Al-Ghazali
- Lived
- 1058 - 1111 CE
- Read next
- Meaning of the name Al-Ghazali
Who was Al-Ghazali? The Persian theologian who resolved the great tension between orthodox law and mystical experience. His Ihya Ulum al-Din (Revival of the Religious Sciences) reshaped the intellectual life of Islam and is still read in madrasas today.
The Persian theologian who resolved the great tension between orthodox law and mystical experience. His Ihya Ulum al-Din (Revival of the Religious Sciences) reshaped the intellectual life of Islam and is still read in madrasas today.
Life
Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali was born in Tus, near Mashhad in Iran, in 1058 CE. He studied at the Nizamiyya of Nishapur under the leading Ash'ari theologian Al-Juwayni, and by the age of thirty-three was appointed head of the Nizamiyya of Baghdad, the most prestigious teaching position in the Sunni world.
At the height of his career he underwent a spiritual crisis. He wrote later in his Munqidh min al-Dalal (The Deliverer from Error) that he stood in front of his students unable to speak. His tongue would not form the words. He recognized that he was teaching for reputation, not for Allah. He left Baghdad, told no one, and disappeared into eleven years of wandering.
He went to Damascus, then to Jerusalem where he spent time in the Dome of the Rock, then to Mecca and Madinah. During those years he wrote his masterpiece, Ihya Ulum al-Din, in forty books, integrating jurisprudence, theology, ethics, and Sufism into a single spiritual system. It became the most influential Sunni religious book after the Quran and the hadith collections.
He returned to Tus in his last years and taught quietly. He died in 1111 CE. His grave is in Tus. He is called Hujjat al-Islam, the Proof of Islam, because his work provided the intellectual argument that reconciled Sufi experience with Sunni law and closed the door on the drift toward Ismaili philosophy.
Stories
Each story is drawn from the classical Islamic sources.