Ibn al-Rawandi

Ibn Al-Rawandi
Born	827 CE Greater Khorasan
Died	860 or 911 CE unknown
Occupation	Writer

Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Rawandi (Persian: ابو الحسن احمد بن یحیی بن اسحاق راوندی‎‎, Arabic: أبو الحسن أحمد بن يحيى بن إسحاق الراوندي‎‎), commonly known as Ibn al-Rawandi (Persian: ابن راوندی‎‎;‎ 827–911 CE), was an early skeptic of Islam and a critic of religion in general. In his early days, he was a Mu'tazilite scholar, but after rejecting the Mu'tazilite doctrine, he adhered to Shia Islam for a brief period before becoming a freethinker who repudiated Islam and revealed religion. Although none of his works have survived, his opinions had been preserved through his critics, Muslim apologists and the surviving books that answered him. His book with the most preserved fragments (through an Ismaili book refuting Al-Rawandi's ideology) is the Kitab al-Zumurrud (The Book of the Emerald).

Abu al-Husayn Ahmad bin Yahya ben Isaac al-Rawandi was born in Greater Khorasan, today located in northwest Afghanistan, about the year 815 CE. According to the Egyptian scholar Abdur Rahman Badawi, Al-Rawandi was born in Basra at the time of the Abbassid Caliph Al-Mamoun. His father, Yahya, was a Jewish scholar and convert to Islam, who schooled Muslims in how to refute the Talmud. Al-Rawandi abandoned Islam for atheism and used his knowledge of Islam, learned from his father, to refute the Quran.

He joined the Mu'tazili of Baghdad, and gained prominence among them. But then he became estranged from his fellow Mu'tazilites, and formed close alliances with Shia Muslims and then with non-Muslims (Manichaeans, Jews and perhaps also Christians). He then became a follower of the Manichaean zindiq Abu Isa al-Warraq in which he wrote several books that criticized revealed religion.

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