In the same year there died (1) Fakhr al-Rāzī (2), the theologian and author of the celebrated Qur’anic commentary (3) and many other works: Muḥammad (4) ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Qurashī, of the Taymī clan, a descendant of Abū Bakr, surnamed Abū al-Maʿālī and Abū ʿAbd Allāh (5), best known as Fakhr al-Rāzī. He was also called Ibn Khaṭīb al-Rayy, and he followed the Shāfiʿī school of jurisprudence (6).

He was counted among the most renowned authors, leaving roughly two hundred works, both large and small. These include (7) his expansive Tafsīr, al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya, al-Mabāḥith al-Sharqiyya, al-Arbaʿīn, Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, and other treatises on theology, the doctrines of the ancients, and the various views of humankind. He also wrote legal theory, such as al-Maḥṣūl and similar works, and produced a useful single-volume biography of al-Shāfiʿī that contains unusual reports not all of which can be accepted. Many remarkable things are attributed to him, and I have given a full account of his life in Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya.

He enjoyed great esteem with the Khwārazmian kings (8) and others; many madrasahs were built for him in several cities. He possessed eighty thousand gold dinars in ready coin, along with other goods, mounts, furnishings, and garments, and he owned fifty Turkish mamluks. When he sat to preach, kings, viziers, scholars, commanders, the poor, the common folk, and even the rabble (9) would attend. He maintained devotional practices (10) and regular litanies. More than once disputes flared between him and the Karrāmiyya: he loathed them and they loathed him, each side going to extremes in reviling the other (11). We have already touched upon some of this. Despite his vast learning (12) in kalām, he would say, “Whoever adheres to the creed of the old women is the one who triumphs.”