Ibn ʿAqīl said, “I marvel that he was not put to death, even though he composed al-Dāmigh (The Crusher) to strike at the Quran, and al-Zumurruda (The Emerald) to deride the very notion of prophethood.”

Ibn al-Jawzī remarked, “His book is a chilly delirium (1) devoid of any credible objection. In it he claims that certain sayings of Aktham ibn Ṣayfī (2) surpass Sūrat al-Kawthar, and that the prophets were ensnared by talismans.”

He also authored works for Jews and Christians, furnishing them with arguments to invalidate the Prophethood of the Master of humankind.

Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī recounted: “The ruler pursued Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and Ibn al-Riywandī. Al-Warrāq—whose full name was Muḥammad ibn Hārūn—was jailed until he died; he was among the leading scholastic theologians and had written refutations of the Christians and others. Ibn al-Riywandī went into hiding with Ibn Lāwī the Jew, for whom he produced al-Dāmigh. Not long afterward he fell ill and died under a curse, having lived a little over eighty years.”

Ibn al-Jawzī devoted nearly three full pages to cataloguing his calamities.

Ibn al-Najjār said, “Abū al-Ḥusayn Ibn al-Rāwandī, the dialectical theologian from Marw al-Rūdh, settled in Baghdad. He was first a Muʿtazilī, then turned heretic.” It is also reported that his father was Jewish.