Abstract:

First paragraph: This book introduces the reader to one of the most intriguing debates that took place between two important thinkers of the tenth century (AD), namely the famous Ismāʿīlī dāʿī (religious missionary) Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. ca. 322/933) and the even more celebrated physician and philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 313/925). The translator of this text, Tarif Khalidi, is a well-known scholar of Islamic history, who has previously translated the sacred scripture of Islam, the Qurʾān. The book, in the original Arabic, was authored by Abū Ḥatim who engages in a bitter polemic with Abū Bakr on several important issues such as prophecy, the eternity of the world, faith and reason, imitation (taqlīd) of the philosophers, evolution of the sciences, and so forth.

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