According to Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771 / 1370), al-Ghazālī (d. 505 / 1111) was the renewer (mujaddid) of the Muslim faith at the end of the 5th / 11th century, whereas al-Rāzī (d. 606 /1210) was the renewer of faith at the end of the 6th / 12th century. That al-Ghazālī deserves such an honour can hardly be disputed, and his importance in the history of Islamic thought is generally recognised. However, the same cannot, as easily, be said of al-Rāzī, whose historical significance is far from being truly appreciated, and some of the most important books of whom still await publication. Much is known about his views on particular philosophical and theological problems, and about the historical backgrounds to, and the relations amongst, some of these views. Some rather general observations on his thought are also common; for instance, that he is a heavily philosophising Ash‘arī mutakallim, a master dialectician, and an influential critic of Ibn Sīnā.
A lthough it is widely recognised that Ash'arism enters the sixth/twelfth century with a physicalist theory of man and exits with an Avicennan-inspired body-soul dualism, the exact nature and circumstances of this conversion, one of the starkest and most momentous shifts in school doctrine, remain little understood.1 In contrast to the considerable attention that al-Ghazālī's theory of the soul, the earliest episode in the post-classical era, has received in recent scholarship, there are hitherto no focused studies on pre-Ghazālian classical Ash'arī anthropology beyond a brief, but valuable, treatment of some of the school-founder's teachings. 2 In relative terms, the interest that Mu'tazilī anthropology has received is immense.3 Our immediate objective in the present article is to address this gap by offering a comprehensive exploration of the theory of man expounded in the available classical Ash'arī sources. A forthcoming study will then investigate the concerns and circumstances that were at play in the radical, but gradual, transformation that Ash'arī anthropology underwent during the late-fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries, including criticisms of the philosophical theory of the rational soul.
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