ENCYCLOPEDIA MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PART 25

QAZWINI, AL‐, ZAKARIYA B.MUHAMMAD B. MAHMUD (D. 1283)

  Qazwını’s name appears in various forms in different sources (Wu ¨stenfeld, al-_ Qazwını, 1849). He was the author of two well-known works: a cosmography, The Wonders of Created Things and the Oddities of Existing Things (‘Aja’ib al-Makhlu qat wa-Ghara’ib al Mawjudat), and a geography with two variant titles, The Wonders of the Lands (‘Aja’ib al-Bulda n) or The Monuments of the Lands and the Annals of [God’s] Servants (Athar al-Bilad wa-Akhbar al-‘Ibad).Judging from the broad dissemination of extant manuscript copies, these two works were the most widely read examples of a medieval Islamic literary genre about wonders (‘aja’ib) (EI2,‘‘‘Adja’ib’’; Encyclopedia Iranica, ‘‘Adja’eb al-Makluqat’’). It was a genre that drew on Neoplatonic ideas about creation as emanation and on classical traditions regarding the oddities of distant lands. Qazwını was a qadı (judge) (Ibn Taghrı birdı; von Hees) and also a professor at al-Madrasa al-Sharabıyya in Wasit (Ibn al-Fuwatı; von Hees).

  Recent work shows that the established version of Qazwını’s biography as presented inThe Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition,requires revision. It has long been held (a) that Qazwını was a qadı at Wasit and Hilla before the Mongol Conquest, (b) that he left this post at the time of the conquest and subsequently turned to scholarship, and (c) that his literary patron was ‘Ala’ al-Dın‘Ata Malik Juwaynı.

  Of these three propositions, only proposition (a) continues to stand unchallenged. It has been based on the clear statement of the biographer Ibn Taghrıbirdı (d. 1470), who wrote the following: ‘‘He was a judge in Wasit and Hilla in the days of the Caliphate. He was a learned ima m,a faqıh, and he wrote useful compositions including ‘The Book of the Wonders of Creation.’ He died on the seventh day of Muharram in the year 682 [1283 CE]. ’’

  Proposition (b), by contrast, can now be shown to be false. It has been based on logical but speculative assumptions concerning the interpretation of a statement in the preface toThe Wonders of Creation. There, Qazwını himself wrote, ‘‘When I was tested to go far from home and homeland, and be separated from family and from those who lived nearby, I set myself to studying in accordance with the saying, ‘In time, a book is an excellent companion.’’’ Scholars have assumed that the home referred to here is Wasit, that the reason for Qazwını’s separation from it is the conquest, and that the reference to studying suggests the writing of books as opposed to the practice of law. However, Syrinx von Hees has recently brought to light new evidence that contradicts these assumptions. The author of al- Hawadith al-Jami‘a,who is thought o be Ibn al-Fuwatı, mentioned Qazwını among the notable personages of Mongol Iraq who died in AH 682. He wrote the following: ‘‘He composed a book calledThe Wonders of Creation.... He took on the judgeship of Hilla in the year (AH) [6]50, and then transferred to the judgeship of Wasit in the year (AH) [6]52, and was assigned to teach in the Sharabı Madrasa, which he continued to do until his death.’’ Therefore, it now seems that if Qazwını’s statement in his preface was meant literally, he was referring to his departure from a previous home and that, both before and after the conquest, his life of study in Wasit included the study, practice, and teaching of law as well as the composition of books.

  As for proposition (c), it is questionable, but it cannot be summarily dismissed. It is based on a passage extolling Juwaynı that appears in some but not all—of the surviving manuscripts of The Wonders of Creation.The passage does not appear in the only surviving manuscript that was made in Wasit while Qazwını lived there (Munich, cod. arab 464). This fact is notable, but it does not prove that Juwaynı  could not have been the patron of the text, because there are several comparable instances in which patronage for a text was only secured after the text was completed. The passage does appear in an undated manuscript that was probably produced about twenty years after both Qazwını and Juwaynı died (London, Or. 14140). Some subsequent manuscripts include the passage, whereas others do not. On the basis of the available evidence, it is impossible to settle the question. Even so, much can be learned much about the history of the reception of the text if we can identify patterns among those manuscripts that do include the eulogy to Juwaynı and among those that do not.

  Qazwını’s geography has not traditionally been used as a source for his biography, but von Hees has recently approached it as such. By collecting the firstperson references in the geography, von Hees makes a strong case that Qazwını spent his youth in Qazwin, studied in Mosul, and then pursued his career in Baghdad, Hilla, and Wasit. One might initially be cautious about these conclusions given that the use of the first person in geographic writing is often a stylistic convention rather than a means for the presentation of autobiographical data. However, as a stylistic convention, the use of the first person in geographical writing often serves to validate otherwise questionable passages concerning distant lands. It is striking that Qazwını, by contrast, actually uses the first person for passages concerning areas in which he is otherwise known to have lived or in which he may quite conceivably have lived given what is otherwise known of his life. It therefore seems that the firstperson references in the geography can indeed be used for the reconstruction of his biography.

  Qazwını’s two works are The Wonders of Created Things and the Oddities of Existing Things (‘Aja’ib alMakhluqat  wa-Ghara’ib al-Mawjudat) and The Wonders of the Lands (‘Aja’ib al-Buldan), of which a variant edition is called The Monuments of the Lands and the Annals of [God’s] Servants (Athar al-Bilad wa-Akhbar al-‘Ibad). Both works were widely disseminated, as demonstrated by numerous surviving manuscripts not only in the original Arabic but also in Persian and Turkish translations and summaries. Both were encyclopedic compendia in which Qazwını organized information gathered from numerous previous authorities into an overarching framework. Manuscripts of the cosmography often contain hundreds of illustrations. Before describing the two works further, it is necessary to explain their modern publication histories.

  Both texts were first published by Ferdinand Wu¨stenfeld, whose editions remain the most widely available versions to scholars. As has long been recognized, Wu¨stenfeld’s choice of manuscript sources for these editions renders them problematic. Recent scholarship based on Qazwını’s own manuscript of the cosmography is beginning to reveal how Wu¨stenfeld’s problematic edition of that text has led to misunderstandings of it in the secondary scholarship. However, parallel scholarship on the early manuscripts of the geography has not yet been undertaken, so it is still unclear what the effects of Wu¨stenfeld’s edition of that book have been.

  In the case of the cosmography, Wu ¨stenfeld mixed sections from manuscripts dated from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the contents of which actually vary considerably. Ruska attempted to quantify this variation by determining exactly how many Arabic editions existed, but his method for classifying the editions was problematic, for two reasons. First, he attempted to count ‘‘lost’’ versions that he presumed must have existed along with surviving versions. Second, he only checked for correspondences and differences at a select few points in the text, and thus falsely identified manuscripts that diverge at other points in the text as belonging to the same edition (von Hees, 91–6). It is not yet possible to say exactly how many manuscript versions there are, but there are clearly many more than the four that Ruska enumerated. However many versions there may be, the general observation can nonetheless be made that the earlier manuscripts place comparatively greater emphasis on natural history, whereas the later ones place comparatively greater emphasis on oddities. Thus, Wu¨stenfeld’s decision to include many passages from later manuscripts in his published version has resulted in an edition that has a much greater emphasis on oddities than Qazwını’s original cosmography. This has unfortunately led to widespread misunderstandings about the emphases of the original book, since much of the secondary scholarship on it is based on Wu¨stenfeld’s version. There are also less widely available editions published in the Arab world, but none that the present author has found to portray the text as it appears in any single early manuscript. Therefore, it is desirable to study Qazwını’s cosmography as much as possible from early manuscripts.

  It has long been recognized that the manuscript on which an authoritative published version should be based is Munich cod. arab. 464. Dated 1280, it is the only dated manuscript to survive from Qazwını’s lifetime. The appearance of his name and titles in the opening rosette indicate that it was his personal copy, and it is almost complete. The present author suggests that the missing passages should be filled in by reference to a newly found manuscript dated 1322, Su¨leymaniye Yeni Cami 813, which is also almost complete (Berlekamp,Proceedings from the Arab Painting Conference, ed. Contadini, forthcoming). Folio-by-folio comparison of the texts in the two manuscripts shows that they contain the same version of the text.

  On the basis of these two manuscripts, the original outline of the cosmography is as follows. It begins with a preface that contains separate expositions of the key terms of the title, which are also the overarching themes of the book: wonder (al-‘ajab), created things (al-makhluqat), odd things (al-gharıb), and existing things (al-mawjudat). In accordance with this, the bulk of the book consists of encyclopedia entries about separate created wonders that are presented according to the classifications of creation to which they belong, which in turn are organized according to a cosmographic hierarchy. The first part deals with ‘‘things above,’’ whereas the second deals with ‘‘things below.’’ The ‘‘things above’’ are organized into chapters about the planets, the fixed stars of the northern and southern hemispheres, the lunar mansions, the angels, and time. The ‘‘things below’’ are divided into sections about the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth. The fire section is the shortest and contains no subchapters. The air section treats such phenomena as winds, thunder, lightning, the aureole of the sun, and the rainbow. The water section starts with a preliminary chapter about the surrounding ocean and then continues with additional chapters about other seas (the China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Sea, the Red Sea, the Sea of Zanzibar, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caspian Sea), with subsections about the islands and characteristic inhabitants of each; it concludes with a section about sea creatures in general. The earth section includes subchapters addressing differing opinions as to how the earth is laid out, the regions and climes of the earth, earthquakes and the sinking in of the ground, mountains, rivers, springs, and wells. These subchapters are followed by those about beings born of mothers. The first such discuss metals and stones (which were understood to have been born of the earth). These are followed by plants: first trees and then small plants. These in turn are followed by animals, classified as follows: people; riding animals; livestock; predatory animals; birds; creepers (such as insects and rodents); and, finally, a concluding section about strangely formed breeds. In Munich cod. arab. 464, a passage about jinn written on later paper and in a later hand is inserted between those about people and riding animals. In Su¨leymaniye Yeni Cami 813, the text is continuous from people to riding animals, demonstrating that the passage about jinn was a later addition to the text of Munich cod. arab. 464 rather than a replacement for a lost original folio.

  The illustrations found in different manuscripts of the cosmography vary considerably. Their significance varies from one manuscript to the next, shifting with changes in the history of the text and with changes in audience. However, taken together, they do challenge two assertions that are often made about manuscript painting in Islamic societies: that it appears in secular contexts and that its audiences were limited to the princely courts. In its original context and version, the cosmography was a deeply religious text, with each wonder presented as a sign pointing to the greatness of its Creator; illustrations of these created wonders appear throughout Qazwını’s own copy of this text, although Qazwını himself was a judge and professor of Islamic law and was not associated with any princely court. Although the overall character of the text shifts in its later history, subsequent illustrated copies vary widely in their quality, suggesting that they were made for audiences at a variety of social levels.

  As for the geography, Wu¨stenfeld’s edition of it is also considered problematic, and rightly so. The version entitled The Wonders of the Lands (‘Aja’ib alBuldan)is recognized as an older version than that entitled The Monuments of the Lands and the Annals of [God’s] Servants (Athar al-Bilad wa-Akhbar al-‘Iba d),but Wu¨stenfeld’s edition is based on various manuscripts ofThe Monuments of the Lands and the Annals of [God’s] Servants.It will not be known what the implications of Wu ¨stenfeld’s problematic choice of manuscript sources have been for secondary scholarship on the geography until intensive study of the early manuscripts is undertaken. Meanwhile, the geography as it occurs in Wu¨stenfeld’s edition can be described as follows. It is organized according to the earth’s seven climes, with descriptions of the cities, countries, mountains, and rivers of each. Included in the descriptions of the cities and countries are short biographies of the famous luminaries who came from them.

Primary Sources

Ibn al-Fuwatı¯, Kamal al-Din. Al-Hawa¯dith al-Ja¯mi‘a, ed. Mustafa Jawa ¯d. Baghdad: al-Maktaba al-‘Arabı¯ya, 1351/1932.

Ibn Taghrı¯birdı¯, [Abu ¯Muhasin] Yu¯ suf. al-Manhal al-Safıwa-al-Mustawfa¯ ba‘da al-Wa¯fı¯, vol. 5. Cairo, 1988.

Katip C¸ elebi, akaHajjı¯al-Khalı¯fa.Kashf al-_ Zunu¯n, 6 vols., vol. 2. Beirut: Da¯r al-Kutub al-‘Ilmı¯ya, 1413/1992.

Qazwı¯nı¯, Zakarı ¯ya b. Muhammad.Die Wunder des Himmels und der Erde, transl. Alma Giese. Stuttgard: Thienemann, Edition Erdmann, 1986.

Qazwı¯nı¯, Zakarı ¯ya b. Muhammad. ‘‘Kita¯b ‘Aja¯’ib al-Makhlu ¯qa¯t. Die Wunder der Scho ¨pfung.’’ InZakarija BenMuhammed Ben Mahmud el-Cazwini’s Kosmographie. Erster Theil, ed. Ferdinand Wu ¨stenfeld. Go ¨ttingen, 1849.

Qazwı¯nı¯, Zakarı ¯ya b. Muhammad. ‘‘Kita¯bA¯tha ¯r al-Bulda¯n. Die Denk ma¨ler der La ¨nder.’’ In Zakarija Ben Muhammed Ben Mahmud el-Cazwini’s Kosmographie. Erster Theil, ed. Ferdinand Wu ¨stenfeld. Go ¨ttingen, 1848.

Further Reading

‘‘‘Adja ¯’ib.’’ In EI2. ‘‘Adja ¯’eb al-Maklu ¯qa¯t.’’ InEncyclopedia Iranica. Badiee, Julie. ‘‘Angels in an Islamic Heaven.’’Bulletin of the Los Angeles County Museum XXIV(1978).

———. ‘‘The Sarre Qazwini: An Early Aq Qoyunlu Manuscript?’’Ars Orientalis14 (1984): 97–113.

———.An Islamic Cosmography: The Illustrations of the Sarre Qazwini. PhD dissertation. The University of Michigan, 1978.

Berlekamp, Persis.Wonders and Their Images in Late Medieval Islamic Culture: ‘The Wonders of Creation’ in Fars and Iraq, 1280–1388. PhD dissertation. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University, 2003.

———. ‘‘From Iraq to Fars: Tracking Cultural Transformations Through the 1322 Qazwini‘Aja ¯’ib Manuscript, Su¨leymaniye Yeni Cami 813.’’ Proceedings of the Arab Painting Conference, ed. Anna Contadini. Forthcoming. Bothmer, Hans-Caspar Graf von.Die Illustrationen des‘Mu ¨nchener Qazwı¯nı¯’ von 1280 (cod. Monac. arab 464):

Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis Ihres Stils. PhD dissertation.Universita¨tMu¨nchen, 1971.

Carboni, Stefano. ‘‘Constellations, Giants and Angels from al-Qazwini Manuscripts.’’ InIslamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum, ed. James Allan, 83–97. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995.

———. ‘‘The London Qazwı¯nı¯: An Early Fourteenth Century Copy of the ‘Aja ¯’ib al-Makhlu ¯qa¯t.’’Islamic ArtIII (1988–1989): 15–31.

———.The Wonders of Creation and the Singularities of Ilkhanid Painting: A Study of the London Qazwini British Library Ms. Or. 14140. PhD dissertation. London:

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1992.

Carboni, Stefano, and Anna Contadini. ‘‘An Illustrated Copy of al-Qazwı¯nı¯’s The Wonders of Creation.’’ Sotheby’s Art at Auction 1989–1990(1990): 228–33.

von Hees, Syrinx.Enzyklopa¨die als Spiegel des Weltbildes: Qazwı¯nı¯s Wunder der Scho ¨pfung- eine Naturkunde des 13. Jahrhunderts. Vol. 4, Diskurse der Arabistik. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag, 2002.

‘‘_Kazwı¯nı¯.’’ Encyclopedia of Islam.‘‘_Kazwı¯nı¯.’’ EI2. Rhu¨rdanz, Karin. ‘‘Zwei Illustrierte Qazwı¯nı¯-Handschriften in Sammlungen der DDR.’’ PersicaX (1982): 97–114, de Ruita, Jan Jaap. ‘‘Human Embryology in Zakariya¯ AlQazwı¯nı¯’s ‘The Marvels of Creation.’’’Tidjsdrift Voor de

Faxhindeus du Geneeskunde, Naturwaterschappen, Wirkunde in Fedurick9 (1986): 99–117. Ruska, Julius. ‘‘U¨ber den Falschen und den Echten _ Kazwı¯nı¯.’’ Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften (Leipzig/Hamburg)13 (1914): 183–8.

Sezgin, Fuat, ed.Studies on Zakarı¯ya¯ b. Muhammad alQazwı¯nı¯(d. 1283). Frankfurt am Main, 1994

QUTB MINAR

Mosque

  A Muslim army occupied Sind in 711, and Islam subsequently expanded its rule along the Indus River. By the beginning of the eleventh century, the Ghaznavid dynasty (977–c. 1150) controlled Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Sind, and between 1007 and 1027 Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna conducted more than twenty raids into northern India, destroyed many Hindu and Jain temples, and acquired enormous booty for his Turkic homeland. The Ghaznavids were energetic patrons of architecture, and two impressive minars still stand in Ghazna.

  The successor Ghurid dynasty (c. 1100–1215) embellished its lands with buildings as well, most notably during the late twelfth century with the towering minar of  Djam in their capital city of Firuzkuh in Afghanistan. Inscribed with the entire surah Maryam (Qur’an 19:1–98), the minar’s epigraphs put particular emphasis on the prophetic tradition leading up to Muhammad s.a.w and proclaim the unique role of Muhammad s.a.w as the bearer of the final divine revelation. The Ghurid sultan defeated the Hindu army under Rai Pithora at the second battle of Tarain in 1192, supplanted the Rajput ruler of Delhi, and established a capital there. The new territory was governed as a Ghurid fief by General Qutb al-Din Aybak, a literate and manumitted mercenary slave, until 1206, when he established an independent sultanate. Under his rule, Islamic domain expanded rapidly in northern India.

  On the site of the eleventh- and twelfth-century Lal Kot (Red Fort) of Delhi, the Ghurids ordered the construction of a jami‘ mosque to serve the new Muslim population and to demonstrate the new order of faith and governance. Now known as the Quwwat al-Islam (Might of Islam) mosque or the Qutb mosque, from the twelfth until the middle of the seventeenth century it was more simply identified as the jami‘ mosque of Delhi, and it served as the city’s principal congregational mosque until Shah Jahan constructed his great mosque further to the north in Mughal Delhi’s Shahjahanabad in 1650 to 1656.

  The old jami‘ mosque’s original courtyard supplanted not only the Hindu fortress but also a Vaishnavite temple. As an inscription on the building testifies, most of the red sandstone building materials for the new mosque came from twenty-seven demolished temples in and around Delhi. Additional epigraphic evidence names Qutb al-Din Aybak as the commander who ordered the construction of the mosque in 1192 and his sovereign Mu‘izz al-Din as its patron in 1197. These two dates allow for the establishment of the initial dimensions of the early mosque. Four arcades framed a rectangular courtyard pointing in the direction of prayer, and the pillars supporting the arcades’ roof and domes came from Hindu and Jain temples. In keeping with Islam’s avoidance of figural imagery in a sacred context, the building’s work crews, which were almost entirely Hindu, chiseled away or plastered over the pillars’ figural art. Despite this refurbishing, the second Delhi sultan, Iltutmish (1210–1235), decided that the qiblah arcade should be altered to approximate mosque aesthetics in the Ghurid homeland. An enormous five-arched stone screen that was richly decorated with incised ornament and inscriptions in angular and cursive styles was erected in front of the qiblah. The screen’s central arch was notably taller than the flanking arches, and some ten meters in front of it was an eleventh-century iron pillar, once topped with an image of Garuda, the Hindu god of victory. With the statue removed, the iron pillar remained in the mosque as a remarkable trophy and permanent testimony to victory.

  The epigraphic program of the screen consists of both Qur’anic selections and hadith (tradition) and should be read like a huge open book: it is visual support for the imam leading the community in prayer. Hadith underscores the importance of building mosques, whereas citations from the Qur’an present several themes: divine sovereignty; divine support for Muslim victory; warnings to all nonbelievers and opponents of Islam that their disbelief will bring them defeat and destruction; a promise of paradise to believers; and the obligations of faith and the times of prayer. In essence, this quotation of scripture reinforces Islam’s political and social agenda in occupying Delhi and its environs. It presents an appropriate and very careful selection from Qur’an and hadith that must have been the responsibility of the sultan, advised by learned persons such as the Muslim judge (qadi) who accompanied the army. Iltutmish was known for his piety and for his support of the Hanafi madhhab (rite). That very few persons were literate and that the inscriptions were rendered in styles that only the highly educated could read did not pose a problem; for most believers, the visible presence of holy writ was more important than specific content.

Minar

  If the mosque’s courtyard presented the obligations of the faith to believers, then the great minar was a visible statement of Islam’s victory to the surrounding countryside and its former Hindu rulers. With a diameter of 14.32 meters at its base and a height of 72.5 meters, it towered over the entire complex. Like its Ghaznavid and Ghurid predecessors especially the somewhat shorter minar of Djam it marked the surrounding landscape as part of the realm of Islam. In the original mosque, it stood outside of the southeast corner, but Iltutmish’s extension brought it within the walls. Its five distinct stories delineate much of the history of Islam in Delhi. According to Persian and Arabic historical inscriptions on the lower three stories, the first story was completed under the authority of the Ghurid Sultan Mu‘izz al-Din b. Sam and Qutb al-Din Aybak, whereas the second and third stories were constructed under the patronage of Sultan Iltutmish. Most of the fourth and all of the present fifth story were the result of repairs ordered by Sultan Firuz Shah (1351–1388) after the top of the minar was severely damaged by lightning.

  Its 379 steps provide access to four overhanging balconies that are supported by elaborate projecting muqarnas (honeycomb or stalactite) brackets. Each of the stories is visually unique. The first story was decorated with alternating wedge-shaped flanges and semicircular fluting. The second story was ringed only with fluting, and the third story was solely ornamented with flanges. The fourth story is circular but clothed in white marble, whereas the final story is a composite design. Ten times the height of the iron pillar, the minar stood as a gigantic symbol of victory, and, with the morning light, its shadow moved across the prayer wall’s face and touched the pillar.

  Extensive Qur’anic and historical inscriptions cover the exterior of the first two stories, where sharp-eyed and experienced viewers could have read them. Placement and styles of script suggest that the designers came from Khurasan in northeastern Iran. Several themes occur on the first story: God’s uniqueness, omniscience, and omnipotence; God’s power to create and maintain life; the obligations of prayer and faithful adherence to Islam; Islam’s victory; the promise of paradise to the faithful; and warnings to disbelievers and idolators that a terrible fate awaits them (this theme in particular occurs again and again). Notably, Qur’an verses 258–60 refer to the prophet Abraham’s devotion to monotheism and his destruction of idols; this is a very pointed object lesson for those that Islam considered polytheists in northern India.

Later History

  Successor to the Mu’izzi sultans, the Khalji dynasty’s most important ruler, ‘Ala’ al-Din Muhammad (1296–1318), initiated the construction of a second minar that would have risen to at least twice the height of the Qutb minar. Never completed, its giant stump stands in a northern section of ‘Ala’ al-Din’s expansion of the mosque. Other planned extensions would have included a doubling of the size of the qiblah screen and the construction of four cubic and domed gateways. Only one of these gateways, the ‘Alai Gate, still stands on the southern side of the mosque; its red sandstone and marble exterior and interior walls are elaborately inscribed. ‘Ala’ al-Din’s wars in the south had brought unparalleled wealth back to Delhi, and the sultan used much of it to start his massive building program at the early mosque. Qur’anic verses and Persian inscriptions refer repeatedly to the destruction of idolators’ temples. Other inscriptions focus on belief and disbelief, paradise, pilgrimage, the truth of the Revelation, and the benefits of prayer. Again and again, non believers are promised dire punishment for eternity, whereas believers are offered the joys of paradise.

  In the southwest corner of the complex, ‘Ala’ alDin also constructed a madrasa that probably contains his own tomb. Well into the sixteenth century, the Qutb mosque remained the center of belief and a symbol of Islam’s power. On its periphery over the course of three centuries were constructed numerous mosques, water tanks, and tombs that make it a virtual necropolis of the wealthy and powerful and one of the richest repositories of Islamic architecture anywhere in the world.

  During the British Raj, the Qutb mosque and minar were admired and beautified as picturesque ruins. The old jami‘ mosque became a popular picnic place, and Indian and British painters produced hundreds of surviving views of the site. This marked the beginning of its transformation into a major tourist site; the Qutb minar has become a revenue generator in India that is second only to the Taj Mahal.

Further Reading

Brown, Percy.Indian Architecture (The Islamic Period). Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons, 1942.

Maricq, Andre´, and Gaston Wiet.Le Minar de Djam, Paris: Me´moires de la Delegation Arche´ologique Franc¸aise en Afghanistan, 1959.

Nath, R.History of Sultanate Architecture. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1978.

Page, J.A.An Historical Memoir on the Qutb: Delhi, vol. 22. Calcutta: Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1926.

Welch, Anthony, Hussein Keshani, and Alexandra Bain. ‘‘Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate.’’Muqarnas, an Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World19 (2002): 12–43.

RANIRI, AL-, NUR AL-DIN (D. 1658)

  Nur al-Din Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn Hasanji ibn Muhammad al-Raniri (d. 1658) was a scholar and religious reformer who was influential in the religious affairs of the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago. He was born in the port city of Rander in Gujarat, India, in the late 1500s to a father of South Arabian and Indian ancestry and probably to a Malay mother. Little is known of al-Raniri’s early life, but he was likely already studying in Arabia when he performed the hajj in 1620. He was a member of the Shafi‘i rite, of the Ash‘ari theological school, and of the Rifa’iyya Sufi order.

  In 1637, al-Raniri arrived in Acheh, North Sumatra, the most important sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Southeast Asian center of Islam since the fall of Malacca in 1511. Acheh’s ruler, Sultan Iskandar Thani (r. 1637–1641), appointed al-Raniri to the highest religious office, and al-Raniri immediately set about to purge heterodox Sufi pantheistic ideas (wujudiyya), which had been popularized by the Malay poet Hamza Fansuri (fl. 1550–1600) and by his followers Shams al-din of Pasai (d. 1629) and ‘Abd al-Ra‘uf al-Singkili (d. c. 1693). Al-Raniri had holders of heretical views banished and some possibly burned at the stake.

  During his time in Acheh (and, later, Pahang on the Malay Peninsula), al-Raniri wrote eighteen of his twenty-one works. The al-Sirat al-Mustaqim (Straight Path), in which he itemizes rules of orthodox belief, contributed to the Islamization of Kedah Southeast Asia. The polemical Hujjat al-Siddiq li-Daf‘ al-Zindiq (Proof of the Veracious in Refutation of the Mendacious), was written between 1638 and 1641, and the al-Tibyan fi ma’Rifat al-Adyan (The Exposition on Knowledge of Religions)was commissioned by Iskandar Thani’s successor, Queen Taj al-‘Alam (r. 1641–1675). The Malayo-Arab scholar and polemicist S.M. Naquib al-Attas has characterized alRaniri’s critique of Hamza’s teachings as distortions and theHujjatas proof of al-Raniri’s appetite for power. However, others view the issues taken up by al-Raniri against the backdrop of the religious and intellectual debates taking place in India, especially the ideas of Sirhindi.

  Al-Raniri’s longest work, the encyclopedic Bustan al-Salatin fi Dhikr al-Awwalin wa‐l-Akhirin (Garden of Kings Concerning Beginning and Ending), is the one that has begun to receive the most widespread attention. Commissioned by Iskandar Thani in 1638 and something of a ‘‘mirror for princes,’’ it is divided into seven parts: (1) creation; (2) prophets and rulers; (3) just kings and wise ministers; (4) ascetic rulers and pious saints; (5) unjust rulers and oppressive ministers; (6) noble and generous people and brave men; and (7) intelligence, science, and the like. Because al-Raniri drew from numerous Arabic sources when compiling this work, it reveals a great deal about what was available in Acheh at the time.

  Popular reaction to al-Raniri’s measures was probably the reason he left Acheh for Rander in 1644. He died on September 21, 1658, but, a quarter century after his death, in 1684, a fatwa (legal opinion) possibly sought by ‘Abd al-Ra’uf al Singkili was issued in Medina condemning al-Raniri and his views.

Further Reading

al-Attas, Syed Muhammad al-Naquib.A Commentary on the Hujjat al-Siddiq of Nur al-Din al-Raniri. Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Culture, Malaysia, 1986.

Azra, Azyumardi. ‘‘The Transmission of Islamic Reformism to Indonesia. Networks of Middle Eastern and Malay-Indonesian ‘Ulama’ in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.’’ PhD dissertation. New York: Columbia University, 1992.

Iskandar, Teuku, ed. Bustanu’s-Salatin of Nur al-Din alRaniri. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1966.

Vakili, Abdollah. ‘‘Sufism, Power Politics, and Reform: Al-Raˆnıˆrıˆ’s Opposition toHamzah al-Fansu ˆrıˆ’s Teachings Reconsidered.’’ Studia Islamika4 (1997): 113–35

RASHID AL-DIN

  Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani was a physician, historian, scholar, and chief administrative official to a series of Mongol Ilkhan rulers in Iran during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Biography

  Born in 1248, Rashid al-Din grew up among the relatively prosperous Jewish community of medieval Hamadan in western Iran. From this time forward, Iran would be under the full control of the Mongol Ilkhan dynasty (1265–1335), and its somewhat ecumenical policies allowed assertive Christians and Jews to pursue professional careers with the Mongols as patrons. It is within this context that it must be understood how a Jewish convert to Islam would ultimately rise to the highest echelons of administrative power in the Mongol empire. Information about Rashid al-Din’s early life is somewhat scant, but it is known that his father was an apothecary and that Rashid al-Din himself pursued medical studies as a young man. He received his first employment, serving as the court physician for the Ilkhan Abaqa (r. 1265–1282); little is heard of him again until the reign of Arghun (1284 –1291). It would appear that Rashid al-Din continued to practice medicine during this time, but historical sources describe his increasing consultation with Mongol amirs and other elites about political and governmental matters.

  The historian Ahmad b. Husain b. Ali Katib describes how Rashid al-Din was an extensive traveler during these early years of his career; indeed, his detailed taxonomy in the Athar wa Ahya of trees, plants, and other botanical features from Iran and Central Asia point to a scholar–doctor who traveled wide and far for both scholarly and pharmacologic interests. Some of these peregrinations are likely connected to Rashid al-Din’s decision to flee the Ilkhanid court in 1295 because of the paralyzing fiscal crisis and ensuing courtly strife, which resulted when the vizier Sadr al-Din introduced a paper currency (ch’ao) that was based on an earlier Chinese banking initiative.

  Rashid al-Din subsequently reappeared during the late 1290s as a recent convert to Islam and an administrator of great promise in the court of Ghazan Khan (r. 1298–1305). Rashid al-Din was approached by the Mongol ruler to replace Sadr al-Din Zanjani who had been executed for his aforementioned currency debacle as the chief vizier of the Ilkhan empire. He appears to have enjoyed a meteoric rise from this time forward both among the Mongol ruling elite as well as in the administration. By 1299, he had been named as the sahib divan (chief of administration) as well as na’ib (deputy), and he had also quickly arranged diplomatic marriages of his sons to daughters of a number of prominent nobles, Turco-Mongol amirs, religious scholars, and high-profile administrators.  According to Rashid al-Din’s personal correspondence (the veracity of these epistles has been debated extensively; see Morton, 2000, 155–199), these included, among others, Majd al-Din Isma’il b. Yahya b. Isma’il al-Fali (a famous religious scholar), ‘Ala al-Din (atabeg of Yazd), Ali b. Muhammad Shah b. Pahlavan (atabeg of Azarbaijan), and Maudud Shah b. Ala al-Din (nephew of Firuz Shah, a Indian Tughluq ruler). He was also reportedly well connected through marriage to persons of quality in the city of Yazd, most notably Nizam al-Din Ali ibn Mahmud ibn Mahfuz ibn Nizam. Rashid al-Din is believed to have amassed a personal fortune during this time, and much of this was channeled toward the purchase of land and the development of this property for waqf (endowment) purposes.

  According to the Waqf  Nama-i Rab’-i Rashidi (compiled in 1310), it appears that Rashid al-Din owned property throughout central-western Iran and Azarbaijan: Yazd, Isfahan, Shiraz, Abarquh, Mawsil, Maragha, Hamadan, Sultaniyya, and Tabriz. The largest waqf complex established by Rashid al-Din was the Rabi’-i Rashidi in Tabriz. Admittedly there was a certain cupidity here, but it would appear that Rashid al-Din was genuinely alarmed by the detrimental effects of Mongol coercion and corruption on the peasantry and land. In addition to revenues from these properties being used for charitable purposes (madrasas [schools], hospices, public works), Rashid al-Din also founded and developed a number of villages and settlements in the Hawiza area.

  There is little doubt that Rashid al-Din played a pivotal role in a series of dramatic administrative and agricultural reforms instituted by Ghazan Khan during the early 1300s. Excessive and haphazard taxation, in combination with governor-related and bureaucratic avarice, had resulted in considerable peasant flight from agricultural regions which although once prosperous had never fully recovered from the initial Mongol invasions. Ghazan Khan’s interdiction against many unhelpful practices by tax collectors and strict admonitions to henceforth survey, assess, and document taxation practices are preserved in a series of yarlighs (decrees), which were included by Rashid al-Din in his monumental Jami’ al-Tavarikh (The Collection of Histories). The most famous yarligh is that of 1304, when Ghazan Khan declared that governors were no longer allowed to collect taxes in their respective territories; henceforth, scribes (bitikchis) were being sent in to respective provinces to properly assess and record taxation levels. As a result of his reforms, Ghazan Khan boasted, the revenues for the Mongol treasury had doubled, and Muslim peasants and townspeople alike could now enjoy justice and responsible government.

  However, the Mongol era was by and large an unsafe one for chief administrators, and many viziers and mustaufis (chief financial officers) often found themselves victims of court intrigue and false allegations. Rashid al-Din was no exception to this rule, and, during his later years, he was forced to contend with considerable rivalry and opposition from his covizier, Taj al-Din Ali Shah, after Ghazan’s successor, Oljeitu, came to power in 1305. These machinations would intensify to such a point that Oljeitu decreed that they should divide the empire so as to provide them with respective administrative bailiwicks; Rashid al-Din was given control of Luristan, Kirman, Fars, and Iraq’-i ’Ajam. Rashid al-Din would survive his seventh consecutive Mongol coronation in 1317 no small feat indeed but he ultimately fell prey to the intrigues of Taj al-Din in July 1318, when he was accused, convicted, and executed for poisoning his previous liege Oljeitu.

His Work

  Rashid al-Din was a scholar of tremendous energy and industry, and, although he produced various treatises on theology, medicine, epistolography, administration, and agronomy, his most enduring and well-recognized work is the Jami’ al-Tavarikh (The Collection of Histories). In the spectrum of medieval Perso-Islamic histories, the Jami’ al-Tavarikh is arguably unsurpassed with respect to its scope, depth, and historical methodology for understanding the Turco-Mongolian world of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This work first began as a commissioned history for Ghazan Khan, who hoped to establish and record a legacy of his rule in Iran. When this text ( Tarikh-i Mubarak-i Ghazani) was presented formally to Ghazan’s brother and successor, Oljeitu, it was decided that this historical project should be extrapolated to include a general history of the Mongol invasions and the establishment of one of the largest land empires to date in Eurasia. Thus, the Jami’ al-Tavarikh comprises a series of histories of China, India, pre-Islamic Iran, Central Asia, and the Steppe while also focusing on the respective history of the Jews, the Muslim ummah under Muhammad and the Rightly Guided Caliphs (al-Khulafa al-Rashidin), and the Christian infidel Franks (Europeans). Rashid al-Din brought a formidable palette of languages to this project—Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Mongolian and his historiographical approach was such that he provided names and sources for much of the material for earlier parts of theJami’ al-Tavarikh. For this reason, Rashid al-Din can be considered one of the first world historians in the medieval PersoIslamic historical tradition. Specialists of  Mongol administrative history have always been enamored with Rashid al-Din because of his decision to include the full texts some of which were written by him of every single decree (yarligh) that was issued during Ghazan Khan’s reform initiatives in the early 1300s.

  Although much of the material in theJami’ al  tavarikh borrowed directly from Juvaini’s earlier Tarikh-i Jahan-gusha, Rashid al-Din was able to bring one particularly valuable source to bear in his own history: the Altan Debter (Golden Book). This peculiar text of which there are no extant copies was an indigenous Mongolian history that enjoyed near-holy status in the Kara Korum court of the Great Khan. No non-Mongols were permitted to see or touch it, but it is known that Rashid al-Din was able to have its contents orally transmitted to him, most likely by Boland Chingsang, the official envoy of the Great Khan in Tabriz. As the Mongol historian David Morgan cautions, it must be appreciated that Rashid al-Din’s presentation of Mongol history was skewed in such a way as to present his first sponsor, Ghazan Khan, in as positive a light as possible. As a result, there is a less-than-subtle juxtaposition of the detrimental rule of earlier Mongols with the enlightened and visionary policies of Ghazan Khan himself. Nonetheless, there is no mistaking that this massive history is the product of an unrivaled erudition and industriousness, and medieval historians appreciate the authoritative status of Rashid al-Din’s section about the reign of Ghazan Khan and his reforms.

Primary Sources

Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani.Athar wa Ahya’, eds. I. Afshar and M. Sotoodeh. Tehran, 1989.

———.Jami’ al-Tavarikh, 3 vols., ed. B. Karimi. Tehran, 1959.

———.Lata’if al-Haqa’iq, 2 vols., ed. Ghulam Riza Tahir. Tehran, 1976.

———.Mukatabat-i Rashidi, ed. M. Shafi’. Lahore, 1945.

———.Oghuz-nama, ed. R. Shukiurova. Moscow, 1991.

———.Tanksuq-nama, ed. M. Minovi. Tehran, 1972.

———.Tarikh-i Mubarak-i Ghazani, ed. K. Jahn. La Haye, 1957.

———.Vaq f-nama-i Rab’-i Rashidi, eds. M. Minovi and I. Afshar. Tehran, 1977.

Further Reading

Blair, Sheila. ‘‘Patterns of Patronage and Production in Ilkhanid Iran: The Case of Rashid al-Din.’’ In The Court of the Il-khans 1290–1340, eds. J. Raby and T. Fitzherbert, 39–62. Oxford, UK, 1997.

Bloom, Jonathan, and Sheila Blair.A Compendium of Chronicles: Rashid al-Din’s Illustrated History of the World. London, 1995.

Boyle, J.A. ‘‘Juvaini and Rashid al-Din as Sources on the History of the Mongols.’’ InHistorians of the Middle East, ed. B. Lewis, 133–7. New York, 1962.

———. ‘‘Rashid al-Din and the Franks.’’Central Asiatic Journal14 (1970): 62–7.

Gray, B.The World History of Rashid al-Din: A Study of the Royal Asiatic Society Manuscript. London, 1978.

Hoffman, B. ‘‘The Gates of Piety and Charity: Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah as Founder of Pious Endowments.’’ In L’Iran Face a` la Domination Mongole, ed. Denise Aigle, 189–202. Paris, 1997.

Lambton, A.K.S. ‘‘TheAthar wa Ahya’of Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturist.’’ In The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, eds. R. AmitaiPreiss and D.O. Morgan, 126–54. Leiden, 1999.

———.Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia: Aspects of Administrative, Economic and Social History, 11th–14th Century. Albany, 1988.

Morgan, D.O. ‘‘Cassiodorus and Rashid al-Din on Barbarian Rule in Italy and Persia’’ BSOAS44 (1977): 302–20.

———.The Mongols. London, 1986.

———. ‘‘Persian Historians and the Mongols.’’ InMedieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, ed. D.O. Morgan, 109–24. London, 1982.

———. ‘‘Rashid al-Din and Gazan Khan.’’ InL’Iran Face a` la Domination Mongole, ed. Denise Aigle, 179–88. Paris, 1997.

Morton, A.H. ‘‘The Letters of Rashid al-Din: Ilkhanid Fact or Timurid?’’ InThe Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, eds. R. Amitai-Preiss and D.O. Morgan, 155–99. Leiden, 1999.

Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani.The History of the Seljuq Turks from the Jami’ al-Tawarikh: An Ilkhanid Adaptation of the Saljuq-nama of Zahir al-Din Nishapuri, ed. C.E. Bosworth, transl. K. Luther. Richmond, 2001.

———.Rashiduddin Fazlullah’s Jami’u’t-Tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), transl. W.W. Thackston. Cambridge, UK, 1998.

———.The Successors of Genghis Khan, ed. and transl. J.A. Boyle. New York and London, 1971.

Richard, Francis. ‘‘Un des Peintres du ManuscriptSupple´-ment Persan 1113de l’Histoire des Mongols de Rashid al-Din Identifie´.’’ In L’Iran face a` la Domination Mongole, ed. Denise Aigle, 307–19. Paris, 1997.

Ru¨hrdanz, K. ‘‘Illustrationen zu Rashid al-DinsTa’rih-i Mubarak-i Gazaniin den Berliner Diez-Alben.’’ In L’Iran Face a` la Domination Mongole, ed. Denise Aigle, 295–305. Paris, 1997.

Soudavar, Abolala. ‘‘In Defense of Rashid-ol-din and His Letters.’’Studia Iranica32 (2003): 77–122. Spuler, B.Die Mongolen in Iran. Berlin, 1985.

Togan, Z.V. ‘‘The Composition of the History of the Mongols by Rashid al-Din.’’Central Asiatic Journal7 (1962): 60–72.

———. ‘‘Still Missing Works of Rashid al-Din.’’Central Asiatic Journal9 (1964): 113–22.

Van Ess, J.Der Wesir und Seine Gelehrten. Wiesbaden, 1981.

RASULIDS

  The Rasulid dynasty that ruled in Yemen from 1229 to 1454 started out as a family of officers of Turkmen origin that was comprised of a patriarch, ‘Ali ibn Rasul, and his four sons, who were attached to the Ayyubid army that conquered Yemen from Egypt in 1173 and 1174. Their rise within the Ayyubid administration culminated in the appointment of Nur al-Din ‘Umar ibn ‘Ali ibn Rasul as deputy to the departing Ayyubid governor, al-Mas‘ud ibn alKamil. When a new appointment from Cairo failed to materialize, Nur al-Din ‘Umar wasted little time taking possession of the most strategic forts and towns, replacing loyal Ayyubid officials with his own followers and arranging a truce with the Zaydis. He also managed to avert a military confrontation with the Ayyubids in Yemen, and, by 1234 or 1235, he had received formal recognition of his sultanate from the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. For the next two centuries, Nur al-Din ‘Umar and his successors succeeded in turning Yemen into a regional power, primarily through their control of the east–west trade and their interest in cultivating diplomatic ties with the rulers of Egypt, India, Persia, Africa, and China.

  The dominions of the Rasulid dynasty extended over the same territories conquered by the Ayyubids: the central and southern highlands and the Tihama coastal plain. Ta‘izz, a former Ayyubid fortress and stronghold, was chosen by the second Rasulid sultan, al-Muzaffar Yusuf, as the dynasty’s political capital because of its strategic location and its proximity to the great emporium of Aden. Alternatively, the Rasulids had little control over northern and eastern Yemen beyond San‘a’; both of these areas remained under the control of the Zaydis, the Rasulids’ political and religious rivals. Furthermore, San‘a’, which continued to serve as the outpost of the Rasulid northern frontier, remained the focus of both Rasulid and Zaydi aspirations but was ultimately lost to the Zaydis by 1323. The Hadramawt, on the other hand, continued to be ruled by small local dynasties that paid tributes to the Rasulids. Trade and taxes levied on merchandise transiting through the port of Aden were the most important source of revenue for the Rasulid state. For this, they developed the port and its administration system, and they ensured the safety of merchant ships with a fleet of patrol ships. Agriculture was another source of revenue developed by the Rasulids, particularly in the Tihama region, the administrative capital of which (Zabid) became their winter residence.

  In these towns and others, the Rasulids constructed a large number of secular and religious monuments. As staunch Shafi‘is, they favored the construction of madrasas, which attracted many Sunni scholars from all over the Islamic world. These scholars, as well as other officials, were often offered posts in the Rasulid administration, such as Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi, who arrived in Yemen in 1394  and was appointed as chief judge (Qadi al-qudat) by Sultan al-Ashraf Isma‘il, who also gave him his daughter in marriage. The sultans were learned men in their own right who not only had important libraries but who also wrote treatises on a wide array of subjects, ranging from astrology and medicine to agriculture and genealogy. They also played an active role in the religious debates between the Sufis and the faqihs with regard to the works of Ibn ‘Arabi; these debates polarized opinions, but most favored the former over the latter.

  The Rasulids modeled much of their administration on that of the Mamluks, despite their recurrent difficult relations because the latter considered them as a vassal state. Their competition centered at first over the Hijaz and the right to provide the kiswa (covering) of the Ka‘ba, each supporting a rival faction among the ruling sharifs of Mecca. Despite the strong Rasulid–Mamluk antagonism surrounding the internal politics of the Hijaz, traditional diplomatic channels remained open, and embassies and gifts were exchanged. However, official gifts to Cairo came to be regarded as tributes from the Rasulid side. The ultimate crisis resulted in the arrest of Sultan al-Mujahid Ali in 1352 (while he was on pilgrimage in Mecca) and his subsequent dispatch to Cairo; he was released a few months later upon payment of a large ransom. Taxation and commercial monopolization were two other major factors around which Rasulid Mamluk rivalry revolved. Accusations against the Rasulid sultans’ imposing of heavy taxes on merchants became a paramount dispute between al-Nasir Ahmad and Barsbay. By the end of the second quarter of the fifteenth century, the economic situation of the Rasulids suffered considerably as a result of Sultan Barsbay’s trade monopoly, alNasir Ahmad’s heavy taxes levied in Aden, and the emergence of Jedda as the new favored port of the Red Sea.

  The Rasulid state became increasingly threatened by periodic tribal revolts, particularly those of the Tihama region, which rebelled against heavy taxes. These tribes cultivated major agricultural areas and reared stock animals (mainly horses), which became, during the Rasulid period, a major export item to the Indian subcontinent. Rasulid rule was periodically challenged by disgruntled family members over the problem of succession. It was during their frequent revolts that many Rasulid women family members played active roles in supporting one faction against another. During the last twelve years of Rasulid rule, the country was torn between several contenders for the sultanate, each supported and manipulated by different power groups. Ultimately, they lost out to the Tahirids, their own governors in Aden.

Primary Sources

Al-Khazraji, ‘Ali ibn al-Hasan.Al-‘Uqud al-lu’lu’Iyya fi Ta’rikh al-Dawla al-Rasuliyya (The Pearl Strings: A History of the Resuliyy Dynasty of Yemen), transl. J.W. Redhouse, 5 vols. Leiden: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, 1906–1918.

Further Reading

Daum, Werner, ed.Yemen: 3000 Years of Art and Civilisation in Arabia Felix. Innsbruck and Frankfurt/Main: Pinguin, 1988.

Sadek, Noha. ‘‘Patronage and Architecture in Rasulid Yemen, 626–858 A.H./1229–1454 A.D.’’ PhD dissertation. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto, 1990.

Sadek, Noha. ‘‘Ta‘izz, Capital of the Rasulid Dynasty in Yemen.’’Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 33 (2003): 309–13.

Smith, G.R.The Ayyubids and Early Rasulids in Yemen, 2 vols. London: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, 1974 –1978.

RAZI, AL-, FAKHR AL-DIN

  Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was one of the most prominent theologians, jurists, and Qur’an commentators of Sunni Islam who lived at a time when Muslim theology was trying to come to grips with the impact of the Aristotelian philosophical tradition (falsafa). Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was born around 1149 in Ray (today, Tehran), Iran. His father was a famous preacher who had studied Kalamat the Nizamiyya madrasa of Nishapur. Fakhr al-Din studied in Ray and in Maragha, the intellectual center of northeastern Iran. Like his father, Fakhr al-Din became an Ash’arite in theology and a Shafi’ite in Islamic law. After the conclusion of his studies, he went to Khwarizm in Transoxiana  (today, Uzbekistan) to dispute with the Mu’tazilites, who were prominent there. He failed, however, to convert them to Ash’arism and was expelled. He continued to travel and teach in Iran, Central Asia (Bukhara and Samarkand), Afghanistan (Ghazna), and the Indus Valley, until he settled in 1203 in Herat (Afghanistan), where the local ruler founded a madrasa to accommodate his teaching activity. Fakhr al-Din was a controversial teacher, and Herat seemed to have been evenly divided in friends and foes. His most fierce enemies were a group of traditionalist Karramites, and it was rumored that they played a role in his death. However, Fakhr al-Din died of natural causes in 1210.

  Al-Razi’s theological doctrine is the result of the epistemological conflict between divine revelation (Qur’an and hadith [tradition]) and the scientific principle of demonstration (burhan; Greek apodeixis). After the Arabic translation of the works of Aristotle during the eighth and ninth centuries, the Muslim philosopher al-Farabi (d. c. 950) had made the Aristotelian technique of demonstration the yardstick of all knowledge in the sciences and in falsafa. If an argument is formally correct and if its premises are already proven, its conclusion is necessarily true and must be accepted. Later, Ibn Sina (d. 1037) had refined the technique of the demonstrative argument in the Arabic sciences and in falsafa. Since the beginning of the twelfth century, Ibn Sina’s works had become part of the curriculum of studies at the Ash’arite madrasas in Iraq and Iran. Fakhr al-Din studied the books of Ibn Sina thoroughly, and he wrote an influential commentary about Ibn Sina’s most theological work, Pointers and Reminders. Al-Razi generally accepted the findings of the scientists and Muslim philosophers (falasifa) wherever they are based on demonstrative arguments. Where the views of the falasifa are not based on demonstration or where al-Razi does not accept that their arguments are truly demonstrative, he considered other sources of knowledge, most importantly the literal wording of the Qur’an and the hadith corpus. On the question of whether the place of the intellect (‘aql) is within the brain or the heart, for instance, al-Razi opted for the latter; his conclusion was based n the many verses in the Qur’an that locate insight and knowledge in the heart. These clear indications in revelation cannot be overruled by the physicians’ arguments for the location of the intellect in the brain, which al-Razi did not accept as being demonstrative.

  Despite being a deeply pious man, Fakhr al-Din was unusually rationalistic in his theology, even for his time. He often abandoned the school tradition of the Ash’arites in favor of the philosophical system of Ibn Sina. Ash’arite theology, for instance, emphasized that the moral values of a person’s actions, namely good and bad, can only be understood through revelation (rather than reason); only the fact that God recommends or condemns an action can make it good or bad. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi abandoned this principle in favor of the rationalist position that it can be determined whether an action is morally good or bad independent of revelation. This view had a profound impact on Fakhr al-Din’s reasoning in Islamic law. Although al-Ghazali (1058–1111) had cautiously introduced the idea that a jurist should consider the benefit (maslaha) of society in his judgments, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi thoroughly aimed to establish maslaha as a source of Islamic law. Because the welleducated jurist knows what is best for the individual and the society, he should apply the principle of expediency in his rulings, even if such application overturns the judgments of earlier jurists.

  Fakhr al-Din’s most influential work is his voluminous commentary on the Qur’an, which he wrote close to the end of his life. Although its official title is The Keys to the Unknown, the work is often known as The Grand Commentary (al-Tafsir al-Kabir). It combines Fakhr al-Din’s rationalist teachings in theology with a precise philological analysis of the text and a deeply pious, often mystic interpretation. The book is known for its many digressions into the sciences, philosophy, and mysticism; Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), one of Fakhr al-Din’s conservative adversaries, claimed it contains everythingbuta commentary of the Qur’an. Fakhr al-Din’s followers, however, responded that it contains everything and a commentary of the Qur’an.

  Fakhr al-Din’s Grand Commentary became a yardstick for all later commentaries on the Qur’an and had a lasting influence. It was, for instance, widely read by modernist Muslim reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and thus shaped all modern Muslim Qur’an commentaries.

Further Reading

Anawati, George. ‘‘Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.’’ InEncyclopeadia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 2, 751–55. Leiden and London: Brill/Luzac & Co., 1963.

Kholeif, Fathalla.A Study on Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and his Controversies in Transoxania. Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq, 1984.

Kraus, Paul. ‘‘The ‘Controversies’ of Fakhr al-Din alRazi.’’Islamic Culture12 (1938): 131–53.

Mafisumi, M. Saghir Hasan. ‘‘Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and His Critics.’’Islamic Studies6 (1967): 355–74.

Muhibbu-Din, Murtada A. ‘‘Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s Philosophical Theology in al-Tafsir al-Kabir.’’Hamdard Islamicus27 (1994): 55–84.

Nasr, Seyyid Hossein. ‘‘Fakhr al-Dın Razi.’’ InThe Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, ed. M.A. Razawi, 107–21. Richmond: Curzon, 1996.

RAZI, AL-, OR RHAZES

  Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya’ al-Razi was born and died in al-Rayy (classical Rhagai; on the southern outskirts of today’s Teheran) (1 Sha‘ban 251–5 Sha‘ban 313/28 August 865–26 October 925). He was a physician, a scientist, and a philosopher, and he was a prolific author in medicine (including ancillary subjects), alchemy, logic, and philosophy.

Life

  The times of al-Razi’s life and his places of residence mostly far distant from the caliphal capital, Baghdad as well as his nonreligious vocation removed him from the focus of attention in the extant biobibliographical sources of classical and medieval Islam; nevertheless, the relative importance that his birthplace al-Rayy then enjoyed and, more to the point, his own scholarly reputation there and in Baghdad, did perpetuate his memory as a person apart from his works. Although his treatise The Philosophical Life (Kitab al-Sira al-Falsafiyya;also called Apologia[Arberry]) is short on concrete detail, a broad outline of his life can be sketched by combining information contained in it and other works of his with carefully sifted secondary evidence.

  The precise transmission of the dates of his birth and death would seem to credit his family with a certain level of education and affluence, which subsequently may have facilitated his access to the scholarship that his works amply attest. Further, comfortable circumstances would easily explain the report about his initial occupation as a moneychanger. His own station in life would later have ensured the recording of his death. As alluded to above, al-Razi spent most of his life in his hometown of al-Rayy; however, medical studies and practice more than once occasioned years of absence from al-Rayy. He is said to have sojourned in Baghdad as a student and, later, as the director of its hospital. In Nishapur and Bukhara, he attended Samanid dynasts.

  Before taking up medicine (as late as in his thirties), al-Razi is alternatively said to have been a lute player and poet or a practitioner of alchemy. Because his alchemical writings show a far more empirical bent than those of the Corpus Jabirianum (see below), such reports would seem credible enough; however, they also function as an etiological legend, deriving his indubitably attested poor eyesight and eventual blindness in old age from the noxious effects of alchemical experiments; a variant and no less suspect explanation would link his eye condition to excessive predilection for the broad bean. Clearly, both accounts impugn his reliance on secular science in that they construe an otherwise inexplicable organic ailment as its consequence and, by inference, as divine retribution.

  Although al-Razi came to embody Galen’s ideal that the excellent physician also be a philosopher, the relationship if any existed between his medical and philosophical interests and the circumstances of his philosophical studies cannot be ascertained. AlRazi himself mentions as his teacher Abu Zayd Ahmad b. Sahl al-Balkhi (i.e., the man from Balkh, classical Bactra), but he also conducted epistolary debates with two of Abu Zayd’s fellow townsmen,Abu l-Qasim ‘Abdallah ibn Ahmad al-Ka‘bi and Abu ’l-Husayn Shahid. Actually, he thus addressed an impressive number of earlier and contemporaneous Scholars physicians, scientists, philosophers, theologians (e.g., Ahmad ibn al-O´ ayyib al-Sarakhsi, al-Jahi , al-Kindi, Abu Sahl al-Rasa’ili, al-Nashi’, and the Manichean Sisinnius). Whereas al-Razi’s own accounts of philosophical controversies are, with one exception, lost, disputations with the Isma‘ili Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 322/933–934) left an echo in the latter’s, fortunately extant, writings; Doubts Concerning Galen (see below) demonstrates al-Razi’s critical attitude toward classical authorities. With regard to students of al-Razi’s, the only name to be transmitted is Yahya ibn ‘Adi, who was later a prominent disciple of al-Farabi’s.

  Al-Razi’s medical writings would seem to confirm the biographers’ reports about his heading the hospitals of al-Rayy and of Baghdad, respectively. As some sources would have it, he was so much sought after by students and patients alike that he attended only to the most intractable cases, referring all others, by degree of severity, to his junior and senior students and assistants. In any case, he generously cared for indigent patients (as witnesses attest) and dedicated a special treatise to the needs of those who had to do without expert treatment (Everybody His Own Doctor Arberry’s version of Man la yahduruhu altabib). On the other hand, his medical acumen could not fail to attract the attention of the powers that be; indeed, his familiarity with princes aroused criticism for violating the principles of the philosophical life, which was here defined along cynic, ascetic lines.

  Al-Razi’s self-statement of indefatigably pursuing knowledge and scholarship, both for his own benefit and for that of his fellow humans, is fully borne out by the extent and quality of his literary production; the debilities of age, cataracts, and failing hand muscles did not stop him nor apparently embitter Him he merely employed help. Beyond study and writing, he strove after human perfection by practicing the philosophical life, which he saw embodied in Socrates; by honoring Socrates as ‘‘our imam’’hus applying the title of supreme Muslim leadership to a pagan philosopher al-Razi implicitly rejected all religiously based claims of authority.

  Al-Razi’s outline of the good life in Apologia includes gainful occupation, procreation of the species, and, generally, measured enjoyment of worldly goods;  he specifically rejects rigorous self-mortification on the model of Hindu, Manichean, and Christian asceticism. As for his own conduct of the philosophical life, other than study and writing, he expressly names his general moderation in material acquisitions; the pursuit of legal claims; in food, drink, entertainment, dress, mount, and slaves (eunuchs and concubines); the implied premise of a certain wealth illustrates that moderation was to be relative to one’s station in life and not to be measured by some absolute standard. His reticence about his private life otherwise conforms to the conventions of his age except that male offspring would normally have been mentioned.

Works

  Al-Razi’s autobibliography runs close to two hundred titles. Subsuming his entire work under philosophy, he, in turn and along established Aristotelian lines divides philosophy into natural and metaphysical science on the one hand and mathematics on the other. However, deviating from the tradition of Islamic Aristotelianism, he depreciates mathematics and, on the other hand, includes both medicine and alchemy within natural philosophy; logic is apparently not assigned a separate place.

  In trying to understand al-Razi’s epistemology learning as open-ended, infinite progress and,  specifically in medicine and alchemy, his attitude toward book learning versus empirically acquired knowledge, care has to be taken to distinguish his programmatic statements (e.g., Doubts Concerning Galen) and his actual practice. In his much celebrated but under studied monograph On Smallpox and Measles, he is quite reluctant to impute to Galen the neglect let alone ignorance of these devastating transmissible diseases. A proper assessment of alRazi’s own contribution to their symptomatology and differential diagnosis is still wanting, notwithstanding the impact of his treatise on later medicine; its Greek and Latin translations were printed repeatedly (and not for antiquarian reasons) right through the middle of the nineteenth century.

  Continens, the most voluminous of al-Razi’s works, is a posthumous compilation of his medical notebooks and files that was never meant for publication; rather, they were mainly to serve his (as he proudly proclaims, in Islam, unprecedented) project of a medical encyclopedia apparently consisting of a series of thematically related but separate monographs under the title al-Jami‘ (Colligens; not to be confused with the nearly synonymous al-Hawi). However, even as they stand gathered in Continens, al-Razi’s notes convincingly fulfill his requirement of a thorough command of existing scholarship; in the given case of medicine, this extended beyond Greek, Sanskrit, Syriac, and early Islamic traditions to unattributed hospital practice and that of  ‘‘wise women.’’ Finally, he recorded his own at times contrasting clinical experience.

  The immense volume of al-Hawi could not but affect its manuscript transmission. However, interest in it transcended religious boundaries, as attested to, for example, by a copy in Hebrew characters and, in Europe, by its Latin translation in 1279. Plausibly the single most influential of al-Razi’s books was his medical compendium Book for Mansur,one hefty volume that combined theory and practice. Its success is illustrated by a large number of manuscripts in the original Arabic, in Hebrew, and in Gerard of Cremona’s Latin version of 1175 (several printed editions) and by a series of Arabic and Latin commentaries.

  Corresponding with the format of al-Razi’s medical writings ranging from encyclopedias to the briefest of monographs, which were designed as handy references for far-flung practitioners his envisioned audiences run the gamut from fellow scholar to layman. His equally comprehensive thematic interests include everything from anatomy to specific disorders; to dietetics (including sexual medicine), materia medica, and pharmacy; to deontological questions; and to lay people’s attitudes toward medicine and its practitioners. In addition, al-Razi engaged authoritative texts of his discipline especially Hippocrates and Galen in commentaries, revisions, and emulations. Monographic treatments of (in the broad medieval sense) philosophical interest include discussions of allergic reactions to flowering roses; of the strictly physiological causation of pathicism (passive anal eroticism); of the public’s frequent preference for quacks over qualified doctors; and of physicians’ curative failures and, conversely, of the success of wise women and their ilk.

  Al-Razi’s epistemological open-mindedness led him to devote a treatise to the (occult) properties (khawass) of mineral, vegetable, and animal substances. Alternatively, his work in alchemy, betraying  similar attitude, dispenses with magic in the attempted transformation of bodies, such as base metals into gold. The implications of his work, calling into question the traditional doctrine of four elemental qualities (among others), were not to be lost on al-Ghazali and other later thinkers.

  Al-Razi stands out among Islamic philosophers for his ethics and his metaphysical and physical doctrines, although he did not ignore logic (in Aristotelian terms, philosophy’s indispensable implement). Conspicuously, he rejects one of Islam’s basic dogmas prophecy and with it all revealed religion. Reason being the creator’s equal gift to all humankind, there was no need for divine dispensations through the mouth of prophets; to the contrary, such (in reality) demonically induced self-delusions had invariably proven pernicious in leading to sanguinary strife. Human beings’ apparent inequality in philosophical potential resulted from the wide variance of their interests and preoccupations.

  Further religious and philosophical disagreements of al-Razi with his contemporaries concern creation as such and man’s destiny in the hereafter. He posits the pre-eternal existence of five entities: (1) God; (2) universal soul; (3) absolute time; (4) absolute space; and (5) matter. By defining, in contradiction to Aristotle, time and space as absolute and infinite, he expressly relies on the uncanny certainty of inferences from straightforward sensory perception.  Al-Razi’s concept of matter is atomistic in a generally Democritean way, which is in contrast to the notion of dimensionless atoms that was prevalent in Muslim dialectic theology (kalam).

  In al-Razi’s cosmological myth, creation is occasioned by God’s accession to Soul’s desire of embodiment in matter; the resulting chaos is mitigated by God’s further gift of intelligence his own to creation and to Soul. Intelligible order is thus imparted to the universe and, in humankind, self-awareness to Soul; conscious of her incorporeal origin, she strives after liberation from imprisonment in this life to return to her primal abode. Thus, al-Razi premises the afterlife on Soul’s incorporeal substantiality alone, rejecting the Qur’anic resurrection of the flesh. Generally taking, like the Gnostics and Manicheans, a dim view of Soul’s embroilment with matter, al-Razi yet insists on the creator’s wisdom and mercy. Creation’s ultimate end, however, is its dissolution after Soul’s liberation from bondage to matter.

  Central to al-Razi’s ethical theory are his concepts of pleasure, which exists only as release from and in proportion with previous discomfort and of the fear of death as a motive force. The attempt to silence such fear irrational, whether or not death terminates the soul’s sentient existence impels humans to indulge their natural appetites for power, food, or sex. In an effort to predicate his ethical theory on unfounded assumptions given the impossibility of rationally demonstrating the reality of the beyond he bases it on the finality of death. Because the appetites, feeding on gratification, ever forestall the achievement of the desired pleasure, they are to be reduced by judiciously denying them gratification to approximate a modicum of contentment: the maximum attainable in this life.

  From among al-Razi’s physical works, his treatise about vision deserves special mention for his rejection of Galen’s extromission theory and excessive reliance on Euclid.

Further Reading

Bar Asher, M.M. ‘‘Quelques Aspects de l’E´thique d’Abu Bakr al-Razi.’’Studia Islamica 69 (1989): 5–38; 70 (1990): 119–47.

Bungy, Gholam Ali, et al. ‘‘Razi’s Report About Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis (Hay Fever) from the 10th Century D.’’International Archives of Allergy and Immunology 110 (1996): 219–24.

Escobar Gomez, S. ‘‘De un Predecesor A´rabe de Bentham en la Defensa de los ‘Derechos de los Animales’.’’ Anaquel de Estudios A´ rabes8 (1997): 87–99.

Goodman, Lenn E. ‘‘Muhammad ibn Zakariyya’ al-Razi.’’ InRoutledge History of World Philosophies, Vol I, History of Islamic Philosophy, eds. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, 198–215. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

———. ‘‘al-Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad.’’ InEncyclopaedia of Islam, vol. VIII, 474a–7b. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994.

Jacquart, Danielle. ‘‘Note sur la Traduction Latine duKitab al-ManOuride Rhazes.’’Revue d’Histoire des Textes24 (1994): 359–74.

Kitab al-ManO`uri fi al-O ˆibb, ed. Hazim al-Bakri al-Niddiqi.

Kuwait: Publications of Institute of Arab [sic] Manuscripts, Arab League Educational Cultural & Scientific Organization, 1987.

Kitab Sirr al-Asrar (Secret of Secrets), ed. M.T. Daneshpazhuh. Tehran: Unesco, 1964 (Nashriya-i Kumisyun-i Milli-i Yunisku dar Iran; 25); J. Ruska, German trl., asal-Razi’s Buch Geheimnis der Geheimnisse, Berlin 1937.

Kitab al-Shukuk ‘ala Jalinus, ed. M. Mohaghegh. Tehran: Mu’assasa-i Mutala’at-i Islami, 1372/1993.

Kitab al-Taqsim wa-l-Tashjir (asTaqasim al-‘Ilal), ed. S.M. Hammami. Aleppo, Syria: University of Aleppo, Institute for the History of Arabic Science, 1412/1992.

Kraus, Paul, and Shlomo Pines. ‘‘al-Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad.’’ InEncyclopaedia of Islam, vol. III, 1134a–6b. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1936.

Mahdi, Muhsin. ‘‘Remarks on al-Razi’s Principles.’’Bulletin d’E´tudes Orientales48 (1996): 145–53.

Meier, Fritz. ‘‘‘Urknall’ bei...a. Bakr al-Razi.’’Oriens33 (1992): 1–21.

Muhaqqiq [Mohaghegh], Mahdi.Filsuf-i Rayy. Tehran, 1970.

Pines, Shlomo. ‘‘al-Razi.’’Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. XI, 323a–6b. New York: Scribner, 1975.

———.Beitra¨ge zur Islamischen Atomenlehre. Berlin, 1936.

(Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hadi Abu Rida, Ar. trl. asMadhhab al-dharra ‘inda l-Muslimin, Cairo 1946; Michael Schwarz, Engl. trl. asStudies in Islamic Atomism, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press 1997).

———. ‘‘What was Original in Arabic Science?’’ InScientific Change—Historical Studies: Symposium... Oxford...1961, ed. A.C. Crombie, 181–205. London,

1963. 1–205 [repr. inThe Collected Works of Shlomo PinesII:Studies in Arabic versions of Greek texts and in medieval science, Jerusalem: Magnes and Leiden: Brill 1986, pp. 329–53].

Richter-Bernburg, Lutz. ‘‘Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi’s (Rhazes) Medical Works.’’ Medicina nei Secoli Arte e ScienzaVI (1994): 377–92.

———. ‘‘al-Hawi.’’ InEncyclopædia Iranica, vol. XII, 64b– 7b. New York: Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, 2003.

Rosenthal, Franz. ‘‘Al-Raˆzıˆon the Hidden Illness.’’Bulletin of the History of Medicine52 (1978): 45–56.

Ruska, Julius. ‘‘Die Alchemie al-Razi’s.’’Der Islam22 (1935): 281–319.

Sezgin, Fuad.Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, vol. III: Medizin [etc.]; vol. V: Mathematik; vol. VII: Astrologie [etc.]. Leiden: Brill, 1970, 1974, 1979, respectively.

Stroumsa, Sarah.Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn alRawandi, Abu Bakr al-Razi and Their Impact on Islamic Thought. Leiden: Brill, 1999. (Islamic philosophy, theology and science. Texts and studies; v. 35).

Ullmann, Manfred.Die Medizin im Islam. Leiden, etc.: Brill, 1970. (Handbuch der Orientalistik, 1. Abtlg., Erga¨nzungsbd. VI, 1), esp. pp. 128–36.

———.Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh: UP, 1978. (Islamic Surveys; 11), esp. pp. 109, 112, 129 (ns. 3–6, 14).