Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Ghūrid Self-Fashioning

Abstract

This article investigates the intellectual production of the celebrated scholar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) during the decade or so he spent in the service of the Ghūrid sultans, from ca. 591/1195 to 602/1206. Operating exclusively within religious disciplines—theology, law and Qurʾān exegesis—and displaying pronounced rhetorical and dialectical features, this production contrasts significantly with his earlier and later production, which most notably exhibits much closer engagement with philosophy. It is argued that this “Ghūrid interlude” in al-Rāzī’s production reflects his role in spearheading the sultans’ project of divesting from the socially and culturally peripheral Karrāmiyya and fashioning themselves as champions of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan orthodoxy, and is furthermore aligned with his patrons’ transregional policies, including their pro-Abbasid stance. Al-Rāzī was in return invested by the Caliph al-Nāṣir with the title “he who summons people to the True One” (al-dāʿī li-l-khalq ilā l-ḥaqq), more commonly attested as “he who summons to God” (al-dāʿī ilā llāh). The article also offers a new examination of al-Rāzī’s Ghūrid-period intellectual biography and oeuvre.