al-Raazii Abu Bakr, in Latin, Rhazes (c.854–925 or 932), Persian physician, philosopher, and chemist. He headed the hospital in Rayy, his birthplace, and later in Baghdad, often returning to Rayy, where he died. A learned Galenist and critic of Galen, he brought the same empirical, Hippocratic spirit to medicine that he had used in transmuting alchemy into a (Neoplatonically) naturalistic art. His medical works, including the first treatise on smallpox, drew on extensive (and compassionate) clinical experience and omnivorous reading – both reading and observation preserved in the twenty-five-volume Hawi, translated in 1279 as the Continens. al-Razi’s mildly ascetic ethics springs from hedonic prudential considerations and from his atomism. In keeping with the Epicureanism he might have imbibed from Galenic sources, he rejects special prophecy as imposture, arguing that reason, God’s gift to all alike, is sufficient guidance. (Only differences of interest and application separate the subtle devices of artisans from those of intellectuals.) God, the world Soul, time, space, and matter are all eternal substances. Nature originates from Soul’s irrational desire for embodiment, which is her only way of learning that her true homeland is the intellectual world. God’s gift of intelligence gave order to the movements she stirred up at the creation, and allows her escape from a world in which pains outweigh pleasures and death is surcease. For one who engages in philosophy ‘creatively, diligently, and persistently’ will inevitably surpass his predecessors; and anyone who thinks independently is assured of both progress and immortality. L.E.G.