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STAVIG : ABU BAKR AL-RAZI AND JAIN PHILOSOPHY
81 According to Ishma'ili Nasir-i-Khusraw (1004-1061/88), al-Razi received some of his ideas on the infinity and eternality of matter, space and time, from a Persian friend named Abbas al-Iranshahri. AlBiruni (973-1048) mentioned that al-Iranshahri authored an account of the religious beliefs of the Indians and the Buddhists. A later writer Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149-1209) attributed al-Razi's doctrine of five eternal principles to the Sabi'ans of Harran. The Harranians held a number of philosophical ideas that are similar to the Indian beliefs. A prominent Harranian Sabi'an physician, Abu Said Sinan (880-943) was a younger contemporary of al-Razi, who supervised the hospitals and medical administration in Baghdad where the latter lived as a doctor.6
5.
Fakhry, p. 33; Pines, pp. 41-43, 65-69; Seya Haq, The Indian and Persian Background", in History of Islamic Philosophy ed. Seyyed Nasr and Oliver Leaman (2 vols.; New York: Routledge, 1996), i, p. 58. Pines, pp. 69-82; Lawrence, pp. 134-42; Gillispie, Charles, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975, xii, pp. 447-48; Stavig, p. 222.
6.
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