Richard M. Frank – författare

The first volume of the collected major articles of Richard M. Frank, pioneering student of Islamic theology (kalam), contains fifteen essays. It includes his early studies, classic but inaccessible for many in their original publication, on the text and terminology of Graeco-Arabic translations (De anima, Themistius on the Metaphysics, Plotinus in Syriac, 'anniya) and the terminology of early kalam. Other articles deal with Islamic theology and its early development, especially in its relation to philosophy (in particular the kalam of Jahm ibn Safwan and al-Ghazali), and the text and translation of two short dogmatic works by the mystic al-Qushayri. The collection is prefaced by a fascinating autobiographical memoir which traces the intellectual development of the author and the reasoning that led him, from study to study, to his discovery of the way of thinking of the theologians and to an understanding of the essential core of Islamic theology.

This is the second of three volumes reprinting the collected papers on Islamic subjects by Richard M. Frank, Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of America. It brings together Franks's articles on early kalam, the Mu`tazilites, and the development of the thought of al-Ash`ari. The studies in this collection are of particular importance for the study of kalam, in that they represent an original attempt to make philosophical sense and understand the theoretical underpinnings of the foundational theological tradition in early Islam, the Mu`tazilite school of Basra. They focus, among others, on Abu l-Hudhayl al-`Allaf, al-Jubba`i, and al-Ash`ari, and include a critical edition and translation of the latter's al-Hathth `ala l-bahth.

This is the third of three volumes reprinting the collected papers on Islamic subjects by Richard M. Frank, Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of America, and completes the set. The present volume on the Ash`arites and the classical Ash`arite tradition brings together articles written in the last two decades of Richard Frank's scholarly activity which represent his mature thought on the main philosophical and doctrinal elements of that tradition. The volume opens with two more general studies, one on the science of kalam, presenting Frank's most profound insights on its very nature and essence, followed by a series of detailed and incisive analyses of the physics, metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology of the Ash`arite system. This body of work forms the vanguard of modern studies on the subject and will repay repeated and prolonged study.