Ibn Kammūna’s and Ibn al-ʿIbrī’s Responses to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Proofs of Muḥammad’s Prophethood

Abstract

‭Two non-Muslim intellectuals who were active in Iraq in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Syrian-Orthodox Christian Abū l-Faraj ibn al-ʿIbrī, better known as Barhebraeus (d. 685/1286) and the Jewish philosopher Saʿd ibn Manṣūr ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284), were almost exact contemporaries. They enjoyed the heyday of their careers in the period following the Mongol conquest when the Mongols had not yet converted to Islam. This article explores some of the similarities in scholarly interests and activities of the two thinkers and takes into account the possibility that they knew each other’s work. Both scholars wrote apologetic works partly devoted to disproving the Muslim claim that Islam superseded all earlier religions. In their responses to the Islamic proofs of Muhammad’s prophethood, they focused on the work of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, in particular, and there are clear similarities in the argumentation of the two thinkers against al-Rāzī’s arguments, which are pointed out in this article, leading to the question of a possible dependency of the one work on the other.‬