 Along with Abū Ḥātim, two other sources are crucial for reconstructing al-Rāzī’s cosmology. These are Naṣīr-e Khosraw (d. 1088), who explained this cosmology in order to refute it in his Persian work Provision for the Traveler (hereafter  NK,  selective trans. into Arabic in al-Rāzī RF), and yet another al-Rāzī, this time the famous theologian-philosopher Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), in his Exalted Topics (hereafter  FDR).  From these and a few other sources, we can piece together the details of a remarkable account of the creation of the world, which invokes five factors that have always existed and come together to produce the cosmos: God, Soul, matter, time, and place. Abū Ḥātim and Naṣīr-e Khosraw both present this as an appalling departure from Islam, since it involves postulating four eternal principles alongside God.