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Famous
Personalities of the Global Islamic Movement Throughout History
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
(450-505 AH/1058-1111 AD) [aka: al-Ghazzali ,
Algazel ] is one of the great jurists, theologians and
mystics of the 12th Century. He wrote on a wide range of
topics including jurisprudence, theology, mysticism and
philosophy.
Born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia
(modern day Iran).
He was a Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and
mystic of Persian origin and remains one of the most
celebrated scholars in the history of Islamic thought.
Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development
of a systematic view of Sufism and its integration and
acceptance in mainstream Islam. He was a scholar of
orthodox Islam, belonging to the Shafi'i school of
Islamic jurisprudence and to the Asharite school of
theology. Ghazali received many titles such as Sharaful
A'emma (Arabic: شرف الائمه), Zainuddin (Arabic: زین
الدین), Hujjatul Islam, meaning "Proof of Islam"
(Arabic: حجة الاسلام).
He is viewed as the key member of the influential
Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy and the most
important refuter of 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
Life
Al-Ghazali was born in 1058 in Tus, a city in Khorasan
province of Persia. His father, a traditional sufi, died
when he and his younger brother, Ahmad Ghazali, were
still young. One of their father's friends took care of
them for the next few years. Later in 1070, Ghazali and
his brother went to Gurgan to get enrolled in a
madrassah. There, he studied fiqh (islamic
jurisprudence) next to Ahmad ibn Muhammad Rādkānī and
Abu'l Qāsim Jurjānī. Approximately after 7 years of
studying, he returned to Tus.
His first important trip to Nishapur occurred around
1080 when he was almost 23 years old. He became the
student of the famous muslim scholar Abu'l Ma'ālī
Juwaynī, known as Imam al-Haramayn. After the death of
Al-Juwayni in 1085, Al-Ghazālī was invited to go to the
court of Nizamul Mulk Tusi, the powerful vizier of the
Seljuq sultans. The vizier was so impressed by Al-Ghazali's
scholarship that in 1091 he appointed him as chief
professor in the Nizamiyya of Baghdad. He used to
lecture to more than 300 students, and his
participations in Islamic debates and discussions made
him popular in all over the Islamic territories.
He passed through a spiritual crisis in 1095 and
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 the
life of a poor Sufi. After some time in Damascus and
Jerusalem, with a visit to Medina and Mecca in 1096, he
settled in Tus to spend the next several years in
seclusion. He ended his seclusion for a short lecturing
period at the Nizamiyyah of Nishapur in 1106. Later he
returned to Tus where he remained until his death in
December, 1111. He had one son named Abdu'l Rahman Allam.
Works
Ghazali wrote more than 70 books on Islamic sciences,
Philosophy and Sufism. His 11th century book titled The
Incoherence of the Philosophers marks a major turn in
Islamic epistemology, as Ghazali effectively discovered
philosophical skepticism that would not be commonly seen
in the West until René Descartes, George Berkeley and
David Hume. The encounter with skepticism led Ghazali to
embrace 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.
The Incoherence also marked a turning point in Islamic
philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle and
Plato. 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
Avicenna and Al-Farabi) who drew intellectually upon the
Ancient Greeks. Ghazali bitterly denounced Aristotle,
Socrates and other Greek writers as non-believers and
labeled those who employed their methods and ideas as
corrupters of the Islamic faith.
In the next century, Averroes drafted a lengthy rebuttal
of Ghazali's Incoherence entitled the Incoherence of the
Incoherence; however, the epistemological course of
Islamic thought had already been set.
Another of Ghazali's major work is Ihya al-Ulum al-Din
or Ihya'ul Ulumuddin (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 Salavation (Rub' al-'munjiyat). Many
admirable comments were made regarding his this book:
"If all Islamic sciences were disappeared, they could be
taken back from Ihya'ul Ulumuddin." He then wrote a
brief version of this book in Persian under The Alchemy
of Happiness (Kīmyāye Sa'ādat).
At the insistence of his students in Jerusalem, Ghazali
wrote a concise exposition of Islam entitled The
Jerusalem Tract.
During the 1930's, under Ataturk's presidency, the young
Turkish Republic translated almost all the works of
ancient philosophers (including but not limited to
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.) into Turkish. These
translations were published by the Ministry of Education
in thousands and distributed to high school students
free of charge. Thus, the revival of rationalism was
indeed a goal of the young Turkish Republic. For this
reason, it may be that Ataturk did not choose to use
state funds to translate the works of Al-Ghazali into
Turkish, though he did not explicitly forbid it.
Ghazali's influence
Ghazali had an important influence on both Muslim
philosophers and Christian medieval philosophers.
Margaret Smith 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. Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274), who made a study of the Arabic writers and
admitted his indebtedness to them. He studied at the
University of Naples where the influence of Arab
literature and culture was predominant at the time."
Ghazali's influence has been compared to the works of
St. Thomas Aquinas in Christian theology, but the two
differed greatly in methods and beliefs. Whereas Ghazali
rejected non-Islamic philosophers such as Aristotle and
saw it fit to discard their teachings on the basis of
their "unbelief," Aquinas embraced them and incorporated
ancient Greek and Latin thought into his own
philosophical writings.
"A careful study of Ghazali's works will indicate how
penetrating and widespread his influence was on the
Western medieval scholars. A case in point is the
influence of Ghazali on St. Thomas Aquinas — who studied
the works of Islamic philosophers, especially Ghazali's,
at the University of Naples. In addition, Aquinas'
interest in Islamic studies could be attributed to the
infiltration of ‘Latin Averroism’ in the 13th century,
especially at [the University of] Paris."
It is also believed that René Descartes' ideas from his
book called "Discourse on the Method" were influenced by
Al-Ghazali and very much similar to Al-Ghazali's work.
Thus, some scholars today believe that Descartes was
being dishonest by writing the "Discourse on Methods"
without giving any academic reference to Al-Ghazali's
work in his book.
Ghazali also played a very major role in integrating
Sufism with Shariah. He combined the concepts of Sufism
very well with the Shariah laws. He was also the first
to present a formal description of Sufism in his works.
His works also strengthened the status of Sunnite Islam
against other schools. The Batinite (Ismailism) had
emerged in Persian territories and were gaining more and
more power during Ghazali's period, as Nizam al-Mulk was
assassinated by the members of Ismailis. Ghazali
strictly refuted their ideology and wrote several books
on refutation of Baatinyas which significantly weakened
their status.
Ijtihad
Ijtihad is the process through which Islamic scholars
can generate new rules for Muslims. Ijtihad was one of
the recognized sources of Islamic knowledge by early
Islamic scholars - that is, in addition to Quran, Sunnah
and Qiyas. While it is not widely agreed that Al-Ghazali
himself intended to "shut the door of ijtihad"
completely and permanently, such an interpretation of
Al-Ghazali's work led the Islamic societies to be
"frozen in time". Works of critics of Al-Ghazali (such
as Ibn-Rushd, a rationalist), as well as the works of
any ancient philosopher, were practically forbidden in
these "frozen societies" through the centuries. As a
result, all chances were lost to gradually revitalize
religion - which may have been less painful had it been
spread over a period of centuries.
Whether the actual outcome of "freezing Islamic thinking
in time" was the goal of Al-Ghazali is highly debatable.
While he himself was a critic of the philosophers, Al-Ghazili
was a master in the art of philosophy and had an immense
education in the field. After such a long education in
philosophy, as well as a long process of reflection. But
only taking Al-Ghazali's final conclusions, while
lacking a comparable education (and a reflection
process) in the area, and as a result being unable to
trace Al-Ghazali in his thought process, only
exacerbates the probability of the misuse of Al-Ghazali's
conclusions.
List of Works
Al-Ghazali had mentioned the number of his works "more
than 70", in one of his letters to Sultan Sanjar 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 Ghazali is
a difficult step.
The following is a short list of his Major works:
Theology
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 (The Niche of Lights)
Tafsir al-yaqut al-ta'wil
Sufism
Mizan al-'amal (Criterion of Action)
Ihya'ul ulum al-din, "Revival of Religious Sciences",
Ghazali's most important work
Bidayat al-hidayah (Beginning of Guidance)
Kimiya-ye sa'ādat (The Alchemy of Happiness) [a resumé
of Ihya'ul ulum, in Persian]
Nasihat al-muluk (Counseling Kings) [in Persian]
al-Munqidh min al-dalal (Rescuer from Error)
Minhaj al-'Abidin (Methodolgy for the Worshipers)
Philosophy
Maqasid al falasifa (Aims of 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]
Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the
Philosophers), [in this book he refutes the Greek
Philosophy aiming at Avicenna and Al-Farabi; and of
which Ibn Rushd 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)
Jurisprudence
Fatawy al-Ghazali (Verdicts of al-Ghazali)
Al-wasit fi al-mathab (The medium [digest] 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)
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