RĀZĪ, FAKHR AL-DĪN AL-, Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar (AH 543–606/1149–1209 CE), was a celebrated twelfth-century Muslim theologian and a prolific scholar. The period in which Rāzī flourished is marked by a cautious reassessment of some of the basic principles of Neoplatonic philosophy, after a period in which this tradition had suffered strong criticism, primarily in the writings of the famous Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). Rāzī was the principal protagonist of this reassessment of the philosophical tradition, particularly as it had been expounded and established by Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037). Although he was not a philosopher in the strict sense, Rāzī's mature theological works manifest an unquestionable Avicennian influence. But what he perceived as being the excesses of the Neoplatonic tradition he sought...