Al-Ghazali, (Persian: ابو حامد محمد ابن محمد غزالی توسی, romanized: Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ghazālī Ṭūsi (c. 1058 – 19 December 1111), Latinized as Algazelus, was a Shafi'i Sunni Muslim Persian scholar and 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 Nizamiyya of 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.
Al-Ghazali was born in c. 1058 in Tus. He was a Muslim scholar of Persian descent. He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of Tus, Khorasan, not long after Seljuks entered Baghdad and ended Shia Buyid Amir al-umaras. This marked the start of Seljuk influence over the 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.
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 of Baghdad.
He underwent a spiritual crisis in 1095, 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 of 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. He was buried near his home in Tus, Iran.
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).
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.
In 1095, at the peak of his academic career as the leading scholar of the most prestigious institution in the Islamic world; Al-Ghazālī decided to step down to undertake a journey that would take the next 10 years of his life. It was said that Al-Ghazālī was suffering from both emotional and physical difficulties including loss of appetite, indigestion and struggling to even vocally orate his lectures as he would normally. When the leading medical practitioners could not remedy his ailments and all medicines had failed, they determined the cause to be a psychological and internal spiritual one, and therefore its remedy can only be a spiritual one.
He was critical of the social and spiritual situation of both his academic institution, the scholarly peers and the political class. Initially he mentioned that he was going on a journey to the Hajj pilgrimage, in order to avoid attempts at preventing his decision from the leadership. Al-Ghazālī sold his belongings, distributed all his property, which was said to be so sufficient for his dependents that he donated the rest to charity.
His first stop was Damascus, at the Umayyad Mosque. In Damascus, he found work as a mosque sweeper, and lived in the minaret of the mosque. During this time period, he produced his most celebrated works of Islamic authorship, some that are today a hallmark of that era. He wrote his chief work, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, in this period. In addition to the works mentioned above related to Bāṭinism, al-Maqṣad al-asnā fī sharḥ asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā, Bidāyat al-hidāya, al-Wajīz, Jawāhir al-Qurʾān, al-Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn, al-Maḍnūn bihi ʿalā ghayr ahlih, al-Maẓnūn al-ṣaghīr, Fayṣal al-tafriqa, al-Qānūn al-kullī fī al-taʾwīl (Qānūn al-taʾwīl, p. 95, 111), Kīmiyā-yi Saʿādat, and Ayyuhā al-walad are also among the works he wrote in this period.
Al-Ghazālī returned to Nishapur in Dhu al-Qa'da 499 (July 1106) and resumed teaching at the Nizamiyya there. As he states in al-Munqidh (pp. 65–68), which is understood to have been written during this period of seclusion:
"Before I was teaching the knowledge that brought prestige and position…; now, however, I am calling to the knowledge that leads one to renounce position."
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.