Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Muslim theologian and scholar

• Born: 1148 or 1149
• Birthplace: Rayy, Persia (now in Iran)
• Died: 1210
• Place of death: Herāt, Khorāsān (now in Iran)

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī was among the last representatives of Islamic theology to espouse the systematic orthodox school founded by al-Ashՙarī. An itinerant scholar, al-Rāzī’s personal contributions as a teacher left an indelible mark on the intellectual life of the eastern provinces of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century Islamic caliphate.

Early Life

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (FAHK-rahl-deen-ahl-uhr-rah-zee) was the son of Shaykh Diya al-Dīn ՙUmar, khatib (preacher) of Rayy, a key city in the north-central area of Iran. The family claimed both a long tribal ancestry (associated with the Taimi tribe) and descent from the family of Abū Bakr, the first caliph. Al-Yafii, whose biographical sketch of al-Rāzī survives in manuscript form only, cites a long pedigree of family teachers (originally named by al-Rāzī himself, in his Tahsil al-haqq), going back to al-Ashՙarī (873 or 874-935 or 936), the famed figure of classical Islamic orthodox scholarship. This line of scholars led in a chain to the generation and person of al-Rāzī’s father, who was his first teacher in the fields that would make his fame. Some traditional Islamic biographers claim that the young student was also interested, in the early stages of his education, in alchemy and astrology. Such interests are reflected only very little within his known works as a mature scholar.

Following his father’s death, al-Rāzī received specialized training not only in fikh (Islamic law) but in ilm al-kalam (Islamic theology) and philosophy as well. His teacher in the latter field, Majd al-Dīn al-Jīlī (from Jilan Province), had clearly been involved in controversial subjects, since at least one of his other students, Shihab al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, faced a death sentence for expounding beliefs that bordered on heresy. Al-Rāzī’s exposure to al-Jīlī, however, did not result in such controversy. What was most significant for this early stage of al-Rāzī’s adult life, perhaps, was the opportunity he received to accompany al-Jīlī to the region of Maragheh, where the latter was engaged as a preacher. This experience, which brought a widening of both intellectual and geographical horizons for the youth, left a mark of cosmopolitanism that became characteristic of al-Rāzī’s entire career.

Life’s Work

At some point after passing his thirtieth year (thus in the 1180’), al-Rāzī began to travel very widely, not to the central Iraqi and Syrian provinces but to the eastern reaches of the Islamic caliphs’ domains. He first left his mark as a philosophical itinerant in Khwārizm (the Amu Dary՚a basin, north of Khorāsān Province in eastern Iran). There, representatives of the Mutazilites (best-known for their contention that the Qur՚ān was created scripture, not the timeless word of God) engaged him in debates that, because of their controversial tenor, led to his expulsion by the authorities. Next came a brief sojourn (between 1184 and 1186, when al-Rāzī would have been thirty-six to thirty-eight years old) in the Iranian/Turkish frontier zone of Transoxiana.

Some traditionalists maintain that the brevity of al-Rāzī’s stay in Transoxiana was connected with his involvement in the philosophical and theological debates that formed the corpus of his edited work Munāarāt jarat fī bilād mā warā ՙa al-nahr (Transoxianian Controversies, 1966). It is also possible that not only intellectual but also material considerations pushed the itinerant scholar from place to place. It is known that the next stage of his career was played out in the palace at Ghor, part of the Islamic domain of Ghazna (south of Kabul in modern Afghanistan). There, al-Rāzī obtained formal patronage, with material compensation, from the Ghūrid ruler Mu ՙizz al-Dīn Muḥammad. This privileged status proved to be tenuous, however, when al-Rāzī’s combination of orthodox and philosophical approaches to Islamic doctrine was opposed by representatives of the extremist Karramiyah doctrine, which was championed locally.

A better climate for profitable patronage for al-Rāzī’s modes of philosophical and theological analysis appeared in the eastern Iranian province of Khorāsān. There, the ruler ՙAlā al-Dīn Tukush appointed al-Rāzī tutor to the crown prince, Muḥammad. Service to the eventual successor brought its rewards: first, in the form of high appointed office with privileged material status, and second, through marriage links to the Tukush court (al-Rāzī’s daughter was married to the vizier, or chief minister, ՙAlā al-Mulk).

Whether it was in Khorāsān or in another position of patronage (the standard accounts vary on this point), it appears that al-Rāzī’s reputation as a teacher earned for him the honor of having a special madrasah, or Islamic seminary, built in his name and for his use. Although it is not known how long al-Rāzī retained such privileged status, by 1203, when he was in his fifties, he was able to move to Herāt, in southeastern Khorāsān, where he settled, investing some of his acquired wealth in propertied estates. The seven years he spent in Herāt before his death (in 1210) did not shield him from bitterness at having had to defend himself from critics of his thought wherever he went. Some of the scholar’s resentment of the unending controversy over his ideas is reflected in his last testament. As recorded in Ibn Abī Uṣaibiՙah’s biographical collection, ՙUyun al-anba fi tabaqat al-atibba{/I}, the testament that al-Rāzī dictated to his student Ibn ՙAlī al-Iṣfahīnī read,

Know I was a lover of knowledge, and . . . wrote about every question that I might know its quantity and quality, irrespective of whether it was true or false. . . . I have examined the methods of theology and philosophy, but I did not find in them the profit I found in the Koran, for the Koran ascribes glory and majesty to God, and forbids preoccupations with obscurities and contradictions. These only teach us that the human intellect disintegrates in these deep narrows and hidden ways.

What was the nature of al-Rāzī’s interpretations of Islamic philosophy and theology that aroused so much controversy? First, one should remember that al-Rāzī did not distinguish himself only as an author of works that were easily acceptable as reflecting Sunni (orthodox) views. In fact, in stages, and after having been tempted by rationalistic Greek thought, he became associated with the well-established Ashՙarī school, which sought to find a synthesis between orthodox religious principles (such as the uncreated nature of the Qur՚ān and the absolute power and grace of God) and human efforts to use reason. Among al-Rāzī’s major works that reflected such principles, the famous Kitāb muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-al-muta՚akhkhirīn (compendium of the ideas of scholars and theologians; best known as Muḥaṣṣal is worthy of note. The {I}Muḥaṣṣal{/I} discusses (among a wide variety of subjects) the general characteristics of being, cause and effect, and prophecy and eschatology. A second landmark work is his {I}Kitāb al-tafsir al-kabir{/I} (great commentary on the Qur՚ān). Although both of these works became Islamic classics, modern commentators on al-Rāzī, including Louis Gardet, make it clear that al-Rāzī’s theology is marked by philosophical and even some scientific references to Greek sources. Gardet provides a key to understanding why those of al-Rāzī’s contemporaries who were bound to strict religious tenets might have opposed the originality of his interpretations. Referring to al-Rāzī’s Qur՚ānic commentary, Gardet cites G. C. Anawati, who says, “It . . . is both philosophical and biՙl-raՙy, i.e., it does not rely on tradition alone, but on the considered judgment and reflection of the commentator.”

Significance

The career of al-Rāzī is a striking example of the survival, into the thirteenth century, of eclectic intellectual currents that had roots in the classical age of Greece and Rome as well as that of Persia, currents that contributed to the great tradition of Islamic scholarship. Anawati’s suggestion that much of al-Rāzī’s analysis of legal and theological questions reflects the use of personal opinion (biՙl-raՙy) is significant, especially in the light of what would follow. To be certain, Islamic religious orthodoxy had never been at ease with certain philosophers’ tendency to introduce secular rational approaches into religious debates. Nor was mysticism an element present in Islam from the earliest years following Muḥammad’s death fully or openly accepted. It was the task of great thinkers such as al-Ashՙarī and al-Ghazzālī (1058-1111) to attempt to forge kalam, or theology, into a set of systematic principles that could resist the criticism of full rationalists, on one hand, and satisfy the need that mystics felt for personal religion, on the other.

During this process, which was at its peak in Islam during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the movement for orthodox systematization, of which al-Rāzī was a part, still left the bab al-ijtihad (door of independent reasoning) open wide enough to allow, not deviation, but at least diversification, in modes of analysis. That al-Rāzī used diverse approaches to arrive at systematic conclusions is illustrated in several scholars’ appraisals of his famous commentary on the Qur՚ān as containing elements of Greek thought and even Greek physical science.

The two or three centuries that followed the generation of al-Rāzī witnessed what would be called the “closing of the door of ijtihad.” The effects of this narrowing of acceptable principles for individual scholarly analysis of theological and legal questions would be to underline further the uniqueness of al-Rāzī’s latter-day contributions to Asharism. Such originality would not be seen again until currents of intellectual rationalization challenged orthodox Islamic values near the end of the nineteenth century. When that happened, there was a call for a “reopening of the door of ijtihad,” and classical but very individualistic commentaries such as that of al-Rāzī resurfaced after centuries of near oblivion.

Bibliography

Abrahamov, Binyamin. Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Explores the foundations of traditionalist and rationalist thought in classical Islamic theology from the third to the sixteenth century, including the criticisms between the two perspectives and the attempted reconciliations.

Gardet, Louis. “Religion and Culture.” In The Cambridge History of Islam, edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977. This chapter is particularly useful for placing the life and work of al-Rāzī in the wider context of Islamic history, including the various schools of thought to which he reacted. Offers chapters titled “The Geographical Setting” and “Literature,” both of which are helpful discussions of the intellectual milieu within which al-Rāzī lived.

Inglis, John, ed. Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Richmond, Surrey, England: Curzon, 2002. Places medieval Islamic philosophy in the context of classic philosophy. Bibliography, index.

Iskenderoglu, Muammer. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Eternity of the World. Boston: Brill, 2002. Explores al-Rāzī’s and Aquinas’s work in the Muslim and Christian contexts and the ways each thinker broke with his respective religious tradition in favor of a philosophical perspective on the question of the eternity of the world. Bibliography, index.

Kholeif, Fathalla. A Study on Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and His Controversies in Transoxiana. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq Press, 1966. This may be the only monographic study of al-Rāzī in English. It includes a substantial section on his life and works in general, but focuses on the text of the famous Transoxiana Controversies. The work is organized around sixteen questions, some of which deal with philosophy and theology and others with Islamic law.

Kraus, Paul. “The Controversies of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī.” Islamic Culture 12, no. 2 (1938): 131-150. Argues that because al-Rāzī’s Transoxiana Controversies is a synthesis of a number of different subjects, it can provide a better idea of the evolution of his thought than that afforded by his major works of theology and Qur՚ānic commentary.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. Edited by Mehdi Amin Razavi. Richmond, Surrey, England: Curzon Press, 1996. Presents a chapter on al-Rāzī’s philosophy, with a look also at his predecessor, Avicenna. Bibliography, index.

Powers, David S. Studies in Qur՚ān and Hadith: The Formation of the Islamic Law of Inheritance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. This work is primarily concerned with technical questions of Islamic law. It shows how representatives of the Ashՙarī school organized their arguments around specific legal issues that were of particular interest to Qur՚ānic commentators.

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966. A detailed and extensive study on the institutions of Islam. The discussion of schools of thought, both within and outside orthodox tradition, includes analysis of the two currents that influenced al-Rāzī most: Mutazilism and Asharism.