known in the Latin West as Rhazes

(b. Rayy, Persia [now Iran], ca. 854; d. Rayy, 925 or 935)

medicine, alchemy, philosophy, religious criticism.

We possess very little authentic information about Rāzī’s life. He was born around 854 in Rayy, and directed a hospital in that town and later in Baghdad. Because of changes in the political situation and his personal standing at court, he returned on several occasions to Rayy. He died there in 925 or 935. Most of Rāzī’s philosophical and antireligious works are lost. Two treatises on ethics, Kitāb al-Tibb al-Ruhani (The Book of Spiritual Physick in Arberry’s translation) and Sirat al-Faylasūf (The Philosopher’s Way of Life), have been published. Several manuscripts exist of the work entitled Doubts Concerning Galen, which deals with philosophical as well as with medical questions. Abundant information about Rāzī’s philosophical teaching can be gleaned from the quotations and references to him made by his critics, many of whom belonged to the Ismā‘īlī sect and defended the strict hierarchical principle maintained by this sect against the equalitarian views propounded by Rāzī.

Rāzī rejected the notion that men can be stratified according to their innate capacities. All of them have, according to Rāzī, their share of reason, which enables them not only to deal with practical matters, but also to reach correct views on theoretical questions. With regard to some of these questions the judgment of simple unsophisticated people may be more valuable than that of the learned, who are befogged by erudite quibblings and subtleties.

Rāzī’s rejection of the hierarchical principle formed a part of his attack against religion. According to him, men, being naturally equal, did not need, in order to manage their affairs, the discipline imposed by religious leaders, who deceived them. The miracles supposed to have been worked by the prophets of the three monotheistic religions as well as by Mani were tricks. (The Tricks of the Prophets is the title of a lost treatise attributed to Rāzī.) Men of science like Euclid and Hippocrates were much more useful than the prophets. In fact, religion was definitely harmful, for fanaticism engendered hatred and religious wars.

Holding these views, Rāzī evidently could not subscribe to the doctrine, maintained by many Islamic authors, according to which the viable human societies were instituted by prophets. He may have followed a suggestion found in Plato in stating that society originated because of the need for a division of labor.

Rāzī’s refusal to accept the principle of absolute authority is in evidence not only in his antireligious polemics, but also in his attitude toward the traditional verities of science and philosophy and the eminent authors who had established these verities. Thus, in justifying his Doubts Concerning Galen, he observes: “Medicine is a philosophy, and this is not compatible with renouncement of criticism with regard to the leading [authors].” In this context he points to the example of disciples of Aristotle who criticized the latter and to that...