Imāmī Thought in Iran During the Ilkhanid Period: The Ḥimṣī Rāzī Family

The present study, focusing on the Ḥimṣī Rāzī family, which flourished in Iran during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, showcases what can be achieved by gathering and piecing together relevant paratextual material that is preserved in manuscripts, providing insights into the scholarly profiles of its members.

Scholars studying the development of Imāmī thought are confronted with a lack of sources. Many pertinent works by Imāmī thinkers who lived in the various centers of Shīʿī learning between the lifetimes of al-Murtaḍā (d. 1044) and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) have not come down to us. Muʿtazilite thought, Avicennan notions, and the quest to return to the early doctrines of the imams constituted the principal parameters of Imāmī theological thought over those centuries. The present study, focusing on the Ḥimṣī Rāzī family, which flourished in Iran during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, showcases what can be achieved by gathering and piecing together relevant paratextual material that is preserved in manuscripts, providing insights into the scholarly profiles of its members. It is complemented by an editio princips of Mishkāt al-yaqīn, and a facsimile edition of the Talkhīṣ al-maqāṣid.

About the Authors

Hassan Ansari, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, has published on Islamic legal and political thought and on doctrine, including L’imamat et l’occultation selon l’imamisme: Edude bibliographique et histoire des textes (Brill, 2017) and, with Nebil Husayn, Caliphate and Imamate: Selected Political Works from the Islamic Tradition (Cambridge, 2023).
Sabine Schmidtke, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, has published on topics ranging from Shīʿism, intersections of Jewish and Muslim intellectual history, the Arabic Bible, and the history of “orientalism”, including The Beginnings of Shiʿi Studies in Germany (American Philosophical Society, 2023).
Hamid Ataei Nazari, Ph.D. (2015), is a scholar of Islamic theology. His publications incluḏe Tārīkh-i burhān-hā-yi ithbāt-i wujūd-i Khudā dar kalām-i Imāmiyya: Az maktab-i Baghdād tā maktab-i Iṣfahān (Isfahan, 2023).

Bibliographic Information

Title: Imāmī Thought in Iran During the Ilkhanid Period: The Ḥimṣī Rāzī Family

Publisher: Brill

 Language: English

Length: 375 pages

ISBN: 978-90-04-72487-7

Pub. Date: 27 Mar 2025