the philosophers, the Muʿtazilah and others like them, with formidable arguments. They say that “Abū Hāmid” and others like him did not attain this imam’s depth of understanding, let alone “Abū al-Maʿālī” and others whom they regard as having reached the furthest limits of what they esteem as learning and disputation. They maintain that “al-Rāzī,” in his works Nihāyat al-ʿUqūl and al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliyah, accomplished in this field what other bold thinkers could not, so that merely understanding his words became, in their eyes, the ultimate aspiration.

Nevertheless, the most learned among them acknowledge how frequently his discourse casts doubt on realities, how many contradictions it contains in its views and methods, and how it leaves his followers bewildered and unsettled, without bringing them to a firm understanding of the truth in which souls find repose and minds find assurance. Yet they had not