Al-Qand fī dhikr ʿulamāʾ Samarqand /
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In the Arabic literary tradition, biographies form a class of their own and have always been widely used. Whether about a single person or about some group, their shared objective was to provide an authoritative account of someone's lineage, social or literary career, academic or religious background or affiliation, or connection to some historic event. As examples one could mention Ibn Hishām's (d. 218/834) Sīrat Muḥammad rasūli ʼllāh , Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa's (d. 668/1270) Kitāb ʿuyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ , or Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṭūkhī's (d. ca 900/1494) Quḍāt Miṣr . The author of the present work, Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 537/1142-43), was a long-time resident of Samarqand and widely known and respected as jurist. He wrote more than 30 works, in Persian and in Arabic. The present volume contains an inventory of ḥadīth scholars bearing some connection to Samarqand. Its importance lies mainly in the many names of people, places, and books which are otherwise entirely unknown.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402614
9789646781122
Al-Ifāda fī tarīkh al-aʾimma al-sāda /
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As is well known, the main difference between the Imāmiyya and Zaydiyya branches in Shīʿī Islam is to do with the fact that the Zaydiyya-named so after their first leader Zayd b.ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 122/740)-did not unconditionally condemn the first three caliphs before ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, while to the Imāmiyya branch, all Sunnīs were infidels. But even though the Zaydīs did not consider Sunnīs generally as infidels, they regarded rebellion against Sunnī rule -unlawful to them-as a religious duty for all. The Imāmīs on the other hand, while radical in doctrine, did not have a militant attitude comparable to that of the Zaydīs. Geographically, the Zaydīs divided into a Yemeni and an Iranian branch, concentrated along the shores of the Caspian sea. The present work contains the biographies of 15 Zaydī imams, some from the Caspian, the author-Abū Ṭālib Hārūnī (d. 424/1033)-being a Zaydī scholar from that region.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404960
9789648700572
Bayān al-ḥaqāʾiq : Majmūʿa-yi hifdah riṣala /
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Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (d. 718/1319) came from a Jewish family in Hamadan. His grandfather had been a courtier of Hūlāgū Khān (r. 1256-65) while his father was a court pharmacist. Rashīd al-Dīn converted to Islam when he was about 30 years old. Trained as a physician, he started his career under the Il-khanid Abāqā Khān (r. 1265-82), rising to the rank of vizier under Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304), Öljeitü (r. 1304-16) and Abū Saʿīd Bahādur Khān (r. 1316-35), who had him executed for murdering his father in 718/1319. Rashīd al-Dīn was also an historian and as such he is best known for his monumental Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh , the earliest attempt at writing a world history and a major source of information on the emergence and organisation of the Mongol empire. The present work is a collection of his essays on various subjects, from theology to Qurʾān interpretation and from the perception of colours to medicine and ethics.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404946
9789648700404
Khuld-i barīn : Rawḍahā-yi shīshum u haftum-Tārīkh-i Tīmūriyān u Turkmānān /
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In the Islamic world, universal histories have been written almost from the very beginning. Among the Arabic works one could, for example, mention the Kitāb akhbār al-rusul wal-mulūk by Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (3rd/9th cent.), Ibn Miskawayh's (d. 421/1030) Kitāb tajārib al-umam , or the Mukhtaṣar taʾrīkh al-bashar by Abu ʼl-Fidāʾ (d. 732/1331). The first such history in New Persian was the abstract of Ṭabarī's Akhbār that was made by Abū ʿAlī Balʿamī (d. between 382-87/992-97) for the Samanid emir Manṣūr b. Nūḥ (d. 365/976). Many other works followed, such as Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (composed in 699-710/1300-10) or the Tārīkh-i Ḥāfiẓ Abrū by Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (d. 833/1430). The present work by Muḥammad Yūsuf Wālih Qazwīnī (d. after 1078/1667) is a universal history with a focus on the Safavids. The sections published here describe the history of the Timurids and the Aq and Qara Qoyunlu dynasties, vital to our understanding of the rise of the Safavids.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402744
9789646781511
Kitāb al-muʿtamad fī uṣūl al-dīn /
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Abu ʼl-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044) was the founder of the last theological school of the Muʿtazila and author of, among others, the Kitāb taṣaffuḥ al-adilla and Sharḥ al-uṣūl al-khamsa . None of his theological works survive in full, while his influential Kitāb taṣaffuḥ al-adilla , of which only fragments remain, was actually never finished. Al-Baṣrī's teachings were given a new impulse and audience through the writings of Rukn al-Dīn b. al-Maḥmūd al-Malāḥimī (d. 536/1141) of Khurāsān, where his ideas also gained support among the Shīʿa, including Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274). Al-Malāḥimī's Kitāb al-muʿtamad fī uṣūl al-dīn , in which he relies mostly on al-Baṣrī's Kitāb taṣaffuḥ al-adilla , survives only in part. The present volume contains a new edition of this text. Thanks to the discovery of two manuscripts in Yemen it was possible to amend the first edition in places and to add a lot of new material, the text now being double in size.
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Added t.p. has: Revised and enlarged edition by Wilferd Madelung.
"Mīras̲-i Maktūb ; 236" :
1 online resource. :
9789004405974
9786002030375
Sullam al-samawāt /
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In the Persianate world, encyclopaedias have a long history. Arabic works by Persian authors aside (like Ibn Farīghūn's Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm , 4th/10th century), the earliest encyclopaedia in Persian is Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) philosophical Dānishnāma-yi ʿAlāʾī . Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī's (d. 606/1210) Jāmiʿ al-'ulūm on the other hand, is an encyclopaedia on everything there was to know at the time. Philosophical encyclopaedias would usually divide into logic, physics and metaphysics, more general encyclopaedias into the pre-Islamic and Islamic sciences, also called the rational ( ʿaqlī ) and traditional ( naqlī ) sciences, even if a strict separation was not always maintained. In addition, there were also specialized encyclopaedias like Ibn Ḥusayn Jurjānī's medical Dhākhira-yi Khwārazmshāhī (early 6th/12th century). The content of encyclopaedias often being dependent on the author's interests and intellectual horizon, no universal format exists. The present work by Abū Qāsim Kāzarūnī (fl. early 11th/17th century) is an example of a very personal encyclopaedia, treating of religion, philosophy, and literature.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404939
9789648700305
Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Volume 1 : Fī nasab abnāʾ al-aʾimma al-aṭhār ʿalayhim ṣalawāt al-malik al-ghaffār /
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In traditional societies, ancestry is an important organising principle, often determining the lives of individuals or groups from the moment that they are born. In the Arab world, nasab (pl. ansāb ) or lineage was and to some extent still is, a major factor in the distribution of wordly and religious power, while administrative positions, trades, crafts and certain offices in the world of scholarship, too, often devolved along hereditary lines. Among the Shīʿa, where blood ties with the family of the Prophet through ʿAlī and his descendants are highly regarded and a source of authority and social standing, we find a number of ansāb works that focus exclusively on the genealogy of the twelve imams. Born into a Shīʿite family of ansāb scholars in 11th/17th-century Medina, the author of the present work travelled extensively in the Shīʿa world in his search for information. The result is a voluminous work, rich in material, genealogical and historic. 3 vols. & supplement al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār ; volume 1.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
9789004402539
9789646781085
Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Supplement : Al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār /
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In traditional societies, ancestry is an important organising principle, often determining the lives of individuals or groups from the moment that they are born. In the Arab world, nasab (pl. ansāb ) or lineage was and to some extent still is, a major factor in the distribution of wordly and religious power, while administrative positions, trades, crafts and certain offices in the world of scholarship, too, often devolved along hereditary lines. Among the Shīʿa, where blood ties with the family of the Prophet through ʿAlī and his descendants are highly regarded and a source of authority and social standing, we find a number of ansāb works that focus exclusively on the genealogy of the twelve imams. Born into a Shīʿite family of ansāb scholars in 11th/17th-century Medina, the author of the present work travelled extensively in the Shīʿa world in his search for information. The result is a voluminous work, rich in material, genealogical and historic. 3 vols. & supplement al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār ; supplement.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
9789004402591
9789646781092
Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 1 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004401556
9789648700596
Qāmūs al-baḥrayn : Matn-i kalāmi-yi fārsi-yi taʾlīf bih sāl-i 814 qamarī /
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Muḥammad Abu ʼl-Faḍl Muḥammad's (fl. ca. 800/1400) Persian Qāmūs al-baḥrayn was written in 814/1411. About the author's life and times nothing is known other than that his nickname 'Ḥamīd Muftī' points at a certain level of expertise in the legal profession. Being a theological summa, the Qāmūs al-baḥrayn stands in a long tradition. The author used numerous theological and philosophical sources, referring explicitly to such authorities as Avicenna (d. 428/1037), Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191), Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1210), and Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274). The work contains so many obvious borrowings from Rāzī that the Qāmūs al-baḥrayn is factually an exposition of his thought. In the edition, a special effort was made to point this out in each case where a concrete reference could be given. There are few theological summae in Persian; readers of Persian will therefore be delighted to discover this comprehensive work and its mellifluous style of composition.
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1 online resource. :
9789004395428
9789004395220
Risālat ithbāt al-ʿaql al-mujarrad-i khwāja-yi Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī va shurūḥ-i ān /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of scholarly works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. In the brief Arabic treatise that is the subject of this publication, Ṭūsī proves that there is a separate intellect in which all contingent being is semperternally represented, unchanging, as a kind of 'interface' between God and the human mind ( dhihn ). Even though this treatise is extremely short, it certainly had an impact, as is clear from the variety of critical reactions in the commentaries and glosses published alongside it in this volume.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406292
9786002030757
Tarjuma-yi Kitāb al-Nijāra : Dar handasa-yi ʿamalī /
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Abu ʼl-Wafāʾ Būzjānī (d. 388/998) was a mathematician and astronomer and a native of Būzjān near Nishapur. He studied arithmetic with two of his uncles, probably in Būzjān. When he was nineteen years old he went to Baghdad. There he further developed himself to become one of the leading scientists of his age, working at the Buyid court. He was a contemporary and protector of the chronicler of intellectual and artistic life in Baghdad at the time, Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. ca. 414/1023). In the bibliographical literature more than twenty works are ascribed to him, many of which were lost. The present work was originally written in Arabic under the title Kitāb fī mā yaḥtāj ilayhi ʼl-ṣāniʿ fī aʿmāl al-handasa . It is a groundbreaking work in that Būzjānī was the first to write a monograph on practical geometry as justified by the rules of theoretical geometry. Medieval Persian and French translation, with introductions and notes.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405646
9789648700992
Qānūn-i Shāhanshāhī /
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Idrīs Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520) was the son of a munshī (secretary) in the chancery of the court of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Ḥasan (d. 882/1478) first in Diyarbakır and then Tabriz. Idrīs must have enjoyed the usual education for an adolescent of his social background. He was fluent in Persian and Arabic, knowing Kurdish as well. He started his career in Tabriz under Yaʿqūb Beg (d. 896/1490), and served him and his descendants for seventeen years in various high administrative offices. When Tabriz was conquered by the Safavids in 907/1501, he fled to the court of the Ottoman emperor Bāyazīd II (d. 918/1512) in Istanbul, serving him and Selīm I (d. 926/1520) in different positions and capacities. Bidlīsī authored more than twenty works but is best known for his Hasht Bihisht , a history of the Ottoman empire written for Bāyazīd II. The present work is a mirror for princes type of composition with a strong religious colouring.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405011
9789648700633
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Ismāʿīliyān /
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Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's (d. 718/1319) Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh has been described by many as the first world history ever. Composed in Persian for the Mongol Il-khans Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304) and Öljeitü (Uljāytu, r. 1304-16), its aim was to set out the history and condition of the Mongol people, conquerors of the world (part one), followed by a description of the other peoples and nations of the world and their histories (part two). Given its unprecedented scope, Rashīd, vizier to both rulers, mobilized a whole team of specialists, informants, and collaborators to assist him in his task. Making use of written and oral sources, the part on the Mongols is a key source on the emergence and organisation of the Mongol empire, while the second part constitutes the first attempt ever at writing a history of the world. The section published here describes the history of the Ismailis.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404236
9789648700503
Rasāʾil-i Fārsi-yi Jurjānī : Rasāʾil-i kalāmī, taʾlīf ḥudūd-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī /
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From the time that ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) was designated to be the successor of al-Maʾmūn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 218/833) and then murdered shortly after that, various Shīʿa groups have been at odds with whoever opposed their claim to leadership in Islam. The author of the Persian dissertations contained in the present volume, the otherwise unknown Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn b. Sadīd al-Dīn Jurjānī (ca. 9th/15th cent.), clearly issues from this polemic tradition. Reading his work, it is clear that Jurjānī had a full command of all the theological registers to be played upon in a traditional sectarian debate. This is especially the case for the first treatise in this collection, in which he opposes such movements as the Ashʿarīs, the Ḥanbalīs, the Ismāʿīlīs, and the Sufis. The treatises that follow, too, are all about religious dogma ( ʿaqāʾid ), with some of them showing clear signs of thematic, not to say temporal, association.
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1 online resource. :
9789004401846
9789645568175
Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Volume 3 : Fī nasab abnāʾ al-aʾimma al-aṭhār ʿalayhim ṣalawāt al-malik al-ghaffār /
:
In traditional societies, ancestry is an important organising principle, often determining the lives of individuals or groups from the moment that they are born. In the Arab world, nasab (pl. ansāb ) or lineage was and to some extent still is, a major factor in the distribution of wordly and religious power, while administrative positions, trades, crafts and certain offices in the world of scholarship, too, often devolved along hereditary lines. Among the Shīʿa, where blood ties with the family of the Prophet through ʿAlī and his descendants are highly regarded and a source of authority and social standing, we find a number of ansāb works that focus exclusively on the genealogy of the twelve imams. Born into a Shīʿite family of ansāb scholars in 11th/17th-century Medina, the author of the present work travelled extensively in the Shīʿa world in his search for information. The result is a voluminous work, rich in material, genealogical and historic. 3 vols. & supplement al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār ; volume 3.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
9789004402577
9789646781207
Al-Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. Another famous work is his Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa published here. As stated by the editor, this is one of the most important and influential astronomical works written in the pre-modern Islamic world. It belongs to the second phase of Ṭūsī's academic career and constitutes a synthesis between two earlier works by him, written when he was still working for the Nizārī Ismailis. Arabic text and apparatus, Persian introduction translated from the English edition.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406476
9786002030917
Der Kategorienkommentar von Abū l-Farağ ʿAbdallāh ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib : Text und Untersuchungen /
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The Commentary on the Categorie s by Abū l-Farağ ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib is an important representative of the Aristotelian tradition in Arabic culture. Formally based on late antique commentaries on Aristotle's Categories , it provides the last example of the learned tradition still alive in eleventh-century Baghdad. The introduction offers a general survey of the commentaries on Aristotelian Categories , from the first Greek texts to the Arabic version featured here. The life and works of Ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib are also discussed. Systematic comparison with surviving Greek commentaries and a series of thematic studies elucidate the author´s method. The critical edition of ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib's Commentary is accompanied by a detailed summary, which facilitates its use by readers unfamiliar with the Arabic language.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047418177
9789004149038
Sabʿ rasāʾil /
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The history of Islamic philosophy was shaped by many great thinkers over a long period of time. As is well known, the Persianate world played an important role in this, almost from the very beginning. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the city of Shiraz saw the rise of a number of thinkers who together came to represent the 'School of Shiraz' in philosophy. A major figure in this school was Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502-03). A specialist in theology and philosophy, Dawānī's fame reached much beyond the confines of Shiraz, from the Ottoman empire all the way to the Indian subcontinent. Dawānī's religious proclivities have been subject of debate, the question being if he ever really was a Sunnī. It is therefore not without significance that the present volume should contain two works by him on Sunnī philosophical theology as well as three other texts of unmistakeably Shīʿī signature.
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Added t. pages in Roman script: Sabʻ Rasāʻil / ʻAllāmah Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī and Mullā Ismāʻīl al-Xāǰūʼī al-Iṣfahānī :
1 online resource. :
9789004402393
9789646781504
Ḥifẓ al-badan : Risālaʾī Fārsī dar bihdāsht wa tandurustī /
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Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1210) was a prominent theologian, interpreter of the Qurʾān, philosopher, and arguably the most important critic of Avicenna (d. 428/1037). He was born in 543/1149 in Rayy, where he studied theology, philosophy and law under different masters, including his father who was a preacher. Having completed his studies, he started a wandering life which took him to different cities and courts in Transoxania and Khwārazm, where he had a number of famous disputes with local scholars. After a brief return to Rayy he finally settled in Herat where he spent the rest of his life, a wealthy and respected scholar with many followers. His works are many, mainly in philosophy and theology, besides his famous commentary on the Qurʾān called Mafātīḥ al-ghayb . Rāzī received a basic medical training during a stopover in Sarakhs 580/1184. The present work is a compendium on preventive medicine and stands in a long tradition.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405790
9786002030160