Al-Ghazali: Life, Thought and the Revival of Religious Sciences

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111) was a Persian jurist, theologian and Sufi, honoured in Sunni Islam with the title Ḥujjat al-Islām, "the Proof of Islam". He is known for his attack on the Aristotelian philosophers in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, for his autobiographical account of a spiritual crisis, and above all for The Revival of the Religious Sciences, a vast guide that joined Islamic law, theology and Sufi spirituality into one way of life. Few Muslim thinkers have been read so widely, or for so long.

Al-Ghazali's Early Life and Rise in Baghdad§

Al-Ghazali was born around 1058 in or near Tus, in north-eastern Iran, close to modern Mashhad. Orphaned young, he and his brother Ahmad, who later became a noted Sufi, were educated through a charitable arrangement left by their father. He studied law and theology in Tus and Jurjan and then at Nishapur under al-Juwaynī, the "Imam of the Two Holy Places", the leading Ash'ari theologian and Shafi'i jurist of his day.

After al-Juwaynī's death in 1085 al-Ghazali joined the entourage of Niẓām al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuk sultans, who had founded a network of colleges called Nizamiyyas. In 1091, in his early thirties, al-Ghazali was appointed to teach at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad, the most prestigious academic post in the Sunni world. There he lectured to hundreds of students, wrote on Shafi'i law, and composed works for the Abbasid caliph, including a polemic against the Isma'ili Shi'is, whose doctrine of an infallible teaching Imam he opposed. The Isma'ilis' place in Shi'i history is outlined in The Twelve Imams of Shi'a Islam.

The Incoherence of the Philosophers§

In Baghdad al-Ghazali also studied philosophy (falsafa) on his own, above all the system of Avicenna. He first wrote a clear summary of it, Maqāṣid al-falāsifa (The Aims of the Philosophers), and then, around 1095, a critique, Tahāfut al-falāsifa, usually translated The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Using the philosophers' own logic, he argued that they had failed to prove their metaphysical claims.

He discussed twenty points, and judged three of them to amount to unbelief (kufr): that the world is eternal and was not created in time; that God knows particulars only in a universal way; and that resurrection after death is spiritual only, not bodily. The other seventeen he counted as errors or innovations. In one famous discussion he denied that fire necessarily causes cotton to burn: what we observe is only that burning follows contact, while the true cause is God's will, which ordinarily follows a regular custom but could do otherwise. This position, close to occasionalism, defended the possibility of miracles.

Al-Ghazali did not reject everything in philosophy. He accepted Aristotelian logic as a neutral tool and introduced it into Islamic legal theory and theology, where it remained for centuries. The Andalusian philosopher Averroes answered him in The Incoherence of the Incoherence; the larger debate is traced in Islamic Philosophy: Falsafa.

Crisis, Withdrawal and the Deliverance from Error§

In 1095, at the height of his fame, al-Ghazali suffered a breakdown. In his later autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (The Deliverance from Error), he describes how he lost the ability to speak while lecturing and could not eat, a condition he understood as God's judgment on his worldly ambition. Late in 1095 he left Baghdad, ostensibly on pilgrimage, gave away his wealth except what he needed for his family, and spent the next years in Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron, Mecca and Medina, living in seclusion and practising Sufi discipline.

The Munqidh, written around 1106–10, presents his life as a search for certainty. He surveys four groups that claimed to possess truth: the theologians, the philosophers, the Isma'ili "authoritarians" and the Sufis. Only the Sufis, he concludes, attain certainty, because their knowledge is "tasting" (dhawq), direct experience rather than argument. Historians debate how far the book is a literal record and how far a carefully shaped apology, but it remains one of the classic spiritual autobiographies of world literature.

The Revival of the Religious Sciences§

During his retirement al-Ghazali wrote his masterpiece, Iḥyā' ʿulūm al-dīn. It is arranged in four "quarters" of ten books each:

• Acts of worship: knowledge, creed, ritual purity, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage, Qur'an recitation, remembrance and supplication, and the ordering of devotions.
• Norms of daily life: eating, marriage, earning a living, the lawful and unlawful, friendship, solitude, travel, listening to music, the duty of commanding good and the manners of the Prophet.
• Things that lead to perdition: the wonders of the heart, the discipline of the soul, the appetites, the tongue, anger and envy, love of the world, avarice, hypocrisy, pride and self-delusion.
• Things that lead to salvation: repentance, patience and gratitude, fear and hope, poverty and renunciation, trust in God, love and longing, sincerity, self-examination, meditation, and the remembrance of death.

The Iḥyā' insists that the outward observance of the law is necessary but insufficient without inner purity, intention and love of God. It explains each practice of the Five Pillars in terms of its spiritual meaning, and it made the ethics of the Sufis, described in Sufism in Islam: Path and Doctrine, acceptable to cautious jurists. Al-Ghazali also wrote a shorter Persian version, Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat (The Alchemy of Happiness), whose title borrows the language of transformation from alchemy.

The Niche of Lights and the Later Works§

In Mishkāt al-anwār (The Niche of Lights) al-Ghazali offered a mystical commentary on the Light Verse of the Qur'an (24:35), reading the world as a hierarchy of lights culminating in God, the one true Light. Its symbolism influenced later philosophers of illumination such as Suhrawardi. In 1106 he returned to teaching at the Nizamiyya of Nishapur at the vizier's request and completed al-Mustaṣfā, a major work of legal theory that set out the objectives of the law, often summarised as the protection of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property. He then retired to Tus, where he taught disciples in a small Sufi lodge, and died there in December 1111.

Legacy, Controversy and Modern Debates§

The Iḥyā' was not universally welcomed. Some jurists objected to its weak hadiths and Sufi teachings, and in Almoravid Córdoba it was publicly burned around 1109. Over time, however, al-Ghazali came to be regarded in Sunni tradition as the "renewer" (mujaddid) of his century, and the Iḥyā' became one of the most widely read books after the Qur'an and the hadith collections. His blend of law, Ash'ari theology and sober Sufism, explained in Islamic Law and Theology, set a pattern for much of later Sunni religious life.

In medieval Latin Europe his Aims of the Philosophers was translated in the twelfth century without its preface, so that "Algazel" was long mistaken for a follower of Avicenna. Modern writers have sometimes blamed al-Ghazali for the supposed decline of science in the Islamic world. Recent scholarship, notably that of Frank Griffel, has challenged this view, showing that he absorbed much of Avicenna's philosophy into theology and that philosophical and scientific work continued vigorously for centuries after him.

Frequently asked questions§

Why is al-Ghazali called the Proof of Islam?§

Ḥujjat al-Islām is an honorific given to him by later Sunni scholars in recognition of his defence of orthodox belief against philosophers and Isma'ilis, and of his synthesis of law, theology and spirituality.

Did al-Ghazali reject philosophy?§

He rejected particular metaphysical doctrines of the philosophers, especially the eternity of the world, but he accepted logic and much of their psychology and ethics. Historians now see him as transforming philosophy within theology rather than ending it.

What is the Ihya ulum al-din about?§

It is a forty-book guide to the whole of Muslim religious life, from ritual purity and prayer to trust in God and love of Him. Its aim is to revive the inner meaning of the religious sciences, which al-Ghazali believed scholars had reduced to legal technicalities and debate.

Sources and further reading§

• The Incoherence of the Philosophers — al-Ghazali, trans. Michael E. Marmura, 1997
• Freedom and Fulfillment: An Annotated Translation of al-Ghazali's al-Munqidh min al-Dalal — Richard Joseph McCarthy, 1980
• The Niche of Lights — al-Ghazali, trans. David Buchman, 1998
• Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology — Frank Griffel, 2009
• Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali — W. Montgomery Watt, 1963
• Al-Ghazali the Mystic — Margaret Smith, 1944