Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

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Not to be confused with al-Razi.
Persian scholar
Medieval era
Name: Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
Birth: 544 AH/1150[1]
Death: 606 AH/1210 CE [1]
School/tradition: Shafi'i [1]
Influences:
Influenced:

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–1209) was a well-known Persian theologian and philosopher from Ray, Iran. He is not to be confused with Rhazes, also known as al-Razi.

Contents

[edit] Name

فخرالدين الرازى

Fakhr-al-Din Abu-Abd-Allah Muhammad Ibn Umar ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Husayn al-Razi, also known as Imam Fakhr al-Razi or Imam Radhi

[edit] Biography

Born in Rayy, Persia (Iran), just south of present-day Tehran [1]

He was born in a Shafi'ite and Ash`arite family. His father was Diya al-Din `Umar who taught him Islamic religious sciences before he went to study with other Muslim savants. Al-Razi travelled to many places such as Bukhara, Khwarazm and Transoxiana and held discussions with local savants. Al-Razi was a prolific and encyclopedic writer and scholar based on his more than sixty complete works. He was a philosopher, historian, mathematician, astronomer, physician, theologian and exegesist. His opponents were the Hanbalites who opposed philosophy, Kalam and mysticism, and the Batinites and Qarmatians of whose al-Razi criticized the teachings.

Al-Razi's works on theology and on Kalam include the books al-Arba`in fi Usul al-Din and al-Mas'il al-Khamsun fi Usul al-Din. In his al-Arba`in fi Usul al-Din, al-Razi presented forty issues in the principles of religion, such as religious cosmology, theology, ethics, prophecy, eschatology and imamate. Meanwhile, al-Masa'il al-Khamsun fi Usul al-Din is a more brief presentation of similar themes or topics.


He travelled to Khawarzim and Khurasan, and finally to Herat, Afghanistan, where he died in 1210 [1]

[edit] Quotes

The world is a garden, whose gardener is the state;
The state is the sultan whose guardian is the Law;
The Law is a policy, which is protected by the kingdom;
The kingdom is a city, brought into being by the army;
The army is made secure by wealth;
Wealth is gathered from the subjects;
The subjects are made servents by justice;
Justice is the axis of the prosperity of the world.
-Jami' al-'ulum

[edit] Works

[edit] Sunni view

“ A Shafi`i scholar of genius and a Mujtahid Imam in tenets of faith, he was among the foremost figures of his time in mastery of the rational and traditional Islamic sciences, and preserved the religion of Ahl al-Sunna from the deviations of the Mu`tazilites, Shiites, Anthropomorphist, and other aberrant sects of his era by authoring a number of brilliant works that came to enjoy a wide readership among his contemporaries and have remained popular with scholars to this day. His thirty-two-volume Koranic exegesis Mafatih al-ghayb [The keys of the unseen] is one of the most famous of his works, though he also wrote on tenets of belief, heresiology, fundamentals of Islamic law and faith, scholastic theology, rhetoric, geometry, and poetry in Arabic and Persian, in both of which he was a preacher of considerable eloquence. His efforts to purify Islam from the heresies of anthropomorphist reached the point that when unable to answer his arguments against them, they resorted to writing ugly remarks and insinuations on scraps of paper and attaching them to the pulpit (Minbar) from which he gave the Friday sermon. He arrived one day and read one of these, and then spoke to those present in an impassioned voice, saying:
"This piece of paper says that my son does such and such. If it is true, he is but a youth and I hope he will repent. It also says that my wife does such and such. If it is true, she is a faithless woman. And it says that my servant does such and such. Servants are wont to commit every wrong, except for those Allah protects. But on none of these scraps of paper - and may Allah be praised -is it written that my son says Allah is a corporeal body, or that he likens Him to created things, or that my wife believes that, or my servant - So which of the two groups is closer to guidance? [1]
 ”

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f from the Biographical Notes in 'Reliance of the Traveller', Noah (Nuh) Ha Mim Keller, USA: Sunna Books, 1991 CE, x122 (a) (pp. 1045-6), using (al-A`lam (y136), 6.313; and Tabaqat al-Shafi`iyya al-kubra (y128), 8.81-89) as a source ]

also:

For his life and writings, see:

  • G.C. Anawati, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. by H.A.R. Gibbs, B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, C. Bosworth et al., 11 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960-2002) vol. 2, pp. 751-5.

For his astrological-magical writings, see:

  • Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Abteilung I, Ergänzungsband VI, Abschnitt 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), pp. 388-390.

For his treatise on physiognomy, see:

  • Yusef Mourad, La physiognomie arabe et le Kitab al-firasa de Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Paris, 1939).

[edit] External links

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