AL-GHAZALI

Al-Ghazālī was a Muslim theologian and mystic whose great work, Ih.yā‘ ’ulūm ad-dīn (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), made S.ūfism (Islamic mysticism) anacceptable part of orthodox Islam.Al-Ghazāl ī was educated at T.ūs (near Meshed in eastern Iran), then in Jorjān, and finally at Nishapur (Neyshābūr), where his teacher was al-Juwaynī. After the latter’s death in 1085, al-Ghazāl ī was invited to go to the court of Niz.ām al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuq sultans. The vizier was so impressed by al-Ghazālī’s scholarship that in 1091 he appointed him chief professor in the Niz.āmīyah college in Baghdad.

He passed through a spiritual crisis that rendered him physically incapable of lecturing for a time. In November 1095 he abandoned his career and left Baghdad on the pretext of going on pilgrimage to Mecca. After some time in Damascus and Jerusalem, with a visit to Mecca in November 1096, al-Ghazālī settled in T.ūs, where S.ūfī disciples joined him in a virtually monastic communal life. In 1106 he was persuaded to return to teaching at the Niz.āmīyah college at Nishapur. He continued lecturing in Nishapur at least until 1110, when he returned to T.ūs, where he died the following year.Al-Ghazālī’s greatest work is Ih.yā‘ ’ulūm ad-dīn. In40 “books” he explained the doctrines and practices of Islam and showed how these can be made the basis of a profound devotional life, leading to the higher stages of S.ūfism, or mysticism. 

The relation of mystical experience to other forms of cognition is discussed in Mishkāt al-anwār (The Niche for Lights). Al-Ghazālī’s abandonment of his career and adoption of a mystical, monastic life is defended in the autobiographical work al-Munqidh min ad.-d.alāl (The Deliverer from Error).His philosophical studies began with treatises on logic and culminated in the Tahāfut (The Inconsistency—or Incoherence—of the Philosophers), in which he defended Islam against such philosophers as Avicenna who sought to demonstrate certain speculative views contrary to accepted Islamic teaching.

Most of his activity was in the field of jurisprudence and theology. Toward the end of his life he completed a work on general legal principles, al-Mustas.fā (Choice Part, or Essentials). His compendium of standard theological doctrine (translated into Spanish), al-Iqtis.ād fī al-l‘tiqād (The Just Mean in Belief ), was probably written before he became a mystic, but there is nothing in the authentic writings to show that he rejected these doctrines, even though he came to hold that theology—the rational, systematic presentation of religious truths—was inferior to mystical experience. 

From a similar standpoint he wrote a polemical work against the militant sect of the Assassins (Ismā‘īlīyah), and he also wrote (if it is authentic) a criticism of Christianity, as well as a book of Counsel for Kings (Nas.īh.at al-mulūk).