exclusively within religious disciplines – theology, law and Qurʾān exegesis – and displaying pronounced rhetorical and dialectical features, this production contrasts significantly with his earlier and later production, which most notably exhibits much closer engagement with philosophy. It is argued that this “Ghūrid interlude” in al-Rāzī’s production reflects his role in spearheading the sultans’ project of divesting from the socially and culturally peripheral Karrāmiyya and fashioning themselves as champions of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan orthodoxy, and is furthermore aligned with his patrons’ transregional policies, including their pro-Abbasid stance. Al-Rāzī was in return invested by the Caliph al-Nāṣir with the title “he who summons people to the True One” (al-dāʿī li-l-khalq ilā l-ḥaqq), more commonly attested as “he who summons to God” (al-dāʿī ilā llāh). The article also offers a new examination of al-Rāzī’s Ghūrid-period intellectual biography and oeuvre.

Sample (Contents, Foreword & Introductions) from Dr Sohaib Saeed's translation of the first volume from Razi's Tafsir (published September 2018).

The Great Exegesis by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Razi (d. 1210), also known as Mafatih al-Ghayb, is one of the great classics of Arabic and Islamic scholarship. Written in the twelfth century, this commentary on the Qur’an has remained until today an indispensable reference work. The Great Exegesis is a compendium not only of Qur’anic sciences and meanings, but also Arabic linguistics, comparative jurisprudence, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, dialectic theology and the spirituality of Sufism.

The present volume is the first ever translation into English from The Great Exegesis and focuses on the first chapter of the Qur’an, the Fatiha. This scholarly yet accessible translation gives readers a thorough understanding of the most commonly recited chapter of the Qur’an; it also opens up for readers a window into the thought and practice of one of Islam’s greatest theologians. This volume includes a foreword by Professor M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, King Fahd Professor of Islamic Studies, University of London.

ENDORSEMENTS:

‘Razi’s Tafsir is a monument to Islam’s great tradition of learning and an incredibly rich pathway into it. Making it accessible to an English-speaking audience, by a translator who is a scholar himself, is a great contribution that will be appreciated by many for many years to come.’
Prof. Jonathan AC Brown, Georgetown University, USA.

‘Dr. Sohaib Saeed offers us a meticulous and readable translation of a masterpiece of Qur’anic exegesis by the great Muslim intellectual Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, whose goal was to illuminate every possible shade of meaning of the Muslim Revelation, from moral-ethical and legal, to rational and allegorical-mystical, not to mention linguistic, grammatical and historical. A must-read for every serious student and connoisseur of the Qur’an.’
Prof. Alexander Knysh, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.

Özet: İman esaslarından gâye ve hikmet; hakikatın bilinmesi, düşünülmesi, inanılması, içselleştirilmesi ve davranış olarak yansımasıdır. Düşünce ve kalp alanından eylem ve hareket alanına çıkamamış iman, meyvesiz bir ağaca benzer. Kalpte mevcut iman ışığının hiç sönmeden parlaması ve giderek gücünü artırması ancak imanın göstergesi fiillerle mümkündür. Allah, Mü’minûn sûresinde bazı fiilleri özgür iradeleriyle gerçekleştirenlerin huzur ve mutlulukla dünya hayatını yaşadıktan sonra ahirette de Firdevs adlı cennetlere gireceklerini vadetmektedir. Bu sûrede bir yandan imanın tezâhürü olan filleri yapan mü’minlere dünya ve ahirette saadet içinde olacağı va’d edilirken diğer yandan amel ile imanı bir sayan Harîcî yaklaşım ile fiillerin imanla hiçbir ilişkisi olmadığını savunan Cehmî görüşler eleştirilmektedir. Bu makalede büyük düşünür ve âlim Fahreddîn er-Râzî’nin (ö.606/1210) Mü’minûn sûresi’ndeki imanın tezâhürü hidayete ulaştırıcı fiiller hakkında görüşleri ve konuyla ilgili bazı itikadî problemlere çözüm önerileri incelenmektedir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Fahreddîn er-Râzî, İman tezâhürü, Fiiller, Hidayet.

In the sample Fahreddîn Al-Razi, Guided Leads To Behaviors Are In Mu’minun Surah  Behaviors that lead to guidance
Abstract: Purpose of the principles of faith and wisdom; truth be known, be considered, to believe, as a reflection of internalization and behavior. The believe he didn't get out in the field of action and movement, from the area of your thoughts and heart, a fruit tree that is.The light of faith present in the heart of never flare is extinguished before, increasingly the growing power of Faith, you may be able to with the behavior of the indicator. God in Mu’minun Surah, some behaviors of their own free will are those who, after living the life of peace and joy with the world, the life of heaven that they want to promise named Firdevs in the hereafter. This in Surah, engaging in conduct which is a manifestation of the faith believers, to that promise the world and in the Hereafter will be in bliss while would on the one hand by the behavior of the Harijia approach to faith to see, the faith of some who argued that behavior had nothing to do with Cahmiyya specs are have been criticized. This article opinions and suggestions for solutions to problems and theology are examined, about guided leads to Behaviors are the appearance of faith in mu’minun surah of Islamic scholar and thinker Fahreddîn al-Râzî (606/1210).
Key Words: Fahreddîn al-Razi, Appearance of faith, Behaviors, Guidance

The question whether God knows particular individuals has traditionally attracted the attention of Islamic scholars: Does the perishability of worldly individuals entail problems about the perishability of God's corresponding knowledge? Can one eternally know that Zayd will arrive tomorrow to the city? In this paper, I systemically and historically analyze (1) how post-Avicennian philosophers distinguished between two pre-Avicennian kalām views on whether such knowledge is eternal or perishable; (2) how they regarded Avicenna's famous theory that God knows particulars qua universals as connected to the pre-Avicennian kalām debate; (3) and how the authors such as Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) and Šihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1191) attempted to synthesize Avicenna and kalām epis-temology in their account of God's knowledge as relation or as presence.

‘Between the God of the Prophets and the God of the Philosophers’ is unique, since, to my knowledge, this is the first book of its kind in the English language, where Dr Hatem al-Haj – an author well-versed not just from an Islamic point of view, but from a Western one too – attempts to directly address an array of Islamic theological topics related to the nature of God from an Athari perspective, with special focus on 'Shaikh al-Islam' Ibn Taymiyyah.

This book review provides a detailed breakdown of the subjects covered, which revolves around the apophatic god of negative theology, charges of anthropomorphism against the 'scripturalists' vis-a-vis God's divine attributes, etc.

I also seek to ask a number of probing questions re the author's position on Ibn Taymiyyah's weltanschauung when it comes to the doctrine of creatio ex-nihilo against that of Shaykh al-Islam’s position of God having perpetually created from eternity, his view on time (A-theory vs B-theory), and more.

İbn Sînâ'nın Uyûnu'l-hikme adlı eserine Fahreddin Râzî'nin yazdığı şerhin felsefî bilimlerin sınıflandırılmasına dair kısmının metin ve tercümesi. Metin, eserin Âtıf Efendi Kütüphanesi, nr. 1592'de yer alan nüshası esas alınarak hazırlanmıştır.

This article sheds new light on the sixth/twelfth-century anti-Avicennan current, which took its cue primarily from al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa). A key representative of this current, Ibn Ghaylān al-Balkhī (d. ca. 590/1194), veers away from the usual points of conflict in metaphysics and natural philosophy, directing his attention instead to descriptions of the properties of simple drugs in Avicenna's Canon of Medicine and Heart Remedies (al-Adwiya al-qalbiyya) and Ismāʿīl al-Jurjānī's (d. 531/1136) medical encyclopaedia The Khwārazmshāhī Treasure (Dhakhīra-yi Khwārazmshāhī). In a dedicated text, he highlights various inconsistencies in these sources, with a view to demonstrating that Avicenna's works are unreliable and exposing a culture of uncritical imitation among contemporary Avicennists. The article includes an edition and translation of the text.

Scholars have come to recognize the importance of classical Islamic philosophy both in its own right and in its preservation of and engagement with Greek philosophical ideas. At the same time, the period immediately following the so-called classical period has been considered a sort of dark age, in which Islamic thought entered a long period of decline. In this monumental new work, Frank Griffel seeks to overturn this conventional wisdom, arguing that what he calls the “post-classical” period has been unjustly maligned and neglected by previous generations of scholars.

The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam is a comprehensive study of the far-reaching changes that led to a re-shaping of the philosophical discourse in Islam during the twelfth century. Earlier Western scholars thought that Islam’s engagement with the tradition of Greek philosophy ended during that century. More recent analyses suggest that Islamic thinkers instead integrated Greek thought into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kalām). Griffel argues that even this new view misses a key point. In addition to the integration of Greek ideas into kalām, Muslim theologians picked up the discourse of classical philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna—a new and oft-misunderstood genre they called “ḥikma"—in which they left aside theological concerns. They wrote in both genres, kalām and ḥikma, and the same writers argued for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world’s creation, and the afterlife depending on the genre in which they were writing. Griffel shows how careful attention to genre demonstrates both the coherence and ambiguity of this new philosophical approach.

A work of extraordinary breadth and depth, "The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam" offers a detailed, insightful history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the twelfth century. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy or the history of Islam.

In the twelfth century, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) was the pre-eminent theologian of the Islamic east. His magisterial work ‘the Hidden Secret’ adapted Avicenna’s psychology and celestial kinematics to explain the “talismanic” occult craft: how the human soul could establish a noetic connection with the planetary spheres to draw down their powers into a talisman. Thus empowered, it could affect terrestrial change that contravened the empirical norm. 

For Rāzī, this was a genuine science, its epistemology rooted in empirical observation, analogical reasoning, inspiration, and the transmission of data accumulated since time immemorial. Results in the real world confirmed the truth of its claims. Examining Rāzī’s philosophical theory of the science and its influence on the counter-Avicennan prophetology of his late career, the present study will demonstrate that occult science was indeed an important aspect of Islamic intellectual history, the object of profound rational engagement.

Ash’arite authors before al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) held that prophecy can only be verified through miracles performed by the prophet. Early Ash’arite authors denied a human capacity able to confirm a prophet’s claim either through his message or his actions. This position has completely changed by the time of Fakhraddin ar-Razi (d. 606/1210). He relies in his views on prophecy heavily on the teachings of Ibn Sina (d. 429/1037), and ar-Razi reproduces the philosophical argument that humans can best judge the truthfulness of a prophet from his message. The reception of Ibn Sina’s views on prophecy starts with al-Ghazali. Although he shares the early Ash’arite position that humans are unable to judge a prophet’s claim from his message, he introduces elements of Ibn Sina’s teachings in his works. In his Faysal at-tafriqa, he explains divine revelation as a representation of “beings” within the minds of the prophets. The several divisions of these beings follow the philosophical divisions of the inner senses (hawass batina). Al-Ghazali attempts to explain elements of prophecy that his Ash’arite predecessors have left unexplained. His filling of a desideratum, however, leads to a significant shift in perspective, and in his late work al-Ghazali develops a novel method to verify the claims of a prophet.

Preserved in what seems to be a unique manuscript at the Bodleian Library, al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā (The Soul and the Spirit together with an Explanation of Their Faculties) of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) is a curious book. At the beginning, the author decribes the text as part of the philosophical sciences (as opposed to the religious ones) and clarifies that it deals with ʿilm al-akhlāq, meaning Aristotelian virtue ethics. The text is divided into two parts, the first explaining subjects of philosophical psychology, such as the nature of the soul, its faculties, and its survival after the death of the body. The second part explains how one can “treat” or “heal” the soul from certain negative character traits or vices. In both parts, the book makes liberal use of quotations from the Qur’an, from prophetical ḥadīth, and from sayings by other prophets and sages. This is quite unlike any other “book on philosophy” that Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī wrote.
      The article explains the distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical books in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and what it means for a book to belong to the former group. Al-Rāzī’s works in the theoretical fields of philosophy (logic, the natural sciences, metaphysics, and theology) do not use evidence derived from revelation and hardly ever refer to it. The relationship between revelation and the practical disciplines of philosophy (among them ethics), however, is different from the relation between revelation and theoretical philosophy. This difference leads in Avicenna to an almost complete abandonment of the practical disciplines. In authors who follow Avicenna in his Farabian approach to the relationship between philosophy and revelation it leads to hybrid works such as al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā that follow a philosophical agenda but employ means and strategies that mimic and imitate revelation.

We examine a hitherto unstudied debate, turning on the epistemology of value judgements, between Ashʿarīs and Baṣran Muʿtazilīs of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Al-Ghazālī and al-Rāzī countered Muʿtazilī ethical realism, here defended by al-Malāḥimī, by developing an emotive subjectivism underpinned by increasingly sophisticated psychological accounts of ethical motivation. Value judgements, they maintained, arise not from knowledge of some ethical attributes of acts themselves, but from subjective inclinations, which are often elusive because they can be unconscious or indirect. We also argue against the widespread notion that Ashʿarīs espoused an anti-rationalist ethics, and we show that they were not only ethical rationalists, but also the more innovative side in this debate.

This article analyzes the overarching themes and goals of Ibn Taymiyya's roughly forty arguments against the philosophers' and theologians' "Universal Law" for the figurative interpretation of scripture, to which he dedicates approximately 500 pages of his 10-volume Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa'l-naql. While Ibn Taymiyya himself presents these arguments in a disjointed and seemingly random fashion, this study demonstrates that by carefully breaking down, regrouping, and reconstructing them, we can discern a coherent attempt on Ibn Taymiyya's part to reconfigure the very terms of the debate between reason and revelation in medieval Islam in several important ways. Firstly, he deconstructs what it means for reason to "ground" our knowledge of revelation. Next, he redefines the opposition at stake not as one of "reason vs. revelation" but as a purely epistemological question of certainty vs. conjecture, with both reason and revelation serving as potential sources of both kinds of knowledge. Finally, he builds on this insight to replace the dichotomy "sharʿī–ʿaqlī," in the sense of "revelational vs. rational," with the dichotomy "sharʿī– bidʿī," in the sense of "scripturally validated vs. scripturally non-validated," arguing that revelation itself both commends and exemplifies the valid use of reason and rational argumentation. By this move, Ibn Taymiyya attempts to introduce a new paradigm in which it is the epistemic quality of a piece of knowledge alone that counts, simultaneously subsuming reason itself into the larger category of "sharʿī," or revelationally validated, sources of knowledge.

Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 728/1328) harsh polemics and his polarizing attitude toward disputes with his opponents pose obstacles for identifying similarities between their positions and the ones that he holds. This article wishes to shed light on two important issues connected with Ibn Taymiyya’s "Rejecting the Notion That Revelation and Reason Contradict Each Other" ("Dar’ ta’aruḍ al-‘aql wa-l-naql"). The first is the position that Ibn Taymiyya is arguing against in the initial passages of this book. Given that it presents itself as a work of refutation (radd), what exactly is it trying to refute at the outset? The second is the position Ibn Taymiyya develops in response to the views he rejects. The two questions are closely connected and have - despite several attempts - not yet received a satisfactory answer in the available secondary literature. One of the results of this study is that Ibn Taymiyya’s own position on the relationship between reason and revelation shows very significant similarities with that of his Ashʿarite opponents. Another result of this paper is the insight that Ibn Taymiyya’s reception of and his reaction to the Ashʿarite position on the priority of reason over revelation leads him into a circular argument about the authority of reason and revelation.

In the anonymous al-Nukat wa-l-fawāʾid, a summa of Avicennan philosophy written around 1200, a partisan of Avicenna accuses Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) of having come under the influence of the reprehensible Leader of the Jews, Abū l-Barakāt al-Baġdādī (d. c. 1165). The reasons for the anonymous author’s antipathy toward Abū l-Barakāt relate to the way Avicenna’s contribution to logic is both pillaged and pilloried in stretches of al-Kitāb al-muʿtabar. The claim that Abū l-Barakāt exercised direct influence over Faḫr al-Dīn is, at least in logic, unlikely to be true. Nonetheless, Abū l-Barakāt’s presentation and methods highlight significant changes in the methods of the later traditions of Arabic logic.

Modern scholars emphasize the influence of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, d. 1037) on Islamic philosophical theology, but Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), one of its contributors, acquainted himself not only with the philosophies of Ibn Sīnā and Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (d. 1152) but also with so-called occult sciences such as astrology, magic, and theurgy. The previous studies of his theology paid little attention to those esoteric sciences even though they had been regarded as natural scientific philosophy. As a part of the study of Islamic philosophical theology at the beginning of the thirteenth century, this paper examines the extent that this philosophy including occult sciences was absorbed into al-Rāzī’s theology. Following the introduction (I), section II analyzes the “philosophy” insofar as he perceives it, by reading his theological treatises in chronological order. As is well-known, al-Rāzī criticizes the “philosophers,” whom al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153) actually described in al-Milal wa-l-niḥal as the Sabian “adherents of spiritual beings.” I point out that, in his latest theological work al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya min ʿilm al-ilāhī, al-Rāzī adopts the cosmlogy of those “adherents of spiritual beings,” who reportedly believed the authority of the mythical figure Hermes and practiced what we call occult sciences like celestial magic. Section III, then, questions the origin of the adherents of spiritual beings. Recent studies have revealed that Hermes, who has been associated with the Sabians, began to be integrated into the Islamic context from the twelfth century onward as al-Shahrastānī did. Al-Rāzī also lived in the era of the synthesis of Arabic Hermeticism and Islamic thoughts, and I point out that he admits that the “philosophers” have an esoteric and mythical origin. In the final section (IV), I will show that al-Rāzī did accept not only the “philosophers” but also the occult sciences into his theology in al-Maṭālib. As a result, he adopts the cosmology of the Universal Soul, which utilizes the concept of “trace” (athar) instead of “emanation” (fayḍ), and he uses “species” (nawʿ) to distinguish between human beings. He differs from Ibn Sīnā in these points, yet he keeps the structure and concepts of Ibn Sīnā to some extent. We can say that he imports occult science into his theology as an alternative to Avicennan philosophy, regarding it as “philosophy.”

The purpose of the present study is to analyze the content of Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Bukhāri’s (d. 747/1346) Tadīl al-kalām in connection with the interaction of kalām with philosophy. In his introduction, the author states that he intends to reorganize and to strengthen the structure of kalām, but without offering any explanation of the method or the means by which he will pursue this goal. This paper argues that Ṣadr al-Sharīa tried to revive and strengthen Maturidian kalām by utilizing the structure and problematics of Ibn Sīnā’s (d. 428/1037) al-Ishārāt, alongside the two most important commentaries on this work by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) and Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Ṭūsi (d. 672/1274). The article’s most important claim is that in his Ta‘dīl al-Kalām Ṣadr al-Sharīa surveys the tradition of al-Ishārāt both in terms of problematics and outline. A closer examination shows that following al-Rāzī’s pattern, he thoroughly criticizes or adapts the philosophical theories of al-Ishārāt and al-Ṭūsī’s Sharh al-Ishārāt. He thus aims to improve and reinforce the structure of Maturidian Kalām by facing the challenges of Avicennan tradition.

Arguments for God's existence, it has often been argued in the secondary academic literature, form an essential part of classical Islamic theology (ʿilm al-kalām) and philosophy (falsafa). In the past decades, numerous scholars have dealt with what could be termed the Islamic discourse on arguments for God's existence, and have commonly analysed these arguments making recourse to Immanuel Kant's (1724–1804) categorisation of such arguments as cosmological, teleological, or ontological. The great Ashʿarī theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) is, unsurprisingly, seen as no exception to this: he, too, has been regarded as a participant in the aforementioned discourse, and in several of his major kalām works he introduces four methods to ‘prove the existence of the creator’. In this article, I will, however, argue that al-Rāzī had no concern for proving God's existence; the arguments in his kalām works, which, in the secondary academic literature, have been described as seeking to prove that God exists, it shall be suggested, serve a different purpose. This shall become clear when al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Qur'an, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, is taken into account. Previous studies of al-Rāzī’s (alleged) arguments for God's existence have only focused on his kalām works proper, however, in the Tafsīr al-Rāzī not only presents the very same four kalām methods to ‘prove the existence of the creator’ and stresses that they originate in Qur'anic forms of argumentation, but he also places them in a thematic context which, in his theological works, is oftentimes lacking. This article therefore clarifies the objective underlying al-Rāzī’s arguments for the existence of the creator and explains their significance in his broader theological thought.

Traduction introduite et annotée d’Ibn Taymiyya, « Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyya », édition M. b. ‘A. R. Bin Qāsim, t. I, p. 446-459. Réfutation en douze points de vue d’une thèse empruntée par Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī à l’astrologue Abū Ma‘shar al-Balkhī selon laquelle l’idolâtrie aurait pour origine l’assimilationnisme, c’est-à-dire une théologie anthropomorphiste.

The essence-existence distinction was a central issue in metaphysical disputes among post-Avicennian thinkers in the Islamic world. One group argued that what a thing is is different from that it is only conceptually. A rival view would have it that the distinction between essence and existence is real. The purpose of this article is to analyze the philosophical core of the dispute, by isolating the main arguments and their metaphysical foundations. I will study four central issues of the essence-existence debate: (1) the argument that existence is distinct from essence because one can conceive of an essence without knowing whether it exists; (2) the argument that if existence were really distinct from essence, existence would itself have to exist, leading to an infinite regress; (3) the question of whether God is responsible for the existence of essences only or also for their essential content (this relates to the problem of the ontological status of the non-existent); (4) the problem of whether essences are prior to existence.

The present paper overviews the Pococke collection of manuscripts of Avicenna’s magnum opus Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing) preserved in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, which originally consisted, in all likelihood, of twenty-five items. This codicological evidence is then confronted with the historical report according to which Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī commented on the Šifāʾ by means of an exegesis made of twenty-five volumes. The contribution explores whether these two apparently unrelated pieces of evidence – relevant, respectively, for the transmission of Avicenna’s masterpiece in philosophy and the history of Avicennism – may be interconnected, trying to determine which relation, if any, links the twenty-five codices of the Šifāʾ actually preserved in the Bodelian Pococke collection with the twenty-five volumes of the alleged commentary on the Šifāʾ by al-Rāzī.

The current text expresses my reflections on Frank Griffel's recently published book "The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam." As mentioned in the text, many intellectual aspects of philosophy became gradually integrated into the theological discourse among Muslim thinkers. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's contributions both in theology and philosophy (d. 1210) remark one of the most influential register of thought in the 6th/12th century.