Machine summary:
A recent publication of Arabic texts by Dr. Paul Kraus, Cairo BO BAKR Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' ar-Razi (Rhazes 251/865- 3 u/925 or 320/934) is known to the· historians of medicine as the greatest clinical genius amongst the physicians of the Islamic world.
As far as the few completely preserved books and the many fragments of Razi's philosophical works which have come down to us, allow of judgment.
he had a strong affinity to Plato's doctrines with some inflow of earlier Greek philosophy, and he possessed an amazing knowledge of the translated Greek and of the early Arabic literature (medical as well as philosophical).
Fuad I University in Cairo (Egypt), after several years of laborious research, has brought together a collection of Arabic and Persian texts of Razi's philosophical writings.
The contents of this fragment are the discussion of certain questions of the Greek Physics in an aphoristic form, the criticism of doctrines without giving Razi's own opinion, and dialectics, e.
, Kraus found in Na~ir-i-Khosraw's- famous Zad-al-Musaf:rin long extracts from Razi's book, giving ·a detailed analysis of its contents, but in Persian translation.
Dr. Kraus has edited thirteen extracts from these authors in oroer to give an idea of the contents of Razi's book.
Then ::illows a discussion of Razi's fundamental doctrine of 'the five eternal principles or elements, of which he treats in extenso in the following chapter, (No. VII).
3. A detailed discussion on Razi' s doctrine of the five eternal principles, especially on space, time, and the descent of the soul into matter.