Creation in "al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr" of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Abstract

The specific intention of this thesis is to study The Great Commentary, Mafatilj. al-Ghayb (The Keys to the Unseen), of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi to find out what he has to say about the creation of the universe. This commentary on the Qur’an cannot be taken in isolation from his other writings, but the spotlight will be explicitly on the Tafsir. Thus, my purpose is not to examine in depth all Raz’s pertinent works; nor to study the influences that contributed to his own intellectual and spiritual formation and the influence that he, in turn, exerted on others; nor yet, finally, to present a general picture of Muslim creation theology in the medieval period. It is about the Tafsir: to see a) how he "takes off', so to speak, from the creation texts of the Qur’an, verse by verse; and b) what his preoccupations and emphases are in this particular work. The character of the thesis, then, is not so much analytical and philosophical as textual and descriptive. I would hope that, if I do make some contribution to Razi studies, it is in the close scrutiny of his creation vocabulary and in the substantial body of translation, not hitherto available in any degree to an English readership. I have also provided in an Appendix the first Tafsir-Qur’an Concordance. In rendering pericopes of the Qur’an into English, I have kept my eye on standard English translations or "interpretations", such as Sale, Arberry, Pickthall, Dawood and M. Asad, together with Blachere’s French and Paret’s German versions. However, I take full responsibility for the final form in which the pericopes appear. References are given according to the traditional arrangement in the Royal (Khedival) edition of Cairo.