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{{Short description|Sunni Muslim polymath (c. 1058–1111)}}
{{For|other people named (Al-)Ghazali|Ghazali}}
{{Distinguish|al-Ghazal}}
{{Jagged 85 shortened}}
{{Other uses|Ghazali}}
{{ infobox Muslim scholar
{{Infobox religious biography
| image =
| region = ] (])<ref name=Meri>{{cite book|last=Griffel|first=Frank|title=Medieval Islamic civilization : an encyclopedia|year=2006|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=0415966906|editor=Meri, Josef W.}}</ref>{{rp|292}}<br>](])/(])/(]) | region = ](])<ref name=Meri>{{cite book |last=Griffel |first=Frank |author-link=Frank Griffel |title=Medieval Islamic civilization: an encyclopedia |year=2006 |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=978-0415966900 |editor-last=Meri |editor-first=Josef W.}}</ref>{{rp|292}}<br />] (])<br /> ] (]) / (])<ref name=Meri />{{rp|292}}
<ref name=Meri />{{rp|292}}| era = ] | era = ]
| honorific_prefix = ]
| name = Al-Ghazālī (Algazel)<br>{{lang|ar|أبو حامد الغزالي}}
| title = Hujjat ul-Islam<ref name="Hunt Janin p 83"/> | name = Al-Ghazali
| native_name = ٱلْغَزَّالِيّ
| fullname = Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī
| birth_date = 1058 | native_name_lang = ar
| caption = Name of al-Ghazali
| birth_place = ] ], ]
| title = ] ('Proof of Islam')<ref name="Hunt Janin p 83"/>
| death_date = December 18, {{Death year and age|1111|1058}}
| birth_date = {{circa|1058}}
| death_place = ] ], ]
| birth_place = ], ], ]
|denomination = ]
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1111|12|19|1058||}}
|jurisprudence = ]
|creed =] | death_place = Tus, Iran, Seljuq Empire
| religion = ]
| main_interests = ], ] ('']''), ], ], ]
| denomination = ]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Meri |first1=Josef W. |last2=Bacharach |first2=Jere L. |title=Medieval Islamic Civilization: A-K |date=2006 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0415966917 |page=293}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Böwering |first1=Gerhard |last2=Crone |first2=Patricia |title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought |date=2013 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0691134840 |page=191 |quote=Ghazali (ca. 1058–1111) Abu Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Ghazali al-Tusi (the "Proof of Islam") is the most renowned Sunni theologian of the Seljuq period (1038–1194).}}</ref>
| major_works = ''Revival of Religious Sciences'', '']'', '']''
| school = ]
| influences = ], ], ], ]
| creed = ]<ref name="jacb1" /><ref>{{Cite book |title=The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia |last=Leaman |first=Oliver |publisher=] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0415326391 |pages= |url=https://archive.org/details/quranencyclopedi2006unse/page/84}}</ref>
| influenced = ]<br>
| main_interests = ], ] ('']''), ], ], ], ], ]
]<ref>Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 77. ISBN 0199724725</ref><br>
| notable_works = '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']''
]<br>
| influences = {{flatlist|
]<ref>Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 75. ISBN 0199724725</ref><br>
* ]<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25182038 |title=The Forerunner of Al-Ghazali |jstor=25182038 |last1=Smith |first1=Margaret |journal=The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland |year=1936 |volume=68 |issue=1 |pages=65–78 |doi=10.1017/S0035869X00076358 |s2cid=163151146}}</ref>
]<ref>Andrew Rippin, The Blackwell Companion to the Qur'an, p 410. ISBN 1405178442</ref><br>
* ]<ref name="auto21">{{Cite web |url=https://www.ghazali.org/site/teachers.htm |title=Imam Ghazali's Teachers: al-Ghazali's Website |website=www.ghazali.org}}</ref>
]<ref>Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, p 76. ISBN 0199724725</ref><br>
* ]<ref>https://phm.znu.ac.ir/article_19567.html?lang=en {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}</ref>
]<ref name="plato.stanford.edu"> Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, June 30, 2005</ref><br>
* ]
]<ref>Karin Heinrichs, Fritz Oser, Terence Lovat, Handbook of Moral Motivation: Theories, Models, Applications, p 257. ISBN 9462092753</ref><br>
}}
]<br>
| influenced = {{flatlist|
]<br>
* ]
]<br>
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=62}}
]<ref>, Islamic Contributions to Science & Math, netmuslims.com</ref><br>
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=81}}
]<br>
* ]<ref>{{cite book|author=]|title=Islamic Jurisprudence in the Classical Era|date=22 March 2010|publisher=]|isbn=9781139485715|page=88}}</ref>
]
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=76}}
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=77}}
* ]<ref>{{cite book |last=Marenbon |first=John |author-link=John Marenbon |title=Medieval Philosophy: an historical and philosophical introduction |page= |publisher=] |year=2007 |url=http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415281133 |isbn=978-0-415-28113-3}}</ref>
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=75}}
* ]<ref name="auto13">Andrew Rippin, The Blackwell Companion to the Qur'an, p 410. {{ISBN|1405178442}}</ref>
* ]<ref name="plato.stanford.edu">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides-islamic/ |title=The Influence of Islamic Thought on Maimonides |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=June 30, 2005}}</ref>
* ]
* ]<ref name="auto18">{{cite book |first1=Karin |last1=Heinrichs |first2=Fritz |last2=Oser |title=Terence Lovat, Handbook of Moral Motivation: Theories, Models, Applications |date=12 June 2013 |page=257 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-9462092754}}</ref>
* ]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.netmuslims.com/index.php/islamic-articles/muslim-contributions/89-muslim-philosophy |title=Muslim Philosophy |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029193408/http://www.netmuslims.com/index.php/islamic-articles/muslim-contributions/89-muslim-philosophy |archive-date=2013-10-29 |website=Islamic Contributions to Science & Math, netmuslims.com}}</ref>
* ]<ref name="auto6">James Robert Brown, Philosophy of Science: The Key Thinkers, p. 159. {{ISBN|1441142002}}</ref>
* ]<ref name="auto12"> Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, September 18, 2019</ref>
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=71}}
* ]<ref name="auto19">Ayn al-`Ilm wa Zayn al-Hilm, Muqadimmah, Page 1</ref>
* ]{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=74}}
}}
}} }}


'''Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali''' ({{langx|ar|أَبُو حَامِد مُحَمَّد بْن مُحَمَّد ٱلطُّوسِيّ ٱلْغَزَّالِيّ}}), known commonly as '''Al-Ghazali''' ({{langx|ar|ٱلْغَزَالِيُّ}}; {{IPAc-en|UK|æ|l|ˈ|ɡ|ɑː|z|ɑː|l|i}},<ref name="auto11">{{cite web |url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ghazali|title=Ghazali |work=] |publisher=] |access-date=29 June 2019}}</ref> {{IPAc-en|US|ˌ|æ|l|ɡ|ə|ˈ|z|ɑː|l|i|,_|-|z|æ|l|-}};<ref name="auto">{{Cite American Heritage Dictionary|Al-Ghazali|access-date=29 June 2019}}</ref><ref name="auto7">{{Cite Merriam-Webster|Ghazālī, al-|access-date=29 June 2019}}</ref> {{circa|1058}} – 19 December 1111), known in Medieval Europe by the Latinized '''Algazel''' or '''Algazelus''', was a Persian Sunni Muslim ].<ref name=Iranica/><ref name="auto8"> "Persian polymath Al-Ghazali published several treatises...."</ref><ref name="auto2">http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ghazalie.pdf « Al-Ghazali was born in A.D. 1058 (A.H. 450) in or near the city of Tus in Khurasan to a Persian family of modest means... »</ref><ref name="auto4"> "A native of Khorassan, of Persian origin, the Muslim theologian, sufi mystic, and philosopher Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali is one of the great figures of Islamic religious thought...."</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Bloch |first1=Ernst |title=Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left |date=2019 |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=9780231175357 |page=77 |quote=Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (ca.1058-1111) was a Persian antirationalist philosopher and theologian.}}</ref> He is known as one of the most prominent and influential ], ], ], ], ], ] and ] in ].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Banuazizi|first1=Ali |last2=Weiner |first2=Myron |title=The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan | publisher=]| date=March 1994 |isbn=9780815626091 |page=108}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Ghazali, al-|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/al-Ghazali.aspx |encyclopedia=The Columbia Encyclopedia |access-date=17 December 2012}}</ref><ref name="Ludwig 2009">{{cite book |first=Ludwig W. |last=Adamec |author-link=Ludwig W. Adamec |date=2009 |title=Historical Dictionary of Islam |page=109 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0810861619}}</ref><ref name=":0"/>
'''Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī''' ({{IPAc-en|g|æ|ˈ|z|ɑː|l|i}}; {{lang-ar|ابو حامد محمد ابن محمد الغزالي}}; c. 1058–1111), known as '''Al-Ghazali''' or '''Algazel''' to the Western medieval world, was a ] ], ], ], and ] of ] descent.<ref>{{cite web|title=Ghazali, al-|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/al-Ghazali.aspx|work=The Columbia Encyclopedia|accessdate=17 December 2012}}</ref>
{{Sufism|Notable early}}
Al-Ghazali has been referred to by some historians as the single most influential Muslim after the Islamic prophet ].<ref name=Watt1953>{{cite book|last=Watt|first=W. Montgomery|title=The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali|year=1953|publisher=George Allen and Unwin Ltd|location=London|url=http://www.ghazali.org/works/watt3.htm}}</ref> Within Islamic civilization he is considered to be a ] or renewer of the faith, who, according to tradition, appears once every century to restore the faith of the community.<ref>Jane I. Smith, ''Islam in America'', p. 36. ISBN 0231519990</ref><ref>Dhahabi, Siyar, 4.566</ref><ref>Willard Gurdon Oxtoby, Oxford University Press, 1996, p 421</ref> His works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was awarded the honorific title "Proof of Islam" (''Hujjat al-Islam'').<ref name="Hunt Janin p 83">Hunt Janin, ''The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World'', p. 83. ISBN 0786419547</ref> Others have cited his opposition to certain strands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress.<ref>Sawwaf, A. (1962) ''al-Ghazali: Etude sur la réforme Ghazalienne dans l’histoire de son développement'' (Fribourg).</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Aydin|first=Nuh|title=Did al-Ghazali kill the science in Islam?|url=http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/did-al-ghazali-kill-the-science-in-islam-may-june-2012|accessdate=23 February 2014}}</ref> Besides his work that successfully changed the course of Islamic philosophy—the early Islamic ] that developed on the grounds of ], for example, was so successfully criticised by al-Ghazali that it never recovered—he also brought the ] Islam of his time in close contact with ]. It became increasingly possible for individuals to combine orthodox theology (''kalam'') and Sufism, while adherents of both camps developed a sense of mutual appreciation that made sweeping condemnation of one by the other increasingly problematic.<ref name="Watt1953" />{{rp|14–16}}


He is considered to be the 11th century's '']'',<ref name="William Montgomery Watt p. 180">William Montgomery Watt, ''Al-Ghazali: The Muslim Intellectual'', p. 180. ]: ], 1963.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Rosmizi |first1=Mohd |last2=Yucel |first2=Salih |date=2016 |title=The Mujaddid of his age: Al-Ghazali and his inner spiritual journey |url=https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/the-mujaddid-of-his-age-al-ghazali-and-his-inner-spiritual-journe |journal=UMRAN - International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies |language=English |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=1–12 |doi=10.11113/umran2016.3n2.56 |issn=2289-8204|doi-access=free }}</ref> a renewer of the faith, who, according to the prophetic ], appears once every 100 years to restore the faith of the ].<ref name="auto3">{{cite book |first=Jane I. |last=Smith |title=Islam in America |date=19 November 2009 |page=36 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0231519991}}</ref><ref name="auto9">Dhahabi, Siyar, 4.566</ref><ref name="auto5">{{cite book |first=Willard Gurdon |last=Oxtoby |publisher=] |date=1996 |page=421}}</ref> Al-Ghazali's works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that he was awarded the honorific title "'''Proof of Islam'''" '''('']'')'''.<ref name="Hunt Janin p 83">{{cite book |first=Hunt |last=Janin |title=The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World |year=2005 |page=83 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=0786419547}}</ref> Al-Ghazali was a prominent ] in the ] school of ].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Al Beirawi |first1=Abu Ismael |title=Essays on Ijtihad in the 21st Century|publisher=]|date=12 April 2016|isbn=9781539995036|page=35}}</ref>
==Life==


Much of Al-Ghazali's work stemmed around his spiritual crises following his appointment as the head of the ] in Baghdad - which was the most prestigious academic position in the Muslim world at the time.<ref>Joseph E. B. Lumbard, Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars p90. {{isbn|0941532607}}</ref><ref>George Makdisi, ''The Rise of Colleges'', p27</ref> This led to his eventual disappearance from the Muslim world for over 10 years, realising he chose the path of status and ego over God.<ref name=":5">Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (2014). "Happiness and the Attainment of Happiness: An Islamic Perspective". ''Journal of Law and Religion''. '''29''' (1): 76–91 . ]:10.1017/jlr.2013.18. ] 24739088.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Al-Ghazali's Turning Point: On the Writings on his Personal Crisis |url=https://www.ghazali.org/articles/crisis.htm |access-date=2023-07-30 |website=www.ghazali.org}}</ref> It was during this period where many of his great works were written.<ref name=":5" /> He believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslims had been forgotten.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q1I0pcrFFSUC&q=Ghazali+Revival+Sciences&pg=PA191 |title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought |last1=Böwering |first1=Gerhard|last2=Crone |first2=Patricia |last3=Mirza |first3=Mahan |last4=Kadi |first4=Wadad |last5=Zaman |first5=Muhammad Qasim |last6=Stewart |first6=Devin J. |date=2013 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0691134840 |pages=191 |language=en |via=]}}</ref> This belief led him to write his magnum opus entitled ''Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn'' ("]").<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/interpretingisla00zhuz |url-access=registration |quote=Ghazali Revival ihya. |title=Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi's Islamic Intellectual History |last=Sonn |first=Tamara |date=1996-10-10 |publisher=] |isbn=9780195356564 |pages= |language=en}}</ref> Among his other works, the '']'' ("Incoherence of the Philosophers") is a landmark in the ], as it advances the critique of ] developed later in 14th-century Europe.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/al-ghazali/ |title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |last=Griffel |first=Frank |chapter=Al-Ghazali |date=2016 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, ] |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Winter 2016}}</ref>
The traditional date of al-Ghazali's birth, as given by ], is 450 ] (March 1058&ndash;February 1059 CE), but modern scholars have raised doubts about the ] of Ibn al-Jawzi's information, and have posited a date of 448 AH (1056&ndash;1057 CE), on the basis of certain statements in al-Ghazali's correspondence and autobiography.<ref name=Griffel>{{cite book|last=Griffel|first=Frank|title=Al-Ghazālī's Philosophical Theology|year=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=9780195331622}}</ref>{{rp|23&ndash;25}} He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of ], which lies within the ] of ].<ref name=Griffel />{{rp|25}}


== Biography ==
A posthumous tradition - the authenticity of which has been questioned in recent scholarship - tells that his father died in poverty and left the young al-Ghazali and his brother ] to the care of a ]. Al-Ghazali's contemporary and first biographer, 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in '']'' (Islamic jurisprudence) from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher.<ref name=Griffel />{{rp|26&ndash;27}}
Al-Ghazali was born in {{Circa|1058}} in ], then part of the ].<ref name="Griffel">{{cite book |last=Griffel |first=Frank |title=Al-Ghazālī's Philosophical Theology |year=2009 |publisher=] |location=Oxford |isbn=9780195331622}}</ref> He was a Muslim scholar, law specialist, rationalist, and spiritualist of ] descent.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Foundation |first=Encyclopaedia Iranica |title=Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica |url=https://iranicaonline.org/ |access-date=2024-03-07 |website=iranicaonline.org |language=en-US|quote=A man of Persian descent, Ḡazālī (variant name Ḡazzālī; Med. Latin form, Algazel; honorific title, Ḥojjat-al-Eslām"The Proof of Islam”), was born at Ṭūs in Khorasan in 450/1058 and grew up as an orphan together with his younger brother Aḥmad Ḡazālī (d. 520/1126; q.v.).}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Rahman |first=Yucel |date=2016 |title=The Mujaddid of His Age}}</ref> He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of ], ] (now part of ]),<ref name="Griffel" /> not long after ] entered ] and ended ] ]s. This marked the start of Seljuk influence over Caliphate. While the ]'s influence grew, ] married his daughter, Arslan Khatun Khadija<ref>{{cite book |chapter=The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World |first=C. E. |last=Bosworth |title=The Cambridge History of Iran |volume=5 |editor-first=J. A. |editor-last=Boyle |publisher=] |year=1968 |page=48}}</ref> to caliph ] in 1056.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Dailamīs in Central Iran: The Kākūyids of Jibāl and Yazd |first=C. E. |last=Bosworth |journal=] |volume=8 |issue=1 |year=1970 |pages=73–95 |doi=10.2307/4299634 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05786967.1970.11834791|url-access=subscription |jstor=4299634}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Margaret |year=1936 |title=The Forerunner of Al-Ghazali |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25182038 |journal=The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland |volume=68 |issue=1 |pages=65–78 |doi=10.1017/S0035869X00076358 |jstor=25182038 |s2cid=163151146}}</ref><ref name="auto21"/>


He later studied under ], the distinguished jurist and theologian and "the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time",<ref name=Griffel />{{rp|29}}in ], perhaps after a period of study in ]. After al-Juwayni's death in 1085, al-Ghazali departed from Nishapur and joined the court of ], the powerful vizier of the ] sultans, which was likely centered in ]. After bestowing upon him the titles of "Brilliance of the Religion" and "Eminence among the Religious Leaders", Nizam al-Mulk advanced al-Ghazali in July 1091 to the "most prestigious and most challenging" professoriate at the time, in the ] madrasa in ].<ref name=Griffel />{{rp|34}} A posthumous tradition, the authenticity of which has been questioned in recent scholarship, is that his father died in poverty and left the young al-Ghazali and his brother ] to the care of a ]. Al-Ghazali's contemporary and first biographer, ], records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in '']'' (Islamic jurisprudence) from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher and ], a ] sufi from Tus.<ref name="Griffel" />{{rp|26–27}} He later studied under ], the distinguished jurist and theologian and "the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time,"<ref name="Griffel" /> in ],<ref name="Meri"/>{{rp|292}} perhaps after a period of study in ]. After al-Juwayni's death in 1085, al-Ghazali departed from ] and joined the court of ], the powerful vizier of the ] empire, which was likely centered in ]. After bestowing upon him the titles of "Brilliance of the Religion" and "Eminence among the Religious Leaders", Nizam al-Mulk advanced al-Ghazali in July 1091 to the "most prestigious and most challenging" professorial position at the time: the ] madrasa in ].<ref name="Griffel" />


He underwent a spiritual crisis in 1095, and consequently abandoned his career and left Baghdad on the pretext of going on pilgrimage to ]. Making arrangements for his family, he disposed of his wealth and adopted an ascetic lifestyle. According to biographer, Duncan B. Macdonald, the purpose of abstaining from scholastic work was to confront the spiritual experience and more ordinary understanding of "the Word and the Traditions".<ref>Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne. (1966). "A literary history of the Arabs". London: Cambridge University Press. p. 382.</ref> After some time in ] and ], with a visit to ] and Mecca in 1096, he returned to Tus to spend the next several years in '''uzla'' (seclusion). This seclusion consisted in abstaining from teaching at state-sponsored institutions, though he continued to publish, to receive visitors, and to teach in the ] (private madrasa) and ] (Sufi monastery) that he had built. He underwent a spiritual crisis in 1095, which some speculate was brought on by clinical ],<ref>Abū Ḥāmid b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazzālī, "al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl" in ''Majmūʿa Rasāʾil al-Imām al-Ghazzālī''. Ed. by Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1988), 29, 60</ref><ref>Jacques Lacan, "Some Reflections on the Ego" in ''The International Journal of Psychoanalysis'', 1953, No. 34, 13. (presentation, the British Psycho-Analytical Society, London, May 2nd, 1951)</ref><ref>Ovidio Salazar, ''Al-Ghazali: The Alchemist of Happiness'' (2004; London: Matmedia Productions, 2006), DVD.</ref> abandoned his career and left Baghdad on the pretext of going on pilgrimage to ]. Making arrangements for his family, he disposed of his wealth and adopted an ] lifestyle. According to biographer Duncan B. Macdonald, the purpose of abstaining from scholastic work was to confront the spiritual experience and more ordinary understanding of "the Word and the Traditions."<ref>Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne. (1966). "A literary history of the Arabs." London: Cambridge University Press. p. 382.</ref> After some time in ] and ], with a visit to ] and Mecca in 1096, he returned to Tus to spend the next several years in ''uzla'' (seclusion). The seclusion consisted in abstaining from teaching at state-sponsored institutions, but he continued to publish, receive visitors and teach in the ] (private madrasa) and ] (Sufi lodge) that he had built.


Fakhr al-Mulk, grand vizier to ], pressed al-Ghazali to return to the Nizamiyya in Nishapur; al-Ghazali reluctantly capitulated in 1106, fearing (rightly) that he and his teachings would meet with resistance and controversy.<ref name=Griffel />{{rp|53–4}} He later returned to Tus, and declined an invitation in 1110 from the grand vizier of ] to return to Baghdad. He died on 18 December 1111. According to 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi he had several daughters, but no sons.<ref name=Griffel />{{rp|57&ndash;59}} ], grand vizier to ], pressed al-Ghazali to return to the Nizamiyya in Nishapur. Al-Ghazali reluctantly capitulated in 1106, fearing rightly that he and his teachings would meet with resistance and controversy.<ref name="Griffel" /> He later returned to Tus and declined an invitation in 1110 from the grand vizier of the Seljuq Sultan ] to return to Baghdad. He died on 19 December 1111. According to 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, he had several daughters but no sons.<ref name="Griffel" />


== School affiliations ==
==Influence==
{{Ash'arism}}
Dimitri Gutas and the ] consider the period between the 11th and 14th centuries to be the "]" of Arabic and Islamic philosophy, initiated by Ghazali's successful integration of ] seminary ] curriculum.<ref name=Stanford>{{cite web|author=Tony Street|title=Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic|publisher=]|date=July 23, 2008|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-language|accessdate=2008-12-05}}</ref>
Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development of a systematic view of ] and its integration and acceptance in mainstream Islam. As a scholar of Islam,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Meri |first1=Josef W. |title=Medieval Islamic Civilization: A-K |last2=Bacharach |first2=Jere L. |date=2006 |publisher=Taylor and Francis |isbn=978-0415966917 |page=293}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Böwering |first1=Gerhard |title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought |last2=Crone |first2=Patricia |date=2013 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0691134840 |page=191 |quote=Ghazali (ca. 1058–1111) Abu Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Ghazali al-Tusi (the "Proof of Islam") is the most renowned Sunni theologian of the Seljuq period (1038–1194).}}</ref> he belonged to the ] school of Islamic ] and to the ] school of ].<ref name="ReferenceA">R.M. Frank, ''Al-Ghazali and the Ashʿarite School'', Duke University Press, London 1994</ref> Al-Ghazali received many titles such as ''Zayn al-Dīn'' ({{lang|ar|زين الدين}}) and ''Ḥujjat al-Islām'' ({{lang|ar|حجة الإسلام}}).<ref name="Hunt Janin p 83"/><ref name="auto3"/><ref name="auto9"/><ref name="auto5"/>


]]]
==School affiliations==
Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development of a systematic view of ] and to its integration and acceptance in mainstream Islam. As a scholar of orthodox Islam, he belonged to the ] school of Islamic ] and to the ] school of ].<ref>R.M. Frank, ''Al-Ghazali and the Ash'arite School'', Duke University Press, London 1994</ref> Al-Ghazali received many titles such as ''Sharaf-ul-Aʾimma'' ({{lang|ar|شرف الأئمة}}), ''Zayn-ud-dīn'' ({{lang|ar|زين الدين}}), ''Ḥujjat-ul-Islām'' ({{lang|ar|حجة الإسلام}}).


He is viewed{{by whom?|date=August 2014}} as the key member of the influential ] school of ] and as the most important refuter of ]s. However, he chose a slightly different position in comparison with the Asharites; his beliefs and thoughts differ, in some aspects, from the orthodox Asharite school.<ref> He is viewed as the key member of the influential ] school of ] and the most important refuter of the ]s. However, he chose a slightly different position in comparison with the Asharites. His beliefs and thoughts differ in some aspects from the orthodox Asharite school.<ref name="ReferenceA" /><ref name="jacb1">{{cite book |last1=A.C. Brown |first1=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan A.C. Brown |title=Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World ''(Foundations of Islam)'' |date=2009 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1851686636 |page=179}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Leaman |first=Oliver |url=https://archive.org/details/quranencyclopedi2006unse/page/84 |title=The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia |publisher=] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0415326391 |pages=}}</ref>
R.M. Frank, ''Al-Ghazali and the Ash'arite School'', Duke University Press, London 1994</ref>


==Logic== == Works ==
A total of about 70 works can be attributed to al-Ghazali.<ref name=EncIr_works>"about five dozen authentic works, in addition to which some 300 other titles of works of uncertain, doubtful, or spurious authorship, many of them duplicates owing to varying titles, are cited in Muslim bibliographical literature. Already Ebn Ṭofayl (d. 581/1185, q.v.) observed that Ḡazālī wrote for different audiences, ordinary men and the elite (pp. 69-72), and Ḡazālī himself completed the rather moderate theological treatise, Eljām al-ʿawāmmʿan ʿelm al-kalām "The restraining of ordinary men from theology," in the last month before his death" '']''.</ref><ref name=":0"/><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Böwering |first1=Gerhard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q1I0pcrFFSUC&q=Ghazali+Revival+Sciences&pg=PA191 |title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought |last2=Crone |first2=Patricia |last3=Mirza |first3=Mahan |last4=Kadi |first4=Wadad |last5=Zaman |first5=Muhammad Qasim |last6=Stewart |first6=Devin J. |date=2013 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0691134840 |pages=191 |language=en |via=]}}</ref> He is also known to have written a fatwa against the ] kings of al-Andalus, declaring them to be unprincipled, not fit to rule and that they should be removed from power. This fatwa was used by ] to justify his conquest of al-Andalus.<ref name="Alkhateeb">{{Cite book |last=Alkhateeb |first=Firas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X5RODwAAQBAJ|title=Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilisation from the Past |date=2017-11-15 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-84904-977-1 |language=en |via=]}}</ref>
In ], Al-Ghazali had an important influence on the use of logic in ], as he was the first to apply the ] of ] ] to Islamic theology.<ref name=Britannica> (), '']''.</ref>


=== ''Incoherence of the Philosophers'' ===
==Works==
Al-Ghazali's 11th century book titled
Al-Ghazali wrote more than 70 books on the sciences, Islamic philosophy and Sufism.{{cn|date=September 2015}}
'']'' ("Incoherence of the Philosophers")
], ], named after ], the mausoleum of Al-Ghazali is thought to be situated at the entrance of this monument]]
marked a major turn in Islamic ]. The encounter with ] led al-Ghazali to investigate a form of theological ], or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God.


In the next century, ] (or ]) drafted a lengthy rebuttal of al-Ghazali's ''Incoherence'' entitled '']''; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Craig |first1=William Lane |author-link=William Lane Craig |title=The cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz |date=2001 |publisher=] |location=Eugene, OR. |isbn=978-1579107871 |page=89}}</ref> Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire. While it might seem as though a natural law was at work, it happened each and every time only because God willed it to happen—the event was "a direct product of divine intervention as any more attention grabbing miracle". ], by contrast insisted while God created the natural law, humans "could more usefully say that fire caused cotton to burn—because creation had a pattern that they could discern."<ref name="Kadri-118">{{cite book |last1=Kadri |first1=Sadakat |title=Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia .. |date=2012 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=9780099523277 |pages=118–9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ztCRZOhJ10wC&q=Heaven+on+Earth:+A+Journey+Through+Shari%27a+Law |via=]}}</ref><ref>For al-Ghazali's argument see ''The Incoherence of the Philosophers''. Translated by Michael E. Marmura. 2nd ed, Provo Utah, 2000, pp.116-7.</ref><ref>For Ibn Rushd's response, see {{cite book |editor-last=Khalid |editor-first=Muhammad A. |title=Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings |location=Cambridge UK |date=2005 |page=162}}</ref>
===''Incoherence of the Philosophers''===
His 11th century book titled '']'' marks a major turn in Islamic ]. The encounter with ] led al-Ghazali to embrace a form of theological ], or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present Will of God.


The ''Incoherence'' also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of ] and ]. The book took aim at the ''falasifa'', a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them ] and ]) who drew intellectually upon the ]. The ''Incoherence'' also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of ] and ]. The book took aim at the ''Falāsifa'', a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them ] and ]) who drew intellectually upon the ].


The influence of Al-Ghazali's book is still debated. Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science ] in 2007 argued that the decline of science in the 11th century has been overstated, pointing to continuing advances, particularly in astronomy, as late as the 14th century.<ref name=Aydin_Saliba>"Many orientalists argue that Ghazali's Tahafut is responsible for the age of decline in ] in the Muslim World. This is their key thesis as they attempt to explain the scientific and intellectual history of the Islamic world. It seems to be the most widely accepted view on the matter not only in the Western world but in the Muslim world as well. George Saliba, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University who specializes in the development of astronomy within Islamic civilization, calls this view the "classical narrative" (Saliba, 2007)".</ref>
In the next century, ] drafted a lengthy rebuttal of al-Ghazali's ''Incoherence'' entitled '']''; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Craig|first1=William Lane|title=The cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz|date=2001|publisher=Wipf and Stock|location=Eugene, OR.|isbn=978-1579107871|page=89}}</ref> Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire. While it might as though a natural law was at work, it happened each and every time only because God willed it to happen -- the event was "a direct product of divine intervention as any more attention grabbing miracle". ], by contrast insisted while God created the natural law, humans "could more usefully say that fire cause cotton to burn -- because creation had a pattern that they could discern."
<ref name=Kadri-118>{{cite book|last1=Kadri|first1=Sadakat|title=Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia ...|date=2012|publisher=macmillan|isbn=9780099523277|page=118-9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ztCRZOhJ10wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Heaven+on+Earth:+A+Journey+Through+Shari%27a+Law&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAWoVChMIob7syrnZxwIVhg6SCh0fYg3Z#v=onepage&q=Heaven%20on%20Earth%3A%20A%20Journey%20Through%20Shari'a%20Law&f=false|}}</ref>
<ref>For al-Ghazali's argument see ''The Incoherence of the Philosophers''. Translated by Michael E. Marmura. 2nd ed, Provo Utah, 2000, pp.116-7.</ref><ref>For Ibn Rushd's response, see Khalid, Muhammad A. ed. ''Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings'', Cambridge UK, 2005, p.162)</ref>


Professor of Mathematics Nuh Aydin wrote in 2012 that one the most important reasons of the decline of science in the Islamic world has been Al-Ghazali's attack of ''philosophers'' (scientists, physicists, mathematicians, logicians). The attack peaked in his book ''Incoherence'', whose central idea of theological ] implies that ''philosophers'' cannot give rational explanations to either metaphysical or physical questions. The idea caught on and nullified the critical thinking in the Islamic world.<ref>
This long-held argument has been disputed. Some argue that al-Ghazali was the first intellectual to champion the separation between several disciplines formerly classified under ''falsafa'' (Arabic word for philosophy but one that used to include physics, mathematics and logic).<ref name="thenational.ae">{{cite web|url=http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/how-the-decline-of-muslim-scientific-thought-still-haunts#full |title=How the decline of Muslim scientific thought still haunts |publisher=thenational.ae |date= |accessdate=2012-10-04}}</ref> "Al-Ghazali argued that some fundamentalists, who perceive ''falsafa'' to be incompatible with religion, tend to categorically reject all views adopted by 'philosophers', including scientific facts like the lunar and solar eclipses. And when that person is later persuaded of a certain view, he tends to blindly accept all other views held by philosophers".<ref name="thenational.ae"/>
{{cite web |last=Aydin |first=Nuh |title=Did al-Ghazali kill the science in Islam?|url=http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/did-al-ghazali-kill-the-science-in-islam-may-june-2012 |access-date=23 February 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150430051445/http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/did-al-ghazali-kill-the-science-in-islam-may-june-2012 |archive-date=2015-04-30 |url-status=dead}}</ref>


On the other hand, author and journalist ] in 2012 argued that while indeed scientific thought in Islam was stifled in the 11th century, the person mostly to blame is not al-Ghazali but ].<ref name="thenational.ae">{{cite news |first=Hasan |last=Hasan |author-link=Hasan Hasan |url=https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/how-the-decline-of-muslim-scientific-thought-still-haunts-1.382129#:~:text=It%20reported%20that%20India%20and,and%20is%20of%20lower%20quality |title=How the decline of Muslim scientific thought still haunts |work=] |date=9 February 2012}}</ref>
===Autobiography===
] 509 (] 1115-1116).]]
The ] al-Ghazali wrote towards the end of his life, ''Deliverance From Error'' ({{lang|ar|المنقذ من الضلال}} ''al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl'') is considered a work of major importance.<ref name=Iranica>{{cite web|last=B&ouml;wering|first=Gerhard|title=ḠAZĀLĪ|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gazali-i-biography|work=Encyclopædia Iranica|accessdate=17 December 2012}}</ref> In it, al-Ghazali recounts how, once a crisis of ] was resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast ... the key to most knowledge,"<ref name=McCarthy>{{cite book|last=McCarthy|first=Richard Joseph|title=Freedom and fulfillment : "al-Munqidh min al-Dalal" and other relevant works|year=1980|publisher=Twayne|location=Boston|isbn=0805781676}}</ref>{{rp|66}} he studied and mastered the arguments of ], ], and ]. Though appreciating what was valid in the first two of these, at least, he determined that all three approaches were inadequate and found ultimate value only in the mystical experience and insight (the state of prophecy or ''nubuwwa''){{Citation needed|date=August 2013}} he attained as a result of following ] practices. ], in '']'', considered the autobiography an important document for "the purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian" because of the scarcity of recorded personal religious confessions and autobiographical literature from this period outside the Christian tradition.<ref name=James>{{cite book|last=James|first=William|title=The Varieties of Religious Experience.|year=2012|publisher=Oxford Univ Press|isbn=9780199691647|editor=Bradley, Matthew}}</ref>{{rp|307}}


===''The Revival of Religious Sciences''=== === ''The Revival of Religious Sciences (Ihya' Ulum al-Din)'' ===
{{See also|The Revival of the Religious Sciences}}
{{Sufism|Notable early}}
Another of al-Ghazali's major works is '']'' or ''Ihya'u Ulumiddin'' (''The Revival of Religious Sciences'').<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sonn |first=Tamara |url=https://archive.org/details/interpretingisla00zhuz |title=Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi's Islamic Intellectual History |date=1996-10-10 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195356564 |pages= |language=en |quote=Ghazali Revival ihya. |url-access=registration}}</ref> It covers almost all fields of Islamic sciences: ] (Islamic ]), ] (]) and ].{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}


Another of al-Ghazali's major works is ''Ihya' Ulum al-Din'' or ''Ihya'u Ulumiddin'' (The Revival of Religious Sciences). It covers almost all fields of Islamic sciences: ] (Islamic ]), ] (]) and ]. It contains four major sections: ''Acts of worship'' (Rub' al-'ibadat), ''Norms of Daily Life'' (Rub' al-'adatat), ''The ways to Perdition'' (Rub' al-muhlikat) and ''The Ways to Salvation'' (Rub' al-munjiyat). The ''Ihya'' became the most frequently recited Islamic text after the Qur'an and the hadith. Its great achievement was to bring orthodox Sunni theology and Sufi mysticism together in a useful, comprehensive guide to every aspect of Muslim life and death.<ref>Hunt Janin, The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World 610-2003, p 83. ISBN 0786429046</ref> The book was well received by Islamic scholars such as ] who stated that: ''"Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace them all."''<ref>Joseph E. B. Lumbard, Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars, p. 291. ISBN 0941532607</ref> Ghazali then wrote a brief version of this book in ] under ''The Alchemy of Happiness'' (]). It contains four major sections: ''Acts of worship'' ({{lang|ar|Rub' al-'ibadat}}), ''Norms of Daily Life'' ({{lang|ar|Rub' al-'adatat}}), ''The ways to Perdition'' ({{lang|ar|Rub' al-muhlikat}}) and ''The Ways to Salvation'' ({{lang|ar|Rub' al-munjiyat}}). The {{lang|ar|Ihya}} became the most frequently recited Islamic text after the Qur'an and the hadith. Its great achievement was to bring orthodox Sunni theology and Sufi mysticism together in a useful, comprehensive guide to every aspect of Muslim life and death.<ref>Hunt Janin, The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World 610-2003, p 83. {{ISBN|0786429046}}</ref> The book was well received by Islamic scholars such as ] who stated that: "Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace them all."<ref>{{cite book |first=Joseph E. B. |last=Lumbard |title=Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars |year=2004 |page=291 |publisher=World Wisdom |isbn=0941532607}}</ref>


===''The Jerusalem Tract''=== === ''The Alchemy of Happiness'' ===
{{See also|The Alchemy of Happiness}}
At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam entitled ''The Jerusalem Tract''.<ref name=Khalidi>{{cite book|last=Khalidi|first=Walid|title=Before their diaspora : a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876-1948|year=1984|publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies|location=Washington, D.C.|isbn=0887281435|url=http://btd.palestine-studies.org/content/introduction-last-days-ottoman-rule-1876-1918|author2=Khalidi, commentary by Walid}}</ref>{{rp|29}}
''The Alchemy of Happiness'' is a rewritten version of ''The Revival of the Religious Sciences''. After the existential crisis that caused him to completely re-examine his way of living and his approach to religion, al-Ghazali put together ''The Alchemy of Happiness''.<ref name="Kimiya" />


=== ''Disciplining the Soul'' ===
==Influence==
One of the key sections of Ghazali's '']'' is ''Disciplining the Soul'', which focuses on the internal struggles that every Muslim will face over the course of his lifetime.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |title=Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul and on Breaking the Two Desires |last=Winter |first=T.J |publisher=The Islamic Text Society |year=2016}}</ref> The first chapter primarily focuses on how one can develop himself into a person with positive attributes and good personal characteristics . The second chapter has a more specific focus: sexual satisfaction and ].<ref name=":2" /> Here, Ghazali states that indeed every man has these desires and needs, and that it is natural to want these things.<ref name=":2" /> However, the Prophet explicitly states that there must be a middle ground for man, in order to practice the tenets of Islam faithfully. The ultimate goal that Ghazali is presenting not only in these two chapters, but in the entirety of ''The'' ''Revival of the Religious Sciences'', is that there must be moderation in every aspect of the soul of a man, an equilibrium. These two chapters were the 22nd and 23rd chapters, respectively, in Ghazali's ''Revival of the Religious Sciences''.<ref name=":2" />
Al-Ghazali had an important influence on both ] and ] ]. ] writes in her book ''Al-Ghazali: The Mystic'' (London 1944): "There can be no doubt that al-Ghazali’s works would be among the first to attract the attention of these European scholars" (page 220). Then she emphasizes, "The greatest of these Christian writers who was influenced by al-Ghazali was St. ] (1225–1274), who made a study of the Arabic writers and admitted his indebtedness to them, having studied at the ] where the influence of Arab literature and culture was predominant at the time." In addition, Aquinas' interest in Islamic studies could be attributed to the infiltration of ‘Latin Averroism’ in the 13th century, especially at the ].


=== ''The Eternity of the World'' ===
Al-Ghazali also played a very major role in integrating ] with ]. He was also the first to present a formal description of Sufism in his works. His works also strengthened the status of ] against other schools. The ] (]) had emerged in ]n territories and were gaining more and more power during al-Ghazali's period, as ] was assassinated by the members of Ismailis. Al-Ghazali strongly rejected their ideology and wrote several books on criticism of Baatinyas which significantly weakened their status.
Al-Ghazali crafted his rebuttal of the Aristotelian viewpoint on the creation of the world in ''The Eternity of the World''. Al-Ghazali essentially formulates two main arguments for what he views as a sacrilegious thought process. Central to the ] approach is the concept that motion will always precede motion, or in other words, a force will always create another force, and therefore for a force to be created, another force must act upon that force.<ref name=":0" /> This means that in essence time stretches infinitely both into the future and into the past, which therefore proves that ] did not create the universe at one specific point in time. Al-Ghazali counters this by first stating that if the world was created with exact boundaries, then in its current form there would be no need for a time before the creation of the world by God.<ref name=":0" />


=== ''The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief'' ===
== List of works ==
Al-Ghazali lays out in ''The'' ''Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief'' his approach to Muslim orthodoxy. Ghazali veers from the often hardline stance of many of his contemporaries during this time period and states that as long as one believes in the ] and God himself, there are many different ways to practice Islam and that any of the many traditions practiced in good faith by believers should not be viewed as heretical by other Muslims.<ref name="Griffel" /> While Ghazali does state that any Muslim practicing Islam in good faith is not guilty of ], he does outline in ''The Criterion'' that there is one standard of Islam that is more correct than the others, and that those practicing the faith incorrectly should be moved to change.<ref name="Griffel" /> In Ghazali's view, only the Prophet himself could deem a faithfully practicing Muslim an infidel, and his work was a reaction to the religious persecution and strife that occurred often during this time period between various Islamic sects.<ref name="Griffel" />
Al-Ghazali had mentioned the number of his works "more than 70", in one of his letters to ] in the late years of his life. However, there are more than 400 books attributed to him today. Making a judgment on the number of his works and their attribution to al-Ghazali is a difficult step. Many western scholars such as ] (''The works attributed to Al-Ghazali''), Maurice Bouyges (''Essai de chronologie des oeuvres d'Al-Ghazali'') and others prepared a list of his works along with their comments on each book.


=== Deliverance from Error ===
Finally, ], an Egyptian scholar, prepared a comprehensive list of al-Ghazali's works under 457 titles:
] 509 (] 1115–1116).]]
* from 1 to 72: works definitely written by al-Ghazali
* from 73 to 95: works of doubtful attribution
* 96 - 127: works which are not those of al-Ghazali with most certainty
* 128 - 224: are the names of the Chapters or Sections of al-Ghazali's books that are mistakenly thought books of his
* 225 - 273: books written by other authors regarding al-Ghazali's works
* 274 - 389: books of other unknown scholars/writers regarding al-Ghazali's life and personality
* 389 - 457: the name of the manuscripts of al-Ghazali's works in different libraries of the world


The ] al-Ghazali wrote towards the end of his life, ''{{ill|Deliverance From Error|ar|المنقذ من الضلال}}'' ({{lang|ar|المنقذ من الضلال}} ''al-Munqidh min al-Dalal''), is considered a work of major importance.<ref name=Iranica>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Böwering |first=Gerhard |title=ḠAZĀLĪ |url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gazali-i-biography |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Iranica |access-date=17 December 2012}}</ref> In it, al-Ghazali recounts how, once a crisis of ] had been resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast ... the key to most knowledge,"<ref name=McCarthy>{{cite book |last=McCarthy |first=Richard Joseph |title=Freedom and fulfillment: "al-Munqidh min al-Dalal" and other relevant works |year=1980 |publisher=Twayne |location=Boston |isbn=978-0805781670 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/freedomfulfillme0000ghaz}}</ref>{{rp|66}} he studied and mastered the arguments of ], ], and ]. Though appreciating what was valid in the first two of these, at least, he determined that all three approaches were inadequate and found ultimate value only in the mystical experience and insight he attained as a result of following ] practices. ], in '']'', considered the autobiography an important document for "the purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian" because of the scarcity of recorded personal religious confessions and autobiographical literature from this period outside the Christian tradition.<ref name=James>{{cite book |last=James |first=William |title=The Varieties of Religious Experience |year=2012 |publisher=] |isbn=9780199691647 |editor-last=Bradley |editor-first=Matthew}}</ref>{{rp|307}}
The following is a short list of his major works:


=== Works in Persian ===
'''Theology'''
Al-Ghazali wrote most of his works in ] and in ]. His most important Persian work is '']'' (The Alchemy of Happiness). It is al-Ghazali's own Persian version of ''Ihya' 'ulum al-din'' (The Revival of Religious Sciences) in Arabic, but a shorter work. It is one of the outstanding works of 11th-century-Persian literature. The book was published several times in ] by the edition of Hussain Khadev-jam, a renowned Iranian scholar. It is translated to ], ], ], ], ] and other languages.<ref name="Kimiya">Translated into English by Mohammed Asim Bilal and available at </ref>
* ''al-Munqidh min al-dalal'' (Rescuer from Error)
* ''Hujjat al-Haq'' (Proof of the Truth)
* ''al-Iqtisad fil-i`tiqad'' (Median in Belief)
* ''al-maqsad al-asna fi sharah asma' Allahu al-husna'' (The best means in explaining Allah's Beautiful Names)
* ''Jawahir al-Qur'an wa duraruh'' (Jewels of the Qur'an and its Pearls)
* ''Fayasl al-tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-l-zandaqa'' (The Criterion of Distinction between Islam and Clandestine Unbelief)
* ''Mishkat al-Anwar'' (, a commentary on the ])
* ''Tafsir al-yaqut al-ta'wil''


Another authentic work of al-Ghazali is the so-called "first part" of the Nasihat al-muluk (Counsel for kings), addressed to the Saljuqid ruler of Khurasan Ahmad b. Malik-shah Sanjar (r. 490-552/1097-1157).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-iranica-online/sanjar-ahmad-b-maleksah-COM_10458#|title = SANJAR, Aḥmad b. Malekšāh|date = 11 August 2020}}</ref> The text was written after an official reception at his court in 503/1109 and upon his request. Al-Ghazali was summoned to Sanjar because of the intrigues of his opponents and their criticism of his student's compilation in Arabic, al-Mankhul min taʿliqat al-usul (The sifted notes on the fundamentals), in addition to his refusal to continue teaching at the Nizamiya of Nishapur. After the reception, al-Ghazali had, apparently, a private audience with Sanjar, during which he quoted a verse from the Quran 14:24: "Have you not seen how Allah sets forth a parable of a beautiful phrase (being) like a beautiful tree, whose roots are firm and whose branches are in Heaven." The genuine text of the Nasihat al-muluk, which is actually an official epistle with a short explanatory note on al-Manḵul added on its frontispiece.<ref>Makatib-i farsi-yi Ghazali ba nam-i Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Ḥujjat al-Islam, ed. ʿAbbas Iqbal Ashtiyani, Tehran, 1954, pp. 11-12</ref>
'''Sufism'''
* ''Mizan al-'amal'' (Criterion of Action)
* ''Ihya' ulum al-din'', "Revival of Religious Sciences"
* ''Bidayat al-hidayah'' (Beginning of Guidance)
* ] (]) ]]
* ''Nasihat al-muluk'' (Counseling Kings)
* ''al-Munqidh min al-dalal'' (Rescuer from Error)
* ''Minhaj al-'Abidin'' (Methodology for the Worshipers)


The majority of other Persian texts, ascribed to him with the use of his fame and authority, especially in the genre of Mirrors for Princes, are either deliberate forgeries fabricated with different purposes or compilations falsely attributed to him. The most famous among them is Ay farzand (O Child!). This is undoubtedly a literary forgery fabricated in Persian one or two generations after al-Ghazali's death. The sources used for the forgery consist of two genuine letters by al-Ghazali's (number 4, in part, and number 33, totally); both appear in the ''Fazaʾil al-anam''.<ref>Makatib-i farsi-yi Ghazali ba nam-i Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Hujjat al-Islam, ed. ʿAbbas Iqbal Ashtiyani, Tehran, 1954, pp. 13-23, 83-85</ref> Another source is a letter known as ''ʿAyniya'' and written by Muhammad's younger brother Majd al-Din Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 520/1126) to his famous disciple ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani (492-526/1098-1131); the letter was published in the ''Majmuʿa-yi athar-i farsi-yi Ahmad-i Ghazali'' (Collection of the Persian writings of Ahmad Ghazali).<ref>Majmuʿa-yi athar-i farsi-yi Ahmad-e Ghazali, ed. A. Mujahid, Tehran, 1979, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1991, pp. 191-238</ref> The other is ʿAyn al-Quzat's own letter, published in the ''Namaha-yi ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani'' (Letters by ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani).<ref>Namaha-yi ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani, ed. ʿAli Naqi Monzawi and ʿAfif ʿUsayran, 2 vols., Tehran, 1983, II, p.103, no 73</ref> Later, ''Ay farzand'' was translated into Arabic and became famous as ''Ayyuha al-walad'', the Arabic equivalent of the Persian title. The earliest manuscripts with the Arabic translation date from the second half of the 16th and most of the others from the 17th century.<ref>George Henry Scherer, Al-Ghazali’s Ayyuha’l-walad, Ph.D. diss., Chicago University, 1930; Beirut, 1933, p. 27</ref> The earliest known secondary translation from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish was done in 983/1575.<ref>Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Gazali’nin bazi eserlerinin Türkçe tercümeleri. Les traductions en Turc de certains livres d’al-Ghazali, Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 9/1, 1961, p. 61</ref> In modern times, the text was translated from Arabic into many European languages and published innumerable times in Turkey as Eyyühe'l-Veled or Ey Oğul.<ref>Günaydin, Gazâlî tercümeleri: Osmanli devri ve 1928 sonrasi için bir bibliyografya denemesi, Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi 16, 2011, pp. 70-73</ref>
'''Philosophy'''
* ''Maqasid al falasifa'' (Aims of Philosophers)
* ''Tahafut al-Falasifa'' (]), ] wrote his famous refutation ''Tahafut al-tahafut'' (The Incoherence of the Incoherence)]
* ''Miyar al-Ilm fi fan al-Mantiq'' (Criterion of Knowledge in the Art of Logic)
* ''Mihak al-Nazar fi al-mantiq'' (Touchstone of Reasoning in Logic)
* ''al-Qistas al-mustaqim'' (The Correct Balance)


A less famous Pand-nama (Book of counsel) also written in the genre of advice literature is a very late compilatory letter of an unknown author formally addressed to some ruler and falsely attributed to al-Ghazali, obviously because it consists of many fragments borrowed mostly from various parts of the Kimiya-yi saʿadat.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-iranica-online/kimia-ye-saadat-COM_362424 |title=Kimiā-Ye Saʿādat |date=29 June 2021}}</ref>
'''Jurisprudence'''
* ''Fatawy al-Ghazali'' (Verdicts of al-Ghazali)
* ''Al-wasit fi al-mathab'' (The medium in the Jurisprudential school)
* ''Kitab tahzib al-Isul'' (Prunning on Legal Theory)
* ''al-Mustasfa fi 'ilm al-isul'' (The Clarified in Legal Theory)
* ''Asas al-Qiyas'' (Foundation of Analogical reasoning)


===Works in Persian=== == Influence ==
During his life, Al-Ghazali wrote over 70 books on science, Islamic reasoning and Sufism.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Smith |first=Margaret |date=1936 |title=The Forerunner of Al-Ghazali |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |pages=65–78}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Banuazizi |first1=Ali |title=The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan |last2=Weiner |first2=Myron |date=March 1994 |publisher=] |isbn=9780815626091 |page=108}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Ghazali, al- |encyclopedia=The Columbia Encyclopedia |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/al-Ghazali.aspx |access-date=17 December 2012}}</ref><ref name="Ludwig 2009"/><ref name=":0" /><ref name="Iranica" /><ref name="auto8"/><ref name="auto2"/><ref name="auto4"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Bloch |first1=Ernst |title=Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left |date=2019 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=9780231175357 |location=New York |page=77 |quote=Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (ca.1058-1111) was a Persian antirationalist philosopher and theologian.}}</ref> Al-Ghazali played a major role in integrating ] with ]. He was also the first to present a formal description of Sufism in his works. His works also strengthened the status of ] against other schools. The ] (]) had emerged in ]n territories and were gaining more and more power during al-Ghazali's period, as ] was assassinated by the members of Ismailis. In his ''Fada'ih al-Batiniyya'' (''The Infamies of the Esotericists'') al-Ghazali declared them unbelievers whose blood may be spilled.<ref name="Adang-2015-19">{{cite book |last1=Adang |first1=Camilla |last2=Ansari |first2=Hassan |last3=Fierro |first3=Maribel |title=Accusations of Unbelief in Islam: A Diachronic Perspective on Takfīr |date=2015 |publisher=] |page=19 |isbn=9789004307834 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nf_dCgAAQBAJ&q=takfir+in+islam |access-date=25 December 2020 |via=]}}</ref> Al-Ghazali succeeded in gaining widespread acceptance for Sufism at the expense of philosophy.<ref name=sells>{{cite book |last=Sells |first=Michael Anthony |title=Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qurʼan, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings |location=New York |publisher=Paulist |year=1996 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BrU54SYQSyoC&pg=PA24 |isbn=9780809136193 |via=]}}</ref> At the same time, in his refutation of philosophers he made use of their philosophical categories and thus helped to give them wider circulation.<ref name=sells/>
]


The staple of his religious philosophy was arguing that the creator was the center point of all human life that played a direct role in all world affairs. Al-Ghazali's influence was not limited to Islam, but in fact his works were widely circulated among Christian and Hebrew scholars and philosophers. Some of the more notable philosophers and scholars in the west include ], ], and ]. ], a Jewish theologian was deeply interested and vested in the works of al-Ghazali. One of the more notable achievements of Ghazali was his writing and reform of education that laid out the path of Islamic Education from the 12th to the 19th centuries. Al-Ghazali's works were heavily relied upon by Islamic mathematicians and astronomers such as At-Tusi.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=AL-Ghazali |url=http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ghazalie.pdf |journal=Quarterly Review of Comparative Education |volume=23 |pages=3–4 }}</ref>
Al-Ghazali wrote most of his works in ] and few in ]. His most important Persian work is ''Kīmyāyé Sa'ādat'' (The Alchemy of Happiness). It is al-Ghazali's own Persian version of ''Ihya'ul ulumuddin'' (The Revival of Religious Sciences) in Arabic, but a shorter work. It is one of the outstanding works of 11th-century-Persian literature. The book was published several times in ] by the edition of Hussain Khadev-jam, a renowned Iranian scholar. It is translated to ], ], ], ] and other languages.


Al-Ghazali was by every indication of his writings a true mystic in the Persian sense. He believed himself to be more mystical or religious than he was philosophical; however, he is more widely regarded by some scholars as a leading figure of Islamic philosophy and thought. He describes his philosophical approach as a seeker of true knowledge, a deeper understanding of the philosophical and scientific, and a better understanding of mysticism and cognition.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-cosmic Horizons of Antiquity |last=Louchakova-Schwartz |first=Olga |date=2011 |publisher=Springer Netherlands |isbn=9789400716902 |location=Dordrecht |pages=423–438 |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-94-007-1691-9_33 |chapter=The Self and the World: Vedanta, Sufism, and the Presocratics in a Phenomenological View}}</ref> The period following Ghazali "has tentatively been called the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy" initiated by Ghazali's successful integration of ] seminary ] curriculum.<ref name=Stanford>
Apart from Kimya, the most celebrated of al-Ghazali's works in Persian is '''Nasīhatul Mulūk'' (The Counseling Kings), written most probably for Sultan ]. In the edition published by Jalāluddīn Humāyī, the book consists of two parts of which only the first can reliably be attributed to al-Ghazali. The language and the contents of some passages are similar to the Kimyaye Sa'adat. The second part differs considerably in content and style from the well-known writings of al-Ghazali. It contains the stories of pre-Islamic kings of ], especially those of ]. Nasihatul Muluk was early translated to Arabic under the title '' al-Tibr al-masbuk fi nasihat al-muluk'' (The Forged Sword in Counseling Kings).
"Ghazâlî had successfully introduced logic into the madrasa (though it was studied in other venues as well (Endress 2006)). What happened to it after this time was the result of the activities of logicians much more gifted than Ghazâlî. This period has tentatively been called the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy (Gutas 2002). It is in this period, and especially in the thirteenth century, that the major changes in the coverage and structure of Avicennan logic were introduced; these changes were mainly introduced in free-standing treatises on logic. It has been observed that the thirteenth century was the time that "doing logic in Arabic was thoroughly disconnected from textual exegesis, perhaps more so than at any time before or since" (El-Rouayheb 2010b: 48–49). Many of the major textbooks for teaching logic in later centuries come from this period. For all his historical importance in the process of introducing logic into the madrasa, the logic that Ghazâlî defended was too dilute to be recognizably Farabian or Avicennan."
{{cite encyclopedia |first=Tony |last=Street |title=Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic |encyclopedia=] |date=July 23, 2008 |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-language |access-date=2008-12-05}}</ref>


Imam Al Ghazali mainly chose to keep his legacy in his books so he wrote more than 70 books in his career. It is said about his book "]" that, if one has no Shaykh Then he has Ihya.<ref>{{Citation |title=Story of Imam Ghazali (r) | date=12 November 2023 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyiaIaYDTew |access-date=2023-12-29 |language=en}}</ref> Through his writing he still influences islamic scholars and community. Prominent scholars like ], Shaykh Ibrahim Osi Efa, Dr. Abdul Hakim Murad (]) are greatly influenced by his teaching. People refer to him as the "Proof of Islam".<ref>{{Citation |title=Who is Imam Al Ghazali (r) {{!}} The proof of Islam {{!}} Shaykh Hamza Yusuf | date=4 May 2022 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvPWLoB5Mao |access-date=2023-12-29 |language=en}}</ref>
''Zād-e Ākherat'' (Provision for the hereafter) is an important Persian book of al-Ghazali but gained less scholarly attention. The greater part of it consists of the Persian translation of one of his Arabic books, ''Bedāyat al-Hedāya'' (Beginning of Guidance). It contains in addition the same contents as the Kīmyāyé Sa'ādat. The book was most probably written during the last years of his life. Its manuscripts are in ] (Library of the Department of Press) and in ].


== Number of works ==
'''Pand-nāma''' (Book of Counsel) is another book of advice and probably attributed to Sultan Sanjar. The introduction to the book relates that Al-Ghazali wrote the book in response to a certain king who had asked him for advice. '''Ay farzand''' (O son!) is a short book of counsel that al-Ghazali wrote for one of his students. The book was early translated to Arabic entitled ''ayyuhal walad''. His another Persian work is '''Hamāqāti ahli ibāhat''' or '''Raddi ebāhīyya''' (Condemnation of antinomians) which is his '']'' in Persian illustrated with ]ic verses and ]s.
Al-Ghazali mentioned the number of his works "more than 70" in one of his letters to ] in the late years of his life.{{citation needed|date=December 2017}} Some "five dozen" are plausibly identifiable, and several hundred attributed works, many of them duplicates because of varying titles, are doubtful or spurious.


The tradition of falsely attributing works to al-Ghazali increased in the 13th century, after the dissemination of the large corpus of works by ].<ref name=EncIr_works/>
'''Faza'ilul al-anam min rasa'ili hujjat al-Islam''' is the collection of letters in Persian that al-Ghazali wrote in response to the kings, ministers, jurists and some of his friends after he returned to ]. The collection was gathered by one of his grandchildren after his death, under five sections/chapters. The longest letter is the response to objections raised against some of his statements in ''Mishkat al-Anwar'' (The Niche of Light) and ''al-Munqidh min al-dalal'' (Rescuer from Error). The first letter is the one which al-Ghazali wrote to ] presenting his excuse for teaching in ] of ]; followed by al-Ghazali's speech in the court of Sultan Sanjar. Al-Ghazali makes an impressive speech when he was taken to the king's court in Nishapur in 1106, giving very influential counsels, asking the sultan once again for excusing him from teaching in Nizamiyya. The sultan was so impressed that he ordered al-Ghazali to write down his speech so that it will be sent to all the ]s of ] and ].


Bibliographies have been published by ] (''The Works Attributed to Al-Ghazali''), Maurice Bouyges (''Essai de chronologie des oeuvres d'Al-Ghazali'') and others.
==Reception of his work==
According to ], Al-Ghazali considered himself to be the ] (Revivier) of his age. Many, perhaps most, later Muslims concurred and according to Watt, some have even considered him to be the greatest Muslim after the Prophet Muhammad.<ref>William Montgomery Watt, ''Al-Ghazali: The Muslim Intellectual'', p. 180. ]: ], 1963.</ref>


{| class="wikitable"
As an example, the Islamic scholar al-Safadi states: {{cquote| Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad, the Proof of Islam, Ornamont of the Faith, Abu Hamid al-Tusi (al-Ghazali) the Shafi'ite jurist, was in his later years without rival<ref>al-Wafa bi'l wafayat, p. 274 - 277. Also see Tabaqat al-Shafiyya, subki, 4, 101.</ref>}}
|+]'s Bibliography of all works attributed to Al-Ghazali<ref>A. Badawi, ''Mu'allafat al-Ghazali'', 2 vols. (Cairo, 1961).</ref>
!Pages
!Content
|-
|1–72
|works definitely written by al-Ghazali
|-
|73–95
|works of doubtful attribution
|-
|96–127
|works which are almost certainly not those of al-Ghazali
|-
|128–224
|are the names of the Chapters or Sections of al-Ghazali's books that are mistakenly thought by him
|-
|225–273
|books written by other authors on al-Ghazali's works
|-
|274–389
|books of other unknown scholars/writers regarding al-Ghazali's life and personality
|-
|389–457
|the name of the manuscripts of al-Ghazali's works in different libraries of the world:
|}


{| class="wikitable"
and the jurist, al-Yafi'i stated that:
|+Short List of Major Works of Gazali
!Title
!Description
!Type
|-
|''al-Munqidh min al-dalal''
|Rescuer from Error
|Theology
|-
|''Hujjat al-Haq''
|Proof of the Truth
|Theology
|-
|'']''
|]
|Theology
|-
|''Iljām al-Awām an Ilm il-Kalām''
|Bridling the Common Folk Away From the Science of Theological Speculation
|Theology
|-
|''al-maqsad al-asna fi sharah asma' Allahu al-husna''
|The best means in explaining God's Beautiful Names
|Theology
|-
|''Jawahir al-Qur'an wa duraruh''
|Jewels of the Qur'an and Its Pearls
|Theology
|-
|''Faysal al-tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-l-zandaqa''
|The Criterion of Distinction between Islam and Clandestine Unbelief
|Theology
|-
|''al-radd al-jamil li-ilahiyyat ‘Isa bi-sarih al-Injil''
|The Excellent Refutation of the Divinity of ] through the Text of the Gospel
|Theology
|-
|'']''<ref>{{cite journal |first=Zora |last=Hesova |date=2012 |url=https://journals.umt.edu.pk/index.php/JITC/article/view/334 |title=The Notion of illumination in the perspective of Ghazali's Mishkat Al-Anwar |journal=] |volume=2 |number=2 |pages=65–85|doi=10.32350/jitc.22.04 |s2cid=188876050 |doi-access=free }}</ref>
|The Niche for Lights, a commentary on the ]
|Theology
|-
|''Tafsir al-yaqut al-ta'wil''
|
|Theology
|-
|''Mizan al-'amal''
|Criterion of Action
|Tasawwuf
|-
|'']''
|]
|Tasawwuf
|-
|'']''
|]
|Tasawwuf
|-
|Kimiya-yi sa'ādat
|] ]]
|Tasawwuf
|-
|''Nasihat al-muluk''
|Counseling Kings in Persian
|Tasawwuf
|-
|''al-Munqidh min al-dalal''
|Rescuer from Error
|Tasawwuf
|-
|'']''
|Methodology for the Worshipers
|Tasawwuf
|-
|''Fada'ih al-Batiniyya''
|The Infamies of the Esotericists, a refutation of esoteric Sufism in general and Isma'ili doctrines in particular
|Tasawwuf
|-
|''Maqasid al falasifa''
|] written in the beginning of his life, in favour of philosophy and presenting the basic theories in Philosophy, mostly influenced by Avicenna's works
|Philosophy
|-
|''Tahāfut al-Falāsifah''
|]), Book refutes the Greek Philosophy aiming at Avicenna and al-Farabi; and of which ] wrote his famous refutation ''Tahāfut al-Tahāfut'' (])
|Philosophy
|-
|''Miyar al-Ilm fi fan al-Mantiq''
|Criterion of Knowledge in the Art of Logic
|Philosophy
|-
|''Mihak al-Nazar fi al-mantiq''
|Touchstone of Reasoning in Logic
|Philosophy
|-
|''al-Qistas al-mustaqim''
|The Correct Balance
|Philosophy
|-
|''Fatawy al-Ghazali''
|Verdicts of al-Ghazali
|Jurisprudence
|-
|'']''
|]
|Jurisprudence
|-
|''Kitab tahzib al-Isul''
|Prunning on Legal Theory
|Jurisprudence
|-
|'']''
|]
|Jurisprudence
|-
|''Asas al-Qiyas''
|Foundation of Analogical reasoning
|Jurisprudence
|-
|''The Jerusalem Tract'' <ref>At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam {{cite book |url=http://btd.palestine-studies.org/content/introduction-last-days-ottoman-rule-1876-1918 |title=Before their diaspora : a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876–1948 |last=Khalidi |first=Walid |publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies |year=1984 |isbn=978-0887281433 |location=Washington, D.C. |access-date=2012-12-17 |archive-date=2018-03-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180302140638/http://btd.palestine-studies.org/content/introduction-last-days-ottoman-rule-1876-1918 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
|
|Jurisprudence
|-
|colspan="3" style="text-align: center;" | '''Sources:'''<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ghazali.org/books/mishkat/index.html |title=The Mishkat al-Anwar of al-Ghazzali Index |website=www.ghazali.org}}</ref><ref name="Khalidi">At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam. {{cite book |last=Khalidi |first=Walid |title=Before their diaspora: a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876–1948 |year=1984 |publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies |location=Washington, D.C. |isbn=978-0887281433 |url=http://btd.palestine-studies.org/content/introduction-last-days-ottoman-rule-1876-1918 |access-date=2012-12-17 |archive-date=2018-03-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180302140638/http://btd.palestine-studies.org/content/introduction-last-days-ottoman-rule-1876-1918 |url-status=dead}}</ref>{{rp|29}}
|}


== Economic philosophy ==
{{cquote|
{{one source|section|date=April 2023}}
He was called The Proof of Islam and undoubtedly was worthy of the name, absolutely trustworthy (in respect of the Faith) How many an epitome (has he given) us setting forth the basic principles of religion : how much that was repetitive has he summarised, and epitomised what was lengthy. How many a simple explanation has he given us of what was hard to fathom, with brief elucidation and clear solution of knotty problems. He used moderation, being quiet but decisive in silencing an adversary, though his words were like a sharp sword-thrust in refuting a slanderer and protecting the high-road of guidance.<ref>Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 47</ref>
Al-Ghazali's ] philosophy was primarily influenced by his Islamic beliefs. He argued that the importance of economic activity lay both in its benefit to society, as well being necessary for salvation.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last1=Ghazanfar |first1=Shaikh Mohammad|last2=Islahi |first2=Abdul Azim |date=1997 |title=Economic Thought of Al-Ghazali |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/213955194.pdf|series=Islamic Economics Research Series, King Abdulaziz University |publisher=Scientific Publishing Centre, King Abdulaziz University|location=Jeddah, Saudi Arabia|isbn=978-9960-06-574-8|pages=13}}</ref>

He established three goals of economic activity that he believed were part of one's religious obligation: "achievement of self-sufficiency for one's survival; provision for the well-being of one's progeny; and provision for assisting those in economic need."<ref name=":4" /> He argued that subsistence living, or living in a way that provides the basic necessities for only one's family, would not be an acceptable practice to be held by the general population because of the detrimental results that he believed that would bring upon the economy, but he acknowledged that some people may choose to live the subsistence lifestyle at their own will for the sake of their personal religious journey. Conversely, he discouraged people from purchasing or possessing excessive material items, suggesting that any additional money earned could be given to provide for the poor.<ref name=":4" />

Al-Ghazali believed that the imposition of income equality in society should not be a necessity. Instead, he advocated for individuals to be guided by the "spirit of Islamic brotherhood," encouraging them to willingly share their wealth. However, he acknowledged that this ideal isn't universally practiced. According to him, earned wealth can serve two potential purposes. The first is for the good of oneself, which includes maintaining one's own health and that of their family, as well as extending care to others and engaging in actions beneficial to the Islamic community. The other is what al-Ghazali would consider misuse, spending it selfishly on extravagant or unnecessary material items.<ref name=":4" />

In terms of trade, al-Ghazali discussed the necessity of exchanging goods across close cities as well as larger borders because it allows more goods, which may be necessary and not yet available, to be accessible to more people in various locations. He recognized the necessity of trade and its overall beneficial effect on the economy, but making money in that way might not be considered the most virtuous in his beliefs. He did not support people taking "excessive" profits from their trade sales.<ref name=":4" />

== Reception of work ==
According to ], al-Ghazali was considered to be the ] ("Reviver") of his age.<ref name="William Montgomery Watt p. 180"/><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Rosmizi |first1=Mohd |last2=Yucel |first2=Salih |date=2016 |title=The Mujaddid of his age: Al-Ghazali and his inner spiritual journey |url=https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/the-mujaddid-of-his-age-al-ghazali-and-his-inner-spiritual-journe |journal=UMRAN - International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies |language=English |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=1–12 |doi=10.11113/umran2016.3n2.56 |issn=2289-8204 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Many, perhaps most, later Muslims concurred and, according to Watt, some have even considered him to be the greatest Muslim after ].<ref name="William Montgomery Watt p. 180"/>

As an example, the Islamic scholar al-Safadi stated: {{cquote| Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad, the Proof of Islam, Ornament of the Faith, Abu Hamid al-Tusi (al-Ghazali) the Shafi'ite jurist, was in his later years without rival.<ref>al-Wafa bi'l wafayat, p. 274 - 277. Also see Tabaqat al-Shafiyya, subki, 4, 101.</ref>}}

and the jurist, al-Yafi'i stated:

{{cquote|
He was called The Proof of Islam and undoubtedly was worthy of the name, absolutely trustworthy (in respect of the Faith) How many an epitome (has he given) us setting forth the basic principles of religion: how much that was repetitive has he summarised, and epitomised what was lengthy. How many a simple explanation has he given us of what was hard to fathom, with brief elucidation and clear solution of knotty problems. He used moderation, being quiet but decisive in silencing an adversary, though his words were like a sharp sword-thrust in refuting a slanderer and protecting the high-road of guidance.<ref>Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 47</ref>
}} }}


The Shafi'i jurist al-Subki stated that: The Shafi'i jurist al-Subki stated:

{{cquote|
{{cquote|
"If there had been a prophet after Muhammad, al-Ghazali would have been the man".<ref>Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyyah al-Kubra, Cairo, 1324/1906, Vol. IV, p. 101</ref><ref>Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 48</ref>
"If there had been a prophet after Muhammad, al-Ghazali would have been the man".<ref>Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyyah al-Kubra, Cairo, 1324/1906, Vol. IV, p. 101</ref><ref>Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 48</ref>
}} }}


Also a widely considered ] scholar, ], in his praise of al-Ghazali wrote: "Al-Ghazzaali, the imaam and shaykh, the prominent scholar, Hujjat al-Islam, the wonder of his time, Zayn al-Deen Abu Haamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Toosi al-Shaafa'i al-Ghazzaali, the author of many books and one possessed of utter intelligence. He studied fiqh in his own town, then he moved to Nisapur in the company of a group of students. He stayed with the Imaam al-Haramayn and gained a deep knowledge of fiqh within a short period. He became well-versed in 'ilm al-kalaam and debate, until he became the best of debater."<ref>{{Cite book |title=Siyar A'laam al-Nubala' |last=al-Dhahabi |publisher=Dar al-Hadith |location=Lebanon |pages=323 |volume=9}}</ref>
Praise for al-Ghazali notwithstanding, he also received criticism:


Ibn Rushd (]), a rationalist, famously responded that "to say that philosophers are incoherent is itself to make an incoherent statement."{{citation needed|date=December 2012}} Rushd's book, ''The Incoherence of the Incoherence'', attempted to refute al-Ghazali's views, but the work was not well received in the Muslim community.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4dxbqEmU-OkC |title=The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain |first=Maria Rosa |last=Menocal |date=29 November 2009 |publisher=Little, Brown |via=] |isbn=9780316092791}}</ref>
] states:{{cquote|If we assume that someone narrated the view of the ] but what he narrated is far removed from what the view of the salaf actually is, then he has little knowledge of the view of the salaf, such as Abu’l-Ma’aali, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ibn al-Khateeb and the like, who did not have enough knowledge of hadith to qualify them as ordinary scholars of ], let alone as prominent scholars in that field. For none of these people had any knowledge of ] and ] and their hadiths, apart from what they heard, which is similar to the situation of the ordinary ], who cannot distinguish between a hadith which is regarded as ] and ] according to the scholars of hadith, and a hadith which is fabricated and false. Their books bear witness to that, for they contain strange things and most of these scholars of ‘ilm al-kalam (science of ]) and ]s who have drifted away from the path of the salaf admit that, either at the time of death or before death. There are many such well-known stories. This Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, despite his brilliance, his devotion to ], his knowledge of ] and philosophy, his ] and spiritual practices and his ], ended up in a state of confusion and resorted to the path of those who claim to find out things through dreams and spiritual methods."<ref>''Majmoo’ al-Fataawa'', part 4, p. 71</ref>}}


According to historian Firas Alkhateeb, "When one reads Imam al-Ghazali's works at a very superficial level, one can easily misunderstand what he is saying as anti-scientific in general. The truth, however, is that al-Ghazali's only warning to students is to not fully accept all the beliefs and ideas of a scholar simply because of his achievements in mathematics and science. By issuing such a warning, al-Ghazali is in fact protecting the scientific enterprise for future generations by insulating it from being mixed with theoretical philosophy that could eventually dilute science itself to a field based on conjecture and reasoning alone."<ref name=":3">{{cite web |url=http://lostislamichistory.com/al-ghazali/ |title=Al-Ghazali and the Revival of Islamic Scholarship |date=22 May 2013 |access-date=27 May 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170630034053/http://lostislamichistory.com/al-ghazali/ |archive-date=30 June 2017 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all}}</ref>
] (Averroes), a rationalist, famously responded that "to say that philosophers are incoherent is itself to make an incoherent statement."{{citation needed|date=December 2012}} Rushd's book, ''The Incoherence of the Incoherence'', attempted to refute al-Ghazali's views, though the work was not well received in the Muslim community.<ref></ref>


Al-Ghazali has been seen by Orientalist scholars as causing a decline in scientific advancement in Islam, because of his refutation of the new philosophies of his time. He purportedly saw danger in the statements made by philosophers that suggested that God was not all-knowing or even non-existent, which strongly contradicted his conservative Islamic belief.<ref name=":3" /> This position has been challenged, however.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://islamsci.mcgill.ca/Viewpoint_ragep.pdf|title=When did Islamic science die (and who cares)?|magazine=Viewpoint|access-date=2023-03-23|date=February 2008|issue=85|author=Jamil Ragep}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Boc0JjGRPF0C |title=Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance |first=George |last=Saliba |date=2007 |publisher=] |isbn=9780262195577 |via=]}}</ref> The following statement made by al-Ghazali has been described as evidence that he was not against scientific advancement: "Great indeed is the crime against religion committed by anyone who supposes that Islam is to be championed by the denial of mathematical sciences."<ref name="Alkhateeb"/> This sentence, the source of which is not indicated in the cited book, is taken from ''Deliverance from Error''.<ref name=":1">Al-Ghazali. ''{{Dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}'', p. 9, §41.</ref> Ghazali does not mean that neglecting the study of mathematics would be a crime against science or against reason, but that rejecting them is a crime against religion. Its aim is not to promote the study of mathematics: it is to condemn the attitude which consists in considering them as rivals of religion. For him, religion has nothing to fear from them, because they do not deal with the same subjects. To condemn the study of mathematics for fear that it endangers religion is to mistake the place of each of them. This is clarified by the sentence which immediately follows: "For the revealed Law nowhere undertakes to deny or affirm these sciences, and the latter nowhere address themselves to religious matters.<ref name=":1" />" A few pages later,<ref>Al-Ghazali. ''{{Dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}'', § 59, p. 13.</ref> he writes that the books of the philosophers must be banned - he defines philosophy as composed of six branches: mathematical, logical, physical, metaphysical, political, and morale.<ref>Al-Ghazali. ''Deliverance from error'', § 36, p. 8.</ref> Al-Ghazali notably influenced ],{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=62}} ],{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=81}} ],{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=76}} ],{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=77}} ],{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=75}} ],<ref name="auto13"/> ],<ref name="plato.stanford.edu"/> ],<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029193408/http://www.netmuslims.com/index.php/islamic-articles/muslim-contributions/89-muslim-philosophy|date=2013-10-29}}, Islamic Contributions to Science & Math, netmuslims.com</ref><ref name="auto18"/> ],<ref name="auto6"/> ],<ref name="auto12"/> ],{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=71}} ],<ref name="auto19"/> ].{{sfn|Griffel|2009|p=74}}
==Early Islam scholars==
{{Islam scholars diagram}}


==See also== == See also ==
{{Portal|Biography|Islam}}
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]


== References ==
*]
=== Notes ===
*]
{{notelist}}
*]]


==Notes== === Citations ===
{{Reflist|colwidth=30em}} {{Reflist|30em}}


==References== === Sources ===
{{refbegin}}
*{{Citation
* {{Cite journal |first=Amber |last=Haque |year=2004 |title=Psychology from Islamic perspective: contributions of early Muslim scholars and challenges to contemporary Muslim psychologists |journal=] |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=357–377 |doi=10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z |s2cid=38740431}}
|first=Amber
* {{Cite journal |first=Emilie |last=Savage-Smith|author-link =Emilie Savage-Smith |title=Attitudes toward dissection in medieval Islam |journal=Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences |year=1995 |volume=50 |issue=1 |pages=67–110 |doi=10.1093/jhmas/50.1.67 |pmid=7876530|doi-access= }}
|last=Haque
* {{Cite journal |last1=Abd Rahman |first1=Mohd Rosmizi Bin |last2=Yucel |first2=Salih |doi=10.11113/umran2016.3n2.56 |title=The Mujaddid of His Age: Al-Ghazali and His Inner Spiritual Journey |year=2016 |journal=UMRAN - International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies|volume=3 |issue=2 |doi-access=free}}
|year=2004
* {{Cite book |last=Saritoprak |first=Zeki |doi=10.5040/9781474297820.0013 |chapter=Al-Ghazali |title=Islamic Spirituality: Theology and Practice for the Modern World |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-4725-7204-2}}
|title=Psychology from Islamic perspective: contributions of early Muslim scholars and challenges to contemporary Muslim psychologists
* {{Cite journal |last1=Parrott |first1=Justin |doi=10.1080/10477845.2017.1281067 |title=Al-Ghazali and the Golden Rule: Ethics of Reciprocity in the Works of a Muslim Sage |year=2017 |s2cid=171854695 |journal=Journal of Religious & Theological Information |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages=68–78 |url=http://archive.nyu.edu/handle/2451/38266}}
|journal=Journal of Religion & Health
* {{Cite journal |last=Smith |first=Margaret |year=1936 |title=The Forerunner of al-Ghazālī |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |issue=1 |pages=65–78 |jstor=25182038}}
|volume=43
{{refend}}
|issue=4
|pages=357–377
|doi=10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z
}}
* {{citation |first=Emilie |last=Savage-Smith |title=Attitudes toward dissection in medieval Islam |journal=Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences |year=1995 |volume=50 |issue=1 |pages=67–110 |pmid=7876530 |doi=10.1093/jhmas/50.1.67 }}


==Further reading== == Further reading ==
{{refbegin|2}}
* Macdonald, Duncan B. (1899) 'The life of al-Ghazzali' In Journal of the American Oriental Society. 20, p. 122 sqq.
* Macdonald, Duncan B. (1899). "The life of al-Ghazzali", in ''Journal of the American Oriental Society''. 20, p.&nbsp;122 sqq.
* Laoust, H: ''La politique de Gazali'', Paris 1970 * Laoust, H: ''La politique de Gazali'', Paris 1970
* Campanini, M.: ''Al-Ghazzali'', in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy 1996 * Campanini, M.: ''Al-Ghazzali'', in ] and ], History of Islamic Philosophy 1996
* Campanini, Massimo, Ghazali, in ''Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God'' (2 vols.), Edited by C. Fitzpatrick and A. Walker, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2014. ISBN 1610691776 * Campanini, Massimo, Ghazali, in ''Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God'' (2 vols.), Edited by C. Fitzpatrick and A. Walker, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2014. {{ISBN|1610691776}}
* Watt, W. M.: ''Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali'', Edinburgh 1963 * Watt, W. M.: ''Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali'', Edinburgh 1963
* Zwemer, S. M. ''A Moslem Seeker after God'', New York 1920 * Zwemer, S. M. ''A Moslem Seeker after God'', New York 1920
* Nakamura, K. ''Al-Ghazali'', Encyclopedia of Philosophy * Nakamura, K. "Al-Ghazali", ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
* Dougan, A. ''The Glimpse'', A study of the inner teaching of the Mishkat al-Alwar (The Niche for Lights) by ] ISBN 0-9597566-6-3 * Dougan, A. ''The Glimpse: The Inner teaching of Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali's Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche for Lights)'' by ] {{ISBN|0-9597566-6-3}}
* A comparison between the philosophy of Ghazali and the ]: {{Cite journal| volume = 1| issue = 2| pages = 165–177| last = Harding| first = Karen| title = ’Causality Then and Now: al-Ghazali and Quantum Theory’| journal = American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences| date = 1993| url = http://i-epistemology.net/attachments/401_V10N2%20Summer%2093%20-%20Harding%20-%20Causality%20Then%20and%20Now.pdf}} * A comparison between the philosophy of Ghazali and the ]: {{Cite journal|volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=165–177 |last=Harding |first=Karen |title=Causality Then and Now: al-Ghazali and Quantum Theory |journal=American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences |date=1993 |doi=10.35632/ajis.v10i2.2505 |url=http://i-epistemology.net/attachments/401_V10N2%20Summer%2093%20-%20Harding%20-%20Causality%20Then%20and%20Now.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100704123901/http://i-epistemology.net/attachments/401_V10N2%20Summer%2093%20-%20Harding%20-%20Causality%20Then%20and%20Now.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=2010-07-04 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book|last=Watt|first=W. Montgomery|title=The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali|year=1953|publisher=George Allen and Unwin Ltd.|location=London|url=http://www.ghazali.org/works/watt3.htm|ref=none}}
{{refend}}


==External links== ==External links==
{{wikisource author|Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī}} {{wikisource author}}
{{commons category|Al-Ghazali}} {{commons category|Al-Ghazali}}
* Translation of the Ihya ulum al-din (The Revival of Religious Sciences), , , ,
* {{cite SEP |url-id=al-ghazali |title=Al-Ghazali |last=Griffel |first=Frank|ref=none}}
*
* *
* at the ] * at the ]
* from Fons Vitae non-profit publishers
* A detailed biography on Imam
* {{librivox author |id=10472}}
* A detailed biography on Imam {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200902071204/http://islamicencyclopedia.org/public/index/topicDetail/id/313 |date=2020-09-02 }}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Al-Ghazali}} * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Al-Ghazali}}
* {{Librivox author |id=10472}}
* *
* *
* Full text of , from Al-Ghazali website * Full text of , from Al-Ghazali website
* on ''The Alchemy of Happiness''
*{{sep entry|al-ghazali|Al-Ghazali|Frank Griffel}}
* ''The Alchemy of Happiness,'' by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan Philosopher, trans. ] (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). See original text in {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130518164808/http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php&title=1844 |date=2013-05-18 }}.
* on ''The Alchemy of Happiness''
* . Richard P. Aulie. PSCF 45. March 1994. pp.&nbsp;26–46.
*''The Alchemy of Happiness,'' by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan Philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). See original text in .
* , in
*. Richard P. Aulie. PSCF 45. March 1994. pp.&nbsp;26–46.
* {{in lang|fr}}
*
* , in http://www.intellectualencounters.org/
* {{fr icon}}


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Latest revision as of 19:28, 6 December 2024

Sunni Muslim polymath (c. 1058–1111) Not to be confused with al-Ghazal. For other uses, see Ghazali.
ImamAl-Ghazali
ٱلْغَزَّالِيّ
TitleHujjat al-Islam ('Proof of Islam')
Personal life
Bornc. 1058
Tus, Iran, Seljuq Empire
Died19 December 1111(1111-12-19) (aged 52–53)
Tus, Iran, Seljuq Empire
EraIslamic Golden Age
RegionSeljuq Empire(Nishapur)
Abbasid Caliphate (Baghdad)
Fatimid Caliphate (Jerusalem) / (Damascus)
Main interest(s)Sufism, theology (kalam), philosophy, logic, Sharia, Islamic jurisprudence, Principles of Islamic jurisprudence
Notable work(s)The Revival of Religious Sciences, The Aims of the Philosophers, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, The Alchemy of Happiness, The Moderation in Belief, The Condensed in Imam Shafi’i’s Jurisprudence, On Legal theory of Muslim Jurisprudence
Religious life
ReligionIslam
DenominationSunni
SchoolShafi'i
CreedAshari
Muslim leader
Influenced by
Influenced

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali (Arabic: أَبُو حَامِد مُحَمَّد بْن مُحَمَّد ٱلطُّوسِيّ ٱلْغَزَّالِيّ), known commonly as Al-Ghazali (Arabic: ٱلْغَزَالِيُّ; UK: /ælˈɡɑːzɑːli/, US: /ˌælɡəˈzɑːli, -zæl-/; c. 1058 – 19 December 1111), known in Medieval Europe by the Latinized Algazel or Algazelus, was a Persian Sunni Muslim polymath. He is known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsults, legal theoreticians, muftis, philosophers, theologians, logicians and mystics in Islamic history.

He is considered to be the 11th century's mujaddid, a renewer of the faith, who, according to the prophetic hadith, appears once every 100 years to restore the faith of the Islamic community. Al-Ghazali's works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that he was awarded the honorific title "Proof of Islam" (Ḥujjat al-Islām). Al-Ghazali was a prominent mujtahid in the Shafi'i school of law.

Much of Al-Ghazali's work stemmed around his spiritual crises following his appointment as the head of the Nizzamiyya University in Baghdad - which was the most prestigious academic position in the Muslim world at the time. This led to his eventual disappearance from the Muslim world for over 10 years, realising he chose the path of status and ego over God. It was during this period where many of his great works were written. He believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslims had been forgotten. This belief led him to write his magnum opus entitled Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences"). Among his other works, the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa ("Incoherence of the Philosophers") is a landmark in the history of philosophy, as it advances the critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th-century Europe.

Biography

Al-Ghazali was born in c. 1058 in Tus, then part of the Seljuk Empire. He was a Muslim scholar, law specialist, rationalist, and spiritualist of Persian descent. He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of Tus, Khorasan (now part of Iran), not long after Seljuks entered Baghdad and ended Shia Buyid Amir al-umaras. This marked the start of Seljuk influence over Caliphate. While the Seljuk dynasty's influence grew, Abu Suleiman Dawud Chaghri Beg married his daughter, Arslan Khatun Khadija to caliph al-Qa'im in 1056.

A posthumous tradition, the authenticity of which has been questioned in recent scholarship, is that his father died in poverty and left the young al-Ghazali and his brother Ahmad to the care of a Sufi. Al-Ghazali's contemporary and first biographer, 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher and Abu ali Farmadi, a Naqshbandi sufi from Tus. He later studied under al-Juwayni, the distinguished jurist and theologian and "the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time," in Nishapur, perhaps after a period of study in Gurgan. After al-Juwayni's death in 1085, al-Ghazali departed from Nishapur and joined the court of Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuk empire, which was likely centered in Isfahan. After bestowing upon him the titles of "Brilliance of the Religion" and "Eminence among the Religious Leaders", Nizam al-Mulk advanced al-Ghazali in July 1091 to the "most prestigious and most challenging" professorial position at the time: the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad.

He underwent a spiritual crisis in 1095, which some speculate was brought on by clinical hysteria, abandoned his career and left Baghdad on the pretext of going on pilgrimage to Mecca. Making arrangements for his family, he disposed of his wealth and adopted an ascetic lifestyle. According to biographer Duncan B. Macdonald, the purpose of abstaining from scholastic work was to confront the spiritual experience and more ordinary understanding of "the Word and the Traditions." After some time in Damascus and Jerusalem, with a visit to Medina and Mecca in 1096, he returned to Tus to spend the next several years in uzla (seclusion). The seclusion consisted in abstaining from teaching at state-sponsored institutions, but he continued to publish, receive visitors and teach in the zawiya (private madrasa) and khanqah (Sufi lodge) that he had built.

Fakhr al-Mulk, grand vizier to Ahmad Sanjar, pressed al-Ghazali to return to the Nizamiyya in Nishapur. Al-Ghazali reluctantly capitulated in 1106, fearing rightly that he and his teachings would meet with resistance and controversy. He later returned to Tus and declined an invitation in 1110 from the grand vizier of the Seljuq Sultan Muhammad I to return to Baghdad. He died on 19 December 1111. According to 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, he had several daughters but no sons.

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Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development of a systematic view of Sufism and its integration and acceptance in mainstream Islam. As a scholar of Islam, he belonged to the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence and to the Asharite school of theology. Al-Ghazali received many titles such as Zayn al-Dīn (زين الدين) and Ḥujjat al-Islām (حجة الإسلام).

Mausoleum of al-Ghazali in Tus

He is viewed as the key member of the influential Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy and the most important refuter of the Mutazilites. However, he chose a slightly different position in comparison with the Asharites. His beliefs and thoughts differ in some aspects from the orthodox Asharite school.

Works

A total of about 70 works can be attributed to al-Ghazali. He is also known to have written a fatwa against the Taifa kings of al-Andalus, declaring them to be unprincipled, not fit to rule and that they should be removed from power. This fatwa was used by Yusuf ibn Tashfin to justify his conquest of al-Andalus.

Incoherence of the Philosophers

Al-Ghazali's 11th century book titled Tahāfut al-Falāsifa ("Incoherence of the Philosophers") marked a major turn in Islamic epistemology. The encounter with skepticism led al-Ghazali to investigate a form of theological occasionalism, or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God.

In the next century, Ibn Rushd (or Averroes) drafted a lengthy rebuttal of al-Ghazali's Incoherence entitled The Incoherence of the Incoherence; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set. Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire. While it might seem as though a natural law was at work, it happened each and every time only because God willed it to happen—the event was "a direct product of divine intervention as any more attention grabbing miracle". Averroes, by contrast insisted while God created the natural law, humans "could more usefully say that fire caused cotton to burn—because creation had a pattern that they could discern."

The Incoherence also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle and Plato. The book took aim at the Falāsifa, a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them Avicenna and al-Farabi) who drew intellectually upon the Ancient Greeks.

The influence of Al-Ghazali's book is still debated. Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science George Saliba in 2007 argued that the decline of science in the 11th century has been overstated, pointing to continuing advances, particularly in astronomy, as late as the 14th century.

Professor of Mathematics Nuh Aydin wrote in 2012 that one the most important reasons of the decline of science in the Islamic world has been Al-Ghazali's attack of philosophers (scientists, physicists, mathematicians, logicians). The attack peaked in his book Incoherence, whose central idea of theological occasionalism implies that philosophers cannot give rational explanations to either metaphysical or physical questions. The idea caught on and nullified the critical thinking in the Islamic world.

On the other hand, author and journalist Hassan Hassan in 2012 argued that while indeed scientific thought in Islam was stifled in the 11th century, the person mostly to blame is not al-Ghazali but Nizam al-Mulk.

The Revival of Religious Sciences (Ihya' Ulum al-Din)

See also: The Revival of the Religious Sciences
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Another of al-Ghazali's major works is Ihya' Ulum al-Din or Ihya'u Ulumiddin (The Revival of Religious Sciences). It covers almost all fields of Islamic sciences: fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), kalam (theology) and sufism.

It contains four major sections: Acts of worship (Rub' al-'ibadat), Norms of Daily Life (Rub' al-'adatat), The ways to Perdition (Rub' al-muhlikat) and The Ways to Salvation (Rub' al-munjiyat). The Ihya became the most frequently recited Islamic text after the Qur'an and the hadith. Its great achievement was to bring orthodox Sunni theology and Sufi mysticism together in a useful, comprehensive guide to every aspect of Muslim life and death. The book was well received by Islamic scholars such as Nawawi who stated that: "Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace them all."

The Alchemy of Happiness

See also: The Alchemy of Happiness

The Alchemy of Happiness is a rewritten version of The Revival of the Religious Sciences. After the existential crisis that caused him to completely re-examine his way of living and his approach to religion, al-Ghazali put together The Alchemy of Happiness.

Disciplining the Soul

One of the key sections of Ghazali's Revival of the Religious Sciences is Disciplining the Soul, which focuses on the internal struggles that every Muslim will face over the course of his lifetime. The first chapter primarily focuses on how one can develop himself into a person with positive attributes and good personal characteristics . The second chapter has a more specific focus: sexual satisfaction and gluttony. Here, Ghazali states that indeed every man has these desires and needs, and that it is natural to want these things. However, the Prophet explicitly states that there must be a middle ground for man, in order to practice the tenets of Islam faithfully. The ultimate goal that Ghazali is presenting not only in these two chapters, but in the entirety of The Revival of the Religious Sciences, is that there must be moderation in every aspect of the soul of a man, an equilibrium. These two chapters were the 22nd and 23rd chapters, respectively, in Ghazali's Revival of the Religious Sciences.

The Eternity of the World

Al-Ghazali crafted his rebuttal of the Aristotelian viewpoint on the creation of the world in The Eternity of the World. Al-Ghazali essentially formulates two main arguments for what he views as a sacrilegious thought process. Central to the Aristotelian approach is the concept that motion will always precede motion, or in other words, a force will always create another force, and therefore for a force to be created, another force must act upon that force. This means that in essence time stretches infinitely both into the future and into the past, which therefore proves that God did not create the universe at one specific point in time. Al-Ghazali counters this by first stating that if the world was created with exact boundaries, then in its current form there would be no need for a time before the creation of the world by God.

The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief

Al-Ghazali lays out in The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief his approach to Muslim orthodoxy. Ghazali veers from the often hardline stance of many of his contemporaries during this time period and states that as long as one believes in the Prophet Muhammad and God himself, there are many different ways to practice Islam and that any of the many traditions practiced in good faith by believers should not be viewed as heretical by other Muslims. While Ghazali does state that any Muslim practicing Islam in good faith is not guilty of apostasy, he does outline in The Criterion that there is one standard of Islam that is more correct than the others, and that those practicing the faith incorrectly should be moved to change. In Ghazali's view, only the Prophet himself could deem a faithfully practicing Muslim an infidel, and his work was a reaction to the religious persecution and strife that occurred often during this time period between various Islamic sects.

Deliverance from Error

Last page of al-Ghazali's autobiography in MS Istanbul, Shehid Ali Pasha no. 1712, dated AH 509 (AD 1115–1116).

The autobiography al-Ghazali wrote towards the end of his life, Deliverance From Error [ar] (المنقذ من الضلال al-Munqidh min al-Dalal), is considered a work of major importance. In it, al-Ghazali recounts how, once a crisis of epistemological skepticism had been resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast ... the key to most knowledge," he studied and mastered the arguments of kalam, Islamic philosophy, and Ismailism. Though appreciating what was valid in the first two of these, at least, he determined that all three approaches were inadequate and found ultimate value only in the mystical experience and insight he attained as a result of following Sufi practices. William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, considered the autobiography an important document for "the purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian" because of the scarcity of recorded personal religious confessions and autobiographical literature from this period outside the Christian tradition.

Works in Persian

Al-Ghazali wrote most of his works in Persian and in Arabic. His most important Persian work is Kimiya-yi sa'adat (The Alchemy of Happiness). It is al-Ghazali's own Persian version of Ihya' 'ulum al-din (The Revival of Religious Sciences) in Arabic, but a shorter work. It is one of the outstanding works of 11th-century-Persian literature. The book was published several times in Tehran by the edition of Hussain Khadev-jam, a renowned Iranian scholar. It is translated to English, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Azerbaijani and other languages.

Another authentic work of al-Ghazali is the so-called "first part" of the Nasihat al-muluk (Counsel for kings), addressed to the Saljuqid ruler of Khurasan Ahmad b. Malik-shah Sanjar (r. 490-552/1097-1157). The text was written after an official reception at his court in 503/1109 and upon his request. Al-Ghazali was summoned to Sanjar because of the intrigues of his opponents and their criticism of his student's compilation in Arabic, al-Mankhul min taʿliqat al-usul (The sifted notes on the fundamentals), in addition to his refusal to continue teaching at the Nizamiya of Nishapur. After the reception, al-Ghazali had, apparently, a private audience with Sanjar, during which he quoted a verse from the Quran 14:24: "Have you not seen how Allah sets forth a parable of a beautiful phrase (being) like a beautiful tree, whose roots are firm and whose branches are in Heaven." The genuine text of the Nasihat al-muluk, which is actually an official epistle with a short explanatory note on al-Manḵul added on its frontispiece.

The majority of other Persian texts, ascribed to him with the use of his fame and authority, especially in the genre of Mirrors for Princes, are either deliberate forgeries fabricated with different purposes or compilations falsely attributed to him. The most famous among them is Ay farzand (O Child!). This is undoubtedly a literary forgery fabricated in Persian one or two generations after al-Ghazali's death. The sources used for the forgery consist of two genuine letters by al-Ghazali's (number 4, in part, and number 33, totally); both appear in the Fazaʾil al-anam. Another source is a letter known as ʿAyniya and written by Muhammad's younger brother Majd al-Din Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 520/1126) to his famous disciple ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani (492-526/1098-1131); the letter was published in the Majmuʿa-yi athar-i farsi-yi Ahmad-i Ghazali (Collection of the Persian writings of Ahmad Ghazali). The other is ʿAyn al-Quzat's own letter, published in the Namaha-yi ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani (Letters by ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani). Later, Ay farzand was translated into Arabic and became famous as Ayyuha al-walad, the Arabic equivalent of the Persian title. The earliest manuscripts with the Arabic translation date from the second half of the 16th and most of the others from the 17th century. The earliest known secondary translation from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish was done in 983/1575. In modern times, the text was translated from Arabic into many European languages and published innumerable times in Turkey as Eyyühe'l-Veled or Ey Oğul.

A less famous Pand-nama (Book of counsel) also written in the genre of advice literature is a very late compilatory letter of an unknown author formally addressed to some ruler and falsely attributed to al-Ghazali, obviously because it consists of many fragments borrowed mostly from various parts of the Kimiya-yi saʿadat.

Influence

During his life, Al-Ghazali wrote over 70 books on science, Islamic reasoning and Sufism. Al-Ghazali played a major role in integrating Sufism with Shariah. He was also the first to present a formal description of Sufism in his works. His works also strengthened the status of Sunni Islam against other schools. The Batinite (Ismailism) had emerged in Persian territories and were gaining more and more power during al-Ghazali's period, as Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated by the members of Ismailis. In his Fada'ih al-Batiniyya (The Infamies of the Esotericists) al-Ghazali declared them unbelievers whose blood may be spilled. Al-Ghazali succeeded in gaining widespread acceptance for Sufism at the expense of philosophy. At the same time, in his refutation of philosophers he made use of their philosophical categories and thus helped to give them wider circulation.

The staple of his religious philosophy was arguing that the creator was the center point of all human life that played a direct role in all world affairs. Al-Ghazali's influence was not limited to Islam, but in fact his works were widely circulated among Christian and Hebrew scholars and philosophers. Some of the more notable philosophers and scholars in the west include David Hume, Dante, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Moses Ben Maimon, a Jewish theologian was deeply interested and vested in the works of al-Ghazali. One of the more notable achievements of Ghazali was his writing and reform of education that laid out the path of Islamic Education from the 12th to the 19th centuries. Al-Ghazali's works were heavily relied upon by Islamic mathematicians and astronomers such as At-Tusi.

Al-Ghazali was by every indication of his writings a true mystic in the Persian sense. He believed himself to be more mystical or religious than he was philosophical; however, he is more widely regarded by some scholars as a leading figure of Islamic philosophy and thought. He describes his philosophical approach as a seeker of true knowledge, a deeper understanding of the philosophical and scientific, and a better understanding of mysticism and cognition. The period following Ghazali "has tentatively been called the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy" initiated by Ghazali's successful integration of logic into the Islamic seminary Madrasah curriculum.

Imam Al Ghazali mainly chose to keep his legacy in his books so he wrote more than 70 books in his career. It is said about his book "Ihya Ulum Uddin: The Revival of the Religious Sciences" that, if one has no Shaykh Then he has Ihya. Through his writing he still influences islamic scholars and community. Prominent scholars like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Shaykh Ibrahim Osi Efa, Dr. Abdul Hakim Murad (Timothy Winter) are greatly influenced by his teaching. People refer to him as the "Proof of Islam".

Number of works

Al-Ghazali mentioned the number of his works "more than 70" in one of his letters to Sultan Sanjar in the late years of his life. Some "five dozen" are plausibly identifiable, and several hundred attributed works, many of them duplicates because of varying titles, are doubtful or spurious.

The tradition of falsely attributing works to al-Ghazali increased in the 13th century, after the dissemination of the large corpus of works by Ibn Arabi.

Bibliographies have been published by William Montgomery Watt (The Works Attributed to Al-Ghazali), Maurice Bouyges (Essai de chronologie des oeuvres d'Al-Ghazali) and others.

Abdel Rahman Badawi's Bibliography of all works attributed to Al-Ghazali
Pages Content
1–72 works definitely written by al-Ghazali
73–95 works of doubtful attribution
96–127 works which are almost certainly not those of al-Ghazali
128–224 are the names of the Chapters or Sections of al-Ghazali's books that are mistakenly thought by him
225–273 books written by other authors on al-Ghazali's works
274–389 books of other unknown scholars/writers regarding al-Ghazali's life and personality
389–457 the name of the manuscripts of al-Ghazali's works in different libraries of the world:
Short List of Major Works of Gazali
Title Description Type
al-Munqidh min al-dalal Rescuer from Error Theology
Hujjat al-Haq Proof of the Truth Theology
al-Iqtisād fī al-iʿtiqad The Moderation in Belief Theology
Iljām al-Awām an Ilm il-Kalām Bridling the Common Folk Away From the Science of Theological Speculation Theology
al-maqsad al-asna fi sharah asma' Allahu al-husna The best means in explaining God's Beautiful Names Theology
Jawahir al-Qur'an wa duraruh Jewels of the Qur'an and Its Pearls Theology
Faysal al-tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-l-zandaqa The Criterion of Distinction between Islam and Clandestine Unbelief Theology
al-radd al-jamil li-ilahiyyat ‘Isa bi-sarih al-Injil The Excellent Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus through the Text of the Gospel Theology
Mishkāt al-Anwār The Niche for Lights, a commentary on the Verse of Light Theology
Tafsir al-yaqut al-ta'wil Theology
Mizan al-'amal Criterion of Action Tasawwuf
Ihya'e Ulum-ed'Deen The Revival of the Religious Sciences Tasawwuf
Bidayat al-hidayah The Beginning of Guidance Tasawwuf
Kimiya-yi sa'ādat The Alchemy of Happiness Tasawwuf
Nasihat al-muluk Counseling Kings in Persian Tasawwuf
al-Munqidh min al-dalal Rescuer from Error Tasawwuf
Minhaj al-'Abidin Methodology for the Worshipers Tasawwuf
Fada'ih al-Batiniyya The Infamies of the Esotericists, a refutation of esoteric Sufism in general and Isma'ili doctrines in particular Tasawwuf
Maqasid al falasifa Aims of the Philosophers written in the beginning of his life, in favour of philosophy and presenting the basic theories in Philosophy, mostly influenced by Avicenna's works Philosophy
Tahāfut al-Falāsifah The Incoherence of the Philosophers), Book refutes the Greek Philosophy aiming at Avicenna and al-Farabi; and of which Ibn Rushd wrote his famous refutation Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) Philosophy
Miyar al-Ilm fi fan al-Mantiq Criterion of Knowledge in the Art of Logic Philosophy
Mihak al-Nazar fi al-mantiq Touchstone of Reasoning in Logic Philosophy
al-Qistas al-mustaqim The Correct Balance Philosophy
Fatawy al-Ghazali Verdicts of al-Ghazali Jurisprudence
al-wajiz fi fiqh al-imam al-shafi’i The Condensed in Imam Shafi’i’s Jurisprudence Jurisprudence
Kitab tahzib al-Isul Prunning on Legal Theory Jurisprudence
al-Mustasfa fi 'ilm al-isul The Clarified in Legal Theory Jurisprudence
Asas al-Qiyas Foundation of Analogical reasoning Jurisprudence
The Jerusalem Tract Jurisprudence
Sources:

Economic philosophy

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Al-Ghazali's economic philosophy was primarily influenced by his Islamic beliefs. He argued that the importance of economic activity lay both in its benefit to society, as well being necessary for salvation.

He established three goals of economic activity that he believed were part of one's religious obligation: "achievement of self-sufficiency for one's survival; provision for the well-being of one's progeny; and provision for assisting those in economic need." He argued that subsistence living, or living in a way that provides the basic necessities for only one's family, would not be an acceptable practice to be held by the general population because of the detrimental results that he believed that would bring upon the economy, but he acknowledged that some people may choose to live the subsistence lifestyle at their own will for the sake of their personal religious journey. Conversely, he discouraged people from purchasing or possessing excessive material items, suggesting that any additional money earned could be given to provide for the poor.

Al-Ghazali believed that the imposition of income equality in society should not be a necessity. Instead, he advocated for individuals to be guided by the "spirit of Islamic brotherhood," encouraging them to willingly share their wealth. However, he acknowledged that this ideal isn't universally practiced. According to him, earned wealth can serve two potential purposes. The first is for the good of oneself, which includes maintaining one's own health and that of their family, as well as extending care to others and engaging in actions beneficial to the Islamic community. The other is what al-Ghazali would consider misuse, spending it selfishly on extravagant or unnecessary material items.

In terms of trade, al-Ghazali discussed the necessity of exchanging goods across close cities as well as larger borders because it allows more goods, which may be necessary and not yet available, to be accessible to more people in various locations. He recognized the necessity of trade and its overall beneficial effect on the economy, but making money in that way might not be considered the most virtuous in his beliefs. He did not support people taking "excessive" profits from their trade sales.

Reception of work

According to William Montgomery Watt, al-Ghazali was considered to be the mujaddid ("Reviver") of his age. Many, perhaps most, later Muslims concurred and, according to Watt, some have even considered him to be the greatest Muslim after Muhammad.

As an example, the Islamic scholar al-Safadi stated:

Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad, the Proof of Islam, Ornament of the Faith, Abu Hamid al-Tusi (al-Ghazali) the Shafi'ite jurist, was in his later years without rival.

and the jurist, al-Yafi'i stated:

He was called The Proof of Islam and undoubtedly was worthy of the name, absolutely trustworthy (in respect of the Faith) How many an epitome (has he given) us setting forth the basic principles of religion: how much that was repetitive has he summarised, and epitomised what was lengthy. How many a simple explanation has he given us of what was hard to fathom, with brief elucidation and clear solution of knotty problems. He used moderation, being quiet but decisive in silencing an adversary, though his words were like a sharp sword-thrust in refuting a slanderer and protecting the high-road of guidance.

The Shafi'i jurist al-Subki stated:

"If there had been a prophet after Muhammad, al-Ghazali would have been the man".

Also a widely considered Sunni scholar, al-Dhahabi, in his praise of al-Ghazali wrote: "Al-Ghazzaali, the imaam and shaykh, the prominent scholar, Hujjat al-Islam, the wonder of his time, Zayn al-Deen Abu Haamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Toosi al-Shaafa'i al-Ghazzaali, the author of many books and one possessed of utter intelligence. He studied fiqh in his own town, then he moved to Nisapur in the company of a group of students. He stayed with the Imaam al-Haramayn and gained a deep knowledge of fiqh within a short period. He became well-versed in 'ilm al-kalaam and debate, until he became the best of debater."

Ibn Rushd (Averroes), a rationalist, famously responded that "to say that philosophers are incoherent is itself to make an incoherent statement." Rushd's book, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, attempted to refute al-Ghazali's views, but the work was not well received in the Muslim community.

According to historian Firas Alkhateeb, "When one reads Imam al-Ghazali's works at a very superficial level, one can easily misunderstand what he is saying as anti-scientific in general. The truth, however, is that al-Ghazali's only warning to students is to not fully accept all the beliefs and ideas of a scholar simply because of his achievements in mathematics and science. By issuing such a warning, al-Ghazali is in fact protecting the scientific enterprise for future generations by insulating it from being mixed with theoretical philosophy that could eventually dilute science itself to a field based on conjecture and reasoning alone."

Al-Ghazali has been seen by Orientalist scholars as causing a decline in scientific advancement in Islam, because of his refutation of the new philosophies of his time. He purportedly saw danger in the statements made by philosophers that suggested that God was not all-knowing or even non-existent, which strongly contradicted his conservative Islamic belief. This position has been challenged, however. The following statement made by al-Ghazali has been described as evidence that he was not against scientific advancement: "Great indeed is the crime against religion committed by anyone who supposes that Islam is to be championed by the denial of mathematical sciences." This sentence, the source of which is not indicated in the cited book, is taken from Deliverance from Error. Ghazali does not mean that neglecting the study of mathematics would be a crime against science or against reason, but that rejecting them is a crime against religion. Its aim is not to promote the study of mathematics: it is to condemn the attitude which consists in considering them as rivals of religion. For him, religion has nothing to fear from them, because they do not deal with the same subjects. To condemn the study of mathematics for fear that it endangers religion is to mistake the place of each of them. This is clarified by the sentence which immediately follows: "For the revealed Law nowhere undertakes to deny or affirm these sciences, and the latter nowhere address themselves to religious matters." A few pages later, he writes that the books of the philosophers must be banned - he defines philosophy as composed of six branches: mathematical, logical, physical, metaphysical, political, and morale. Al-Ghazali notably influenced Ibn Rushd, Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani, al-Nawawi, Ibn Tumart, Fakhruddin Razi, Suyuti, Tan Malaka, Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, Asad Mayhani, Ali al-Qari, Muhammad Ibn Yahya al-Janzi.

See also

References

Notes

Citations

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  61. Böwering, Gerhard; Crone, Patricia (2013). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0691134840. Ghazali (ca. 1058–1111) Abu Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Ghazali al-Tusi (the "Proof of Islam") is the most renowned Sunni theologian of the Seljuq period (1038–1194).
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  63. Leaman, Oliver (2006). The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 84. ISBN 978-0415326391.
  64. ^ "about five dozen authentic works, in addition to which some 300 other titles of works of uncertain, doubtful, or spurious authorship, many of them duplicates owing to varying titles, are cited in Muslim bibliographical literature. Already Ebn Ṭofayl (d. 581/1185, q.v.) observed that Ḡazālī wrote for different audiences, ordinary men and the elite (pp. 69-72), and Ḡazālī himself completed the rather moderate theological treatise, Eljām al-ʿawāmmʿan ʿelm al-kalām "The restraining of ordinary men from theology," in the last month before his death" Encyclopedia Iranica.
  65. Böwering, Gerhard; Crone, Patricia; Mirza, Mahan; Kadi, Wadad; Zaman, Muhammad Qasim; Stewart, Devin J. (2013). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0691134840 – via Google Books.
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  68. Kadri, Sadakat (2012). Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia . Macmillan. pp. 118–9. ISBN 9780099523277 – via Google Books.
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  70. For Ibn Rushd's response, see Khalid, Muhammad A., ed. (2005). Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings. Cambridge UK. p. 162.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  71. "Many orientalists argue that Ghazali's Tahafut is responsible for the age of decline in science in the Muslim World. This is their key thesis as they attempt to explain the scientific and intellectual history of the Islamic world. It seems to be the most widely accepted view on the matter not only in the Western world but in the Muslim world as well. George Saliba, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University who specializes in the development of astronomy within Islamic civilization, calls this view the "classical narrative" (Saliba, 2007)".
  72. Aydin, Nuh. "Did al-Ghazali kill the science in Islam?". Archived from the original on 2015-04-30. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  73. Hasan, Hasan (9 February 2012). "How the decline of Muslim scientific thought still haunts". The National.
  74. Sonn, Tamara (1996-10-10). Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi's Islamic Intellectual History. Oxford University Press. pp. 30. ISBN 9780195356564. Ghazali Revival ihya.
  75. Hunt Janin, The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World 610-2003, p 83. ISBN 0786429046
  76. Lumbard, Joseph E. B. (2004). Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars. World Wisdom. p. 291. ISBN 0941532607.
  77. ^ Translated into English by Mohammed Asim Bilal and available at archive.org
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  79. McCarthy, Richard Joseph (1980). Freedom and fulfillment: "al-Munqidh min al-Dalal" and other relevant works. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 978-0805781670.
  80. James, William (2012). Bradley, Matthew (ed.). The Varieties of Religious Experience. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199691647.
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  82. Makatib-i farsi-yi Ghazali ba nam-i Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Ḥujjat al-Islam, ed. ʿAbbas Iqbal Ashtiyani, Tehran, 1954, pp. 11-12
  83. Makatib-i farsi-yi Ghazali ba nam-i Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Hujjat al-Islam, ed. ʿAbbas Iqbal Ashtiyani, Tehran, 1954, pp. 13-23, 83-85
  84. Majmuʿa-yi athar-i farsi-yi Ahmad-e Ghazali, ed. A. Mujahid, Tehran, 1979, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1991, pp. 191-238
  85. Namaha-yi ʿAyn al-Quzat Hamadani, ed. ʿAli Naqi Monzawi and ʿAfif ʿUsayran, 2 vols., Tehran, 1983, II, p.103, no 73
  86. George Henry Scherer, Al-Ghazali’s Ayyuha’l-walad, Ph.D. diss., Chicago University, 1930; Beirut, 1933, p. 27
  87. Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Gazali’nin bazi eserlerinin Türkçe tercümeleri. Les traductions en Turc de certains livres d’al-Ghazali, Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 9/1, 1961, p. 61
  88. Günaydin, Gazâlî tercümeleri: Osmanli devri ve 1928 sonrasi için bir bibliyografya denemesi, Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi 16, 2011, pp. 70-73
  89. "Kimiā-Ye Saʿādat". 29 June 2021.
  90. Smith, Margaret (1936). "The Forerunner of Al-Ghazali". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 65–78.
  91. Banuazizi, Ali; Weiner, Myron (March 1994). The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. Syracuse University Press. p. 108. ISBN 9780815626091.
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  93. Bloch, Ernst (2019). Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 77. ISBN 9780231175357. Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (ca.1058-1111) was a Persian antirationalist philosopher and theologian.
  94. Adang, Camilla; Ansari, Hassan; Fierro, Maribel (2015). Accusations of Unbelief in Islam: A Diachronic Perspective on Takfīr. Brill. p. 19. ISBN 9789004307834. Retrieved 25 December 2020 – via Google Books.
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  97. Louchakova-Schwartz, Olga (2011). "The Self and the World: Vedanta, Sufism, and the Presocratics in a Phenomenological View". Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-cosmic Horizons of Antiquity. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 423–438. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-1691-9_33. ISBN 9789400716902.
  98. "Ghazâlî had successfully introduced logic into the madrasa (though it was studied in other venues as well (Endress 2006)). What happened to it after this time was the result of the activities of logicians much more gifted than Ghazâlî. This period has tentatively been called the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy (Gutas 2002). It is in this period, and especially in the thirteenth century, that the major changes in the coverage and structure of Avicennan logic were introduced; these changes were mainly introduced in free-standing treatises on logic. It has been observed that the thirteenth century was the time that "doing logic in Arabic was thoroughly disconnected from textual exegesis, perhaps more so than at any time before or since" (El-Rouayheb 2010b: 48–49). Many of the major textbooks for teaching logic in later centuries come from this period. For all his historical importance in the process of introducing logic into the madrasa, the logic that Ghazâlî defended was too dilute to be recognizably Farabian or Avicennan." Street, Tony (July 23, 2008). "Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
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  101. A. Badawi, Mu'allafat al-Ghazali, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1961).
  102. Hesova, Zora (2012). "The Notion of illumination in the perspective of Ghazali's Mishkat Al-Anwar". Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization. 2 (2): 65–85. doi:10.32350/jitc.22.04. S2CID 188876050.
  103. At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam Khalidi, Walid (1984). Before their diaspora : a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876–1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 978-0887281433. Archived from the original on 2018-03-02. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
  104. "The Mishkat al-Anwar of al-Ghazzali Index". www.ghazali.org.
  105. At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, al-Ghazali wrote a concise exposition of Islam. Khalidi, Walid (1984). Before their diaspora: a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876–1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 978-0887281433. Archived from the original on 2018-03-02. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
  106. ^ Ghazanfar, Shaikh Mohammad; Islahi, Abdul Azim (1997). Economic Thought of Al-Ghazali (PDF). Islamic Economics Research Series, King Abdulaziz University. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: Scientific Publishing Centre, King Abdulaziz University. p. 13. ISBN 978-9960-06-574-8.
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  108. al-Wafa bi'l wafayat, p. 274 - 277. Also see Tabaqat al-Shafiyya, subki, 4, 101.
  109. Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 47
  110. Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyyah al-Kubra, Cairo, 1324/1906, Vol. IV, p. 101
  111. Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazali, The Mystic, p. 48
  112. al-Dhahabi. Siyar A'laam al-Nubala'. Vol. 9. Lebanon: Dar al-Hadith. p. 323.
  113. Menocal, Maria Rosa (29 November 2009). The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316092791 – via Google Books.
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  115. Jamil Ragep (February 2008). "When did Islamic science die (and who cares)?" (PDF). Viewpoint. No. 85. Retrieved 2023-03-23.
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  117. ^ Al-Ghazali. Deliverance from error, p. 9, §41.
  118. Al-Ghazali. Deliverance from error, § 59, p. 13.
  119. Al-Ghazali. Deliverance from error, § 36, p. 8.
  120. Muslim Philosophy Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, Islamic Contributions to Science & Math, netmuslims.com

Sources

Further reading

  • Macdonald, Duncan B. (1899). "The life of al-Ghazzali", in Journal of the American Oriental Society. 20, p. 122 sqq.
  • Laoust, H: La politique de Gazali, Paris 1970
  • Campanini, M.: Al-Ghazzali, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy 1996
  • Campanini, Massimo, Ghazali, in Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God (2 vols.), Edited by C. Fitzpatrick and A. Walker, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2014. ISBN 1610691776
  • Watt, W. M.: Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali, Edinburgh 1963
  • Zwemer, S. M. A Moslem Seeker after God, New York 1920
  • Nakamura, K. "Al-Ghazali", Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Dougan, A. The Glimpse: The Inner teaching of Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali's Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche for Lights) by Abdullah Dougan ISBN 0-9597566-6-3
  • A comparison between the philosophy of Ghazali and the Copenhagen Interpretation: Harding, Karen (1993). "Causality Then and Now: al-Ghazali and Quantum Theory" (PDF). American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. 1 (2): 165–177. doi:10.35632/ajis.v10i2.2505. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-04.
  • Watt, W. Montgomery (1953). The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

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