Al-GHAZĀLĪ, ABU HAMID MUHAMMAD B. MUHAMMAD AL-TUSI (45o/1058-505/1111), outstanding theologian, jurist, original thinker, mystic and religious reformer. There has been much discussion since ancient times whether his nisba should be Ghazali or ghazzali; cf. Brockelmann, S 1, 744; the former is to be preferred in accordance with the principle of difficilior lectso potius.

 

I. Life

 

   He was born at Tus in Khurasan, near the modern Meshād, in 450/1o58. He and his brother Ahmad were left orphans at an early age. Their education was begun in Tus. Then al-Ghazālī went to Jurjan and, after a further period in Tus, to Naisapur, where he was a pupil of al-Juwayni Imam al-Haramayn [q.v.] until the latter’s death in 478/1085. Several other teachers are mentioned, mostly obscure, the best known being Abu `Alt al-Farmadhi. From Naisapur in 478/1085 al-Ghazālī went to the “camp” of Nizam al-Mulk [q.t.] who had attracted many scholars, and there he was received with honor and respect. At a date which he does not specify but which cannot be much later than hi move to Baghdad and which may have been earlier, al-Ghazālī passed through a phase of skepticism, and emerged to begin an energetic search for a more satisfying intellectual position and practical way of life. In 484/7091 he was sent by Nizam al-Mulk to be professor at the madrasa he had founded in Baghdad, the al-Nizamiyya. Al-Ghazālī was one of the most prominent men in Baghdad, and for four years lectured to an audience of over three hundred students. At the same time he vigorously pursued the study of philosophy by private reading, and wrote several books. In 488/1085, however, he suffered from a nervous illness which made it phy­sically impossible for him to lecture. After some months he left Baghdad on the pretext of making the pilgrimage, but in reality he was abandoning his professorship and his whole career as a jurist and theologian. The motives for this renunciation have been much discussed from the contemporary period until the present day. He himself says he was afraid that he was going to Hell, and he has many criticisms of the corruption of the ulamā’ of his time (e.g., Ihyā’, i); so it may well be that he felt that the whole organized legal profession in which he was involved was so corrupt that the only way of leading an upright life, as he conceived it, was to leave the profession completely. The recent suggestion (F. Jabre, in MIDEO, i (1954), 73-102) that he was chiefly afraid of the Ismā’ilis (Assassins) who had murdered Nizam al-Mulk in 485/1092, and whom he had attacked in his writings, places too much emphasis on what can at most have been one factor. Another suggestion is that of D. B. Macdonald (in EIi) that contemporary political events may have made al-Ghazālī apprehensive; shortly before he left Baghdad the Salajuqid sultan Barkiyaruk, q.v.] executed his uncle Tutush, who had been supported by the caliph and presumably al-Ghazali; and it was soon after the death of Barkiyaruk, in 498/1105 that al-Ghazālī returned to teaching.

 

From al-Ghazali’s abandonment of his professor­ship in Baghdad to his return to teaching at Naisapur in 499/1106 is a period of eleven years, and it is sometimes said even ig~ arfy Muslim biographical notices, that al-Ghazālī spent ten years of this in Syria. Careful reading of his own words in the Munkidh (see below), and attention to numerous small details in other sources, makes it certain that he was only “about two years” in Syria. On his departure from Baghdad in Dhu’l - Qa’da 488/ November 1o95 he spent some time in Damascus, then went by Jerusalem and Hebron to Medina and Mecca to take part in the pilgrimage of 489/ November-December 1o96. He then went back for a short time to Damascus, but his own phrase of “nearly two years there” (-Munqidh, 13o) must be taken loosely. He is reported to have been seen in Baghdad in /jumada 11 49o May-June 1097 (Jabre, op. cat., 87; cf. Bouyges, Chronologie, 3), but this can only have been a brief stay in the course 0f his journey to his home, Tics. It is sometimes said that al-Ghazālī visited Alexandria, but scholars are now inclined to reject this report; if he did go to Egypt it can only have been for a short time.

In this period of retirement at Damascus and Tus al-Ghazālī lived as a poor sufi, often in solitude, spending his time in meditation and other spiritual exercises. It was at this period that he composed his greatest work, Ihya ‘ulum al-din (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), and he may have lectured on its contents to select audiences. By the end of the period he had advanced far along the mystic path and was convinced that it was the highest way of life for man.

In the course of the year 499/11o5-6 Fakhr al-­Mulk, son of Nizam al-Mulk and vizier of Sanjar, the Saljukid ruler of Khurasan, pressed al-Ghazālī to return to academic work. He yielded to the pressure, partly moved by the belief that he was ! destined to be the reviver of religion (mujiādid) j at the beginning of the new century, in accordance with a well-known Tradition. In Dhu ‘1-qa’da 499/ July-August iio6 he began to lecture at the Nizamiyya in Naysabur and not long afterwards wrote the autobiographical work al-Munqidh min al-dalal (“Deliverance from Error”). Before his death, however, in jumada II 505/December 1111, he had once again abandoned teaching and retired to Tus. Here he had established, probably before he went to Naisapur, a khuinkah or hermitage, where he trained young disciples in the theory and practice of the stiff life. Several names are known of men who were his pupils at Tus (cf. Bouyges, Chronologie, 4 n.).

 

2. Works and doctrines

 

(a) Questions of authenticity and esotesieism. A great difficulty in the study of al-Ghazali’s thought is that, while he undoubtedly wrote many books, some have been attributed to him which he did not write. Bouyges in his Essai de Chronologie (composed before 1924 but only published posthumously in 1959 with additional notes on subsequent publications by M. Allard) lists 404 titles. Many of these are taken from lists of his works and no copies are known to exist. In other cases the same book appears under different titles, and a great deal of work has still to be done on manuscripts before scholars know exactly what is extant and what is not. Further, at least from the time of Muhyi l-Din b. al-’Arabi (d. 638/ 1240) allegations have been made that books have been falsely attributed to al-Ghazālī (cf. Montgomery Watt, A forgery in al-Ghazali’s Mishkat?, in JRAS 1949, 5-22; idem, The authenticity of the works attributed to al-Ghazali, in JRAS, 1952, 24-45). The works whose authenticity has been doubted are mostly works expressing advanced sufistic and philosophical views which are at variance with the teaching of al-Ghazālī in the works generally accepted as authentic. There are difficulties, owing to the richness of his thought, in establishing con­clusively the existence of contradictions. Ibn Tufayl (d. 58i/iz85), however, who called attention to contradictions, also suggested that al-Ghazālī wrote differently for ordinary men and for the elite, or, in other words. that he had esoteric views which were not divulged to everyone; Hayy b. Yaqzan, Damascus, i358lig39, 69-72). This complicates the problem of authenticity: but there is no reason for thinking that, even if al-Ghazālī had different levels of teaching for different audiences, he ever in the “higher” levels directly contradicted what he maintained at the lower levels. An alternative supposition, that he adopted extreme philosophical forms of s6fism in his last years, seems to be excluded by the discovery that Iljīm al-’Awāmm, in which he holds a position similar to that of the Ihyā’, was completed only a few days before his death (Bouyges, Chronologie, 80 f.; G. F. Hourani, The chronology of Ghazāli’s writings, in JRAS, lxxix:1959), 225-33). In the present state of scholarship the soundest methodology is to concentrate on the main works of undoubted authenticity and to accept other works only in so far as the views expressed are not incom­patible with those in the former (cf. Montgomery Watt, The study of al-Ghāzālī, in Oriens, xiii-xiv (rg6r), r2r-3r. (b) Personal. A year or two before his death al-Ghazālī wrote al-Munqidh min al-dalāl, an account of the development of his religious opinions, but not exactly an autobiography, since it is arranged schematically not chronologically; e.g., he knew something of Sufism before the stage of development at which he describes it in the book. Most of the details about his life given above are derived from the Munqidh. He is also concerned to defend himself against the accusations and criticism that had been brought against his conduct and the views he had expressed. A small work answering criticisms of the Ihya’ is the Imlā’.

(c) Legal. Al-Ghazālī’s early training was as a jurist, and it was probably only under al-Juwayni that he devoted special attention to kālām or dogmatic theology. Some of his earliest writings were in the sphere of fiqh, notably the Basit and the Wasit, but he apparently continued to be in­terested in the subject and to write about it, for a work called the Wājiz is dated 495/1101, while the Mustasfā was written during his period of teaching at Naisapur in 503; 1109 (Bouyges, Chronologie, 49, 73). The latter deals with the sources of law (usul al-fiqh) in a manner which shows the influence of his earlier philosophical studies but is entirely within the juristic tradition. It is reported in biographical notices that at the time of his death al-Ghazālī was engaged in deepening his knowledge of Tradition.

(d) Philosophy and logic. After the period of skepticism described in the Munqidh, al-Ghazālī in his quest for certainty made a thorough -study of philosophy , a subject to which he had been intro­duced by al-Juwayni. This occupied all the earlier part of the Baghdad period. What he studied was chiefly the Arabic Neoplatonism of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Though his final aim was to show in what respects their doctrines were incompatible with Sunni Islam, he first wrote an exposition of their philosophy without any criticism, Maqasid al-­falasifa, which was much appreciated in Spain and the rest of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This he followed by a criticism of the doctrines entitled Tahafut al-Falasifa, “The incohe­rence (or inconsistency) of the philosophers”; this was finished at the beginning of 488/1095 (Bouyges, Chronologie, 23). In it he noted twenty points on which the philosophers’ views were objectionable to Sunnis or inconsistent with their own claims; in respect of three of these they were to be adjudged unbelievers. In the Tahafut al-Ghazālī concentrates on demonstrating the inconsistencies of the philo­sophers and does not argue for any positive views of his own. Because of this he has been accused of having remained something of a skeptic. This accusation fails to notice that the Tahafut was written just before the crisis which caused him to leave Baghdad; it is therefore possible that at the time he was somewhat uncertain of his positive beliefs, but a few years later when he was writing the Ihyā’ he was in no doubt about what he believed. What impressed al-Ghazālī most of the various branches of philosophical studies was logic, and in particular the Aristotelian syllogism. For the sake of Sunni jurists and theologians to whom philosophical books were not easily accessible or, because of their technical language, not readily understandable, he wrote two books on Aristotelian logic, Miryar al-’ilm and Mihakk al-nazar. A justification of the use of this logic in religious matters is contained in al-Qistas al-Mustaqim, apparently written for some comparatively simple-minded believers who were attracted by Batini (Isma’ili) doctrines. While full of enthusiasm for philosophy al-Ghazālī wrote a work on ethics, Mizan al-Amal, though whether the whole of the extant text is authentic has been questioned (JRAS, 1952, 38-40, 45). Since al-Ghazālī does not appear to refer to the Mizān in his later works, and since he became very critical of philosophical ethics (Munqidh, gg ff.), it is possible that, as his enthusiasm waned, he rejected much of what he had written in this work.

(e) Dogmatic theology. His chief work of dogmatics is al-Iqtisād fi ‘I-i`tiqad, probably composed shortly before or shortly after his departure from Baghdad (Bouyges, 34). This book deals with roughly the same topics as the Irshād of al-Juwayni, but it makes full use of Aristotelian logic, including the syllogism. In this respect Ibn Khaldun (iii, 41) is correct in making al-Ghazālī the founder of a new tendency in theology, although there is no striking novelty in his dogmatic views. In Kitāb al-Arba’in, (Cairo 1344, 24), written after the Ihyā’, al-Ghazālī’ says that the Iqtisad is more likely to prepare for the gnosis (ma’rifa) of the than the usual works of dogmatics; and this continuing approval strengthens the view that al-Ghazālī never ceased to be an Ash’arī in dogmatics, even though he came to hold that intellectual discussions in religion should range far beyond the limited field of dogmatics, and that detailed discussions in dogmatics had no practical value. To dogmatic theology might also be assigned Faysal al-tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-’l-zandaqa. This is partly directed against the Batiniyya, but is mainly a defence of his own views on the extent to which ta’mil is justified, and on the relative places of tawdtur and ildimd’ as sources of religious knowledge. Iljam al-’awamm ‘an ‘ilm al-kalām, which appears to be his last work, warns of the dangers in the study of kalām for those with little education.

 (f) Polemics. The Mustazahiri, edited in abridged form by Goldziher as Streitsekrift des Gauili gegen die Batiniya-Sekte (rg16), is a searching theological critique of the Nizari Ismailis or Assassins. A Persian work, edited by O. Pretzl as Die Stseitsckrift des Gasdli gegen die Ibdhija (1933), attacks the antino­mianism of certain mystics. The authenticity of a work of anti-Christian polemic, al-Radd al-Jamil `alā sarik al-Inijil (ed. and tr. R. Chidiac, Paris 1939), is doubted by Bouyges (126), but defended by Louis Massignon (in REI, 1932, 491-536).

(g) Sufistic practice. Al-Ghazālī’s greatest work, both in size and in the importance of its contents is Ihyā’ ‘ulūm al-din, “The revival of the religious sciences”, in four volumes. This is divided into four “quarters”, dealing with ībdāt (cult practices), ‘adāt (social customs), muhlikāt (vices, or faults of character leading to perdition), munjiyāt (virtues, or qualities leading to salvation). Each “quarter” has ten books. The 1kyi’ is thus a complete guide for the devout Muslim to every aspect of the religious life­ worship and devotional practices, conduct in daily life, the purification of the heart, and advance along the mystic way. The first two books deal with the necessary minimum of intellectual knowledge. This whole stupendous undertaking arises from al-Ghazālī’s feeling that in the hands of the ‘ulamā’ of his day religious knowledge had become a means of worldly advancement, whereas it was his deep conviction that it was essentially for the attainment of salvation in the world to come. He therefore, while describing the prescriptions of the Shari‘a in some detail, tries to show how they contribute to a man’s final salva­tion. Biddyat al-hiddya is a brief statement of a rule of daily life for the devout Muslim, together with counsel on the avoidance of sins. K. al-Arbain is a short summary of the Ihya’, though its forty sections do not altogether correspond to the forty books. Al-Maksad al-asnā discusses in what sense men may imitate the names or attributes of God. Kimiya’ al­-sa’dah is in the main an abridgement in Persian of the Ihya’ (also translated in whole or in part into Urdu, Arabic, etc.), but there are some differences which have not been fully investigated.

(h) Sufistic theory. It is in this field that most of the cases of false or dubious authenticity occur. Mishkat al-anwar (“The niche for lights”, tr. W. H. T. Gairdner, London 1924; cf. idem, in Isl., v (1914), 121-53) is genuine, except possibly the last section (JRA S, 1949, 5-22). Al-Risala al-laduniyya deals with the nature of knowledge of divine things, and its authenticity has been doubted because of its closeness to a work of Ibn al-‘Arabi and because of its Neoplatonism (cf. Bouyges, 124 f.). There are numerous other works in the same category, of which the most important is Minhaj al-’abidin. These works are of interest to students of mysticism, and their false attribution to al-Ghazālī, if it can be proved, does not destroy their value as illustrations of some branches of Sufistic thought during the lifetime of al-Ghazālī and the subsequent half ­century.

 

3. His influence

 

A balanced account of the influence of al-Ghazālī will probably not be possible until there has been much more study of various religious movements during the subsequent centuries. The following assessments are therefore to some extent provisional.

(a) His criticism of the Bātiniyya may have helped to reduce the intellectual attractiveness of the movement, but its comparative failure, after its success in capturing Alamut, is due to many other factors.

(b) After his criticism of the philosophers there are no further great interest in the philosophical movement in the Islamic east, but it is not clear how far the decline in philosophy is due to al-Ghazālī’s criticisms and how far to other causes. Its continuance in the Islamic west, where the Tahafut was also known, suggests that the other causes are also important.

(c) Al-Ghazālī’s studies in philosophy led to the incorporation of certain aspects of philosophy, notably logic, into Islamic theology. In course of time theologians came to devote much more time and space to the philosophical preliminaries than to the theology proper. On the other hand, his speculations about the nature of man’s knowledge of the divine realm and his conviction that the upright and devout man could attain to an intuition (or direct experience -dhawq) of divine things comparable to that of the worldliness of the `ulamā’ does not seem to have led to any radical changes.

(d) He undoubtedly performed a great service for devout Muslims of every, level of education by presenting obedience to the prescriptions of the Shari’a as a meaningful way of life. His khankāh at Tus, where he and his disciples lived together, was not unlike a Christian monastery; and it may be that he gave an impetus to the movement out of which came the dervish orders (but this requires further investigation).

(e) His example may have encouraged those forms of Sufism which were close to Sunnism or entirely Sunni. Before him, however, there had been much more Sufism among Sunni ‘ulamā’ than is commonly realized. His influence on the g11fl movement is general, however, requires further careful study.

 

Bibliography:

(a) Life, General. M. Bouyges, Essai de chronologie des aruvres de al-Ghāzālī, ed. M. Allard, Beirut 1959 (pp. 1-6 contain very full references to the main biographical sources); D. B. Macdonald, The life of al-Ghazālī, in JAOS, xx (1899), 71-132 (still useful but requires to be supplemented and corrected); Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazālī the mystic, London 1944 (contains large biographical section, also chapter on his influence); W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim intellectual, Edin­burgh 1963; W. R. W. Gardner, An account of al-Ghāzālī’s life and works, Madras 1919; S. M. Zwemer, A Moslem seeker after God, London x920.

(b) Works. Brockelmann, I, 535-46; S 1, 744-56; Bouyges, Chronologie (as above). In ZDMG, xciii, 395-408, Fr. Meier gives information about the Persian Nasihat al-Mulak and its Arabic translation al-Tibr al-Masbsak; English tr. by F. R. C. Bagley, Ghazali’s Book of Counsel for Kings, London 1964. Translations and studies later than Brockelmann: W. Montgomery Watt, The faith and practice of al-Ghazali, London 1953 (Munqidh, Biddyat al­hiddya); G.-H. Bousquet, Ih’ya 011 Vivification des sciences de Is foi, analyse et index, Paris 1955 ; Ihyā’, xi, Ger. tr. H. Kindermaan, Leiden 1962; xii, Fr. tr. G.-H. Bousquet, Paris 1953; xxxi, Susanna Wilzer, Untnsuckungen, in Isl., xxxii, 237-309, xxxiii, 51-120, xxxiv; 128-37; xxxiii, Eng. tr. W. McKane, Leiden 1962; Tahafut, Eng. tr. S. A. Kamali, Lahore 1958; Fr. trs. of Kistds by V. Chelhot in BAOr., xv, 7-98; and of Munqidh by F. Jabre, Beirut.

(c) Doctrines. M. Asin Palacios, La espiritualsdad de Algazel y su sentido cristiano, Madrid 1935, etc.; J. Obermann, Der philosophiseke and seligi6se Subjehtivismus Ghasalis, Vienna and Leipzig 1921; A. J. Wensinck, La pensle de Ghazāli, Paris 1940; Farid Jabre, La notion de certitude selon Ghazali, Paris 1958- idem, La notion de la Marrifa ehes Gharali, Beirut x958; M. Smith, al-Ghazali the Mystic (as above); Roger Arnaldez, Controversu thtologiques chex Ibn Hazm de Cordowa et Ghazali, in Les Mardis de Dar el-Salem, Sommaire, 1953, Paris x956, 207-48.

(W. MONTGOMERY WATT)

 

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Al-GHAZĀLĪ, AHMAD B. MUHAMMAD, brother of the more renowned Muhammad Ghazali, the Sufi and popular preacher, made his way via Hamadan to Baghdad, and took his brother’s place when the latter retired from teaching at the Nizamiyya. He died in 520/1126 in Kazwin. He wrote an abridged version of the K. al-Ihya’ of his brother, which has not survived; an exposition in sermon form of his confession of faith, al-Tajrid fi kalimat al-tawhid (Turkish translation by M. Fewzi, el-Tefrid fi terjemet el-Tejrid, Istanbul 1285); a discussion of the admissibility of sama’ (Sufi music and dancing), Bawarik al-ilma’ fi ‘l-radd ‘ala man yuharimu ‘I-sama’, ed.  J. Robson in Tracts on listening to music (Or. Transl. Fund, NS v), London 1938; a subtle psychology of love, Sawanih, ed. H. Ritter (Bibl. Islamica, xv) 1942; (probably) the Risalat al-Tayr, which was the inspiration for the Mantik al-tayr of Farid al-Din ‘Attar (see H. Ritter, Das Meer der Seele, 8-1o); and other minor writings which have not yet been investigated. His sermons were very popular in Baghdad, and were collected in two volumes by Sa`id b. Faris al-Labbani; of these however, only extracts are preserved in Ibn al-Jawzi. In them he undertook the defense of Satan (al-ta’assub li-lblis), popular in many Sufi circles since Hallaj, which was soon afterwards further developed by ‘Attar (see Das Meer der Seele, 536-5o), and which presumably gave the so-called Devil worshippers, the Yazidis, the justification for their worship of Satan (Ahmad Taymur Pasha, al-Yazidiyya, Cairo 1352, 59-61).

Bibliography: Brockelmann, S 1, 756, 1=, 546; `Umar Rid& Kahhala, Mu’ajam al-mu’allifin, Damascus 1957, iii, 147; L. Massignon, Recueil de textes inidits concernant 1’histoire de la mystique en pays d’Islam, Paris x929, 95-8; H. Ritter, Das Meer der Seele, Leiden 1955, index; Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam, S. A. 520; idem, Akhabar al-kussa wa ‘l-mudhakkirin, ms. Leiden 2156, fol. 77 a-b; Ibn Khallikan, no. 37; Subki, Tabakat al-sufiyya, iv, 54.

(H. Ritter)