Prolific thinker from Afghanistan, Abu Hasan Ahmad Ibn al-Rawandi was the son of a Jewish scholar who converted to Islam. Al-Rawandi later emigrated to Baghdad and abandoned both Judaism and Islam to become, by some accounts, an Aristotelian philosopher and, by other accounts, a radical atheist. He seems to have been a champion of unfettered reason and skeptic of revealed religion. Little of his work survives, but among his writings was a dialogue on prophecy called The Blinding Emerald which is partially preserved in the work of other scholars who long debated its key points.