Al-Ghazzali, his life, times, and work; Sufiism formally
accepted into Islam.
With the time came the man. He was al-Ghazzali, the greatest, certainly
the most sympathetic figure in the history of Islam, and the only teacher
of the after generations ever put by a Muslim on a level with the four
great Imams. The equal of Augustine in philosophical and theological
importance, by his side the Aristotelian philosophers of Islam, Ibn
Rushd and all the rest, seem beggarly compilers and scholiasts. Only
al-Farabi, and that in virtue of his mysticism, approaches him. In his
own person he took up the life of his time on all its sides and with it
all its problems. He lived through them all and drew his theology from
his experience. Systems and classifications, words and arguments about
words, he swept away; the facts of life as he had known them in his own
soul he grasped. When his work was done the revelation of the mystic
(_kashf_) was not only a full part but the basal part in the structure
of Muslim theology. That basis, in spite, or rather on account of the
work of the mutakallims had previously been lacking. Such a scepticism
as their atomic system had practically amounted to, could disprove much
but could prove little. If all the categories but substance and quality
are mere subjectivities, existing in the mind only, what can we know of
things? An ultra-rational basis had to be found and it was found in the
ecstasy of the Sufis. But al-Ghazzali brought another element into fuller
and more effective working. With him passes away the old-fashioned kalam,
a thing of shreds and patches, scraps of metaphysics and logic snatched
up for a moment of need, without grasp of the full sweep of philosophy,
and incapable, in the long run, of meeting it. Even its atomic system is
a philosophy of amateurs, with all their fantastic one-sidedness, their
vigor and rigor. But al-Ghazzali was no amateur. His knowledge and grasp
of the problems and objects of philosophy were truer and more vital
than in any other Muslim up to his time—perhaps after it, too. Islam
has not fully understood him any more than Christendom fully understood
Augustine, but until long after him the horizon of Muslims was wider and
their air clearer for his work. Then came a new scholasticism, reigning
to this day.
So much by way of preface. We must now give some account of the life
and experiences, the ideas and sensations, of this great leader and
reformer. For his life and his work were one. Everything that he thought
and wrote came with the weight and reality of personal experience. He
recognized this connection himself, and has left us a book—the _Munqidh
min ad-dalal_, “Rescuer from Error”—almost unique in Islam, which, in the
form of an apology for the faith, is really an _Apologia pro vita sua_.
This book is our main source for what follows.
[Sidenote: EARLY CAREER; RENUNCIATION]
Al-Ghazzali was born at Tus in 450. He lost his father when young and
was educated and brought up by a trusted Sufi friend. He early turned
to the study of theology and canon law, but, as he himself confesses,
it was only because they promised wealth and reputation. Very early
he broke away from _taqlid_, simple acceptance of religious truth on
authority, and he began to investigate theological differences before
he was twenty. His studies were of the broadest, embracing canon law,
theology, dialectic, science, philosophy, logic and the doctrines and
practices of the Sufis. It was a Sufi atmosphere in which he moved, but
their religious fervors do not seem to have laid hold of him. Pride in
his own intellectual powers, ambition and contempt for others of less
ability mastered him. The latter part of his life as a student was spent
at Naysabur as pupil and assistant of the Imam al-Haramayn. Through the
Imam he stood in the apostolic succession of Ash‘arite teachers, being
the fourth from al-Ash‘ari himself. There he remained till the death of
the Imam in 478, when he went out to seek his fortune and found it with
the great wazir, Nizam al-Mulk. By him al-Ghazzali was appointed, in 484,
to teach in the Nizamite Academy at Baghdad. There he had the greatest
success as a teacher and consulting lawyer, and his worldly hopes seemed
safe. But suddenly he was struck down by a mysterious disease. His speech
became hampered; his appetite and digestion failed. His physicians gave
him up; his malady, they said, was mental and could only be mentally
treated. His only hope lay in peace of mind. Then he suddenly quitted
Baghdad, in 488, ostensibly on pilgrimage to Mecca. This flight, for it
was so in effect, of al-Ghazzali was unintelligible to the theologians of
the time; since that time it has marked the greatest epoch in the church
of Islam after the return of al-Ash‘ari.
That it should be unintelligible was natural. No cause could be seen on
the surface, except some possible political complications; the cause in
reality lay in al-Ghazzali’s mind and conscience. He was wandering in the
labyrinth of his time. From his youth he had been a sceptical, ambitious
student, playing with religious influences yet unaffected by them. But
the hollowness of his life was ever present with him and pressing upon
him. Like some with us, he sought to be converted and could not bring
it to pass. His religious beliefs gradually gave way and fell from him,
piece by piece.
At last, the strain became too great and at the court of Nizam al-Mulk he
touched for two months the depths of absolute scepticism. He doubted the
evidence of the senses; he could see plainly that they often deceived. No
eye could perceive the movement of a shadow, but still the shadow moved;
a gold piece would cover any star, but a star was a world larger than the
earth. He doubted even the primary ideas of the mind. Is ten more than
three? Can a thing be and not be? Perhaps; he could not tell. His senses
deceived him, why not his mind? May there not be something behind the
mind and transcending it, which would show the falsity of its convictions
even as the mind showed the falsity of the information given by the
senses? May not the dreams of the Sufis be true, and their revelations
in ecstasy the only real guides? When we awake in death, may it not be
into a true but different existence? All this—perhaps. And so he wandered
for two months. He saw clearly that no reasoning could help him here; he
had no ideas on which he could depend, from which he could begin. But the
mercy of God is great; He sends His light to whom He wills, a light that
flows in, and is given by no reasoning. By it al-Ghazzali was saved; he
regained the power to think, and the task which he now set before him was
to use this power to guide himself to truth.
[Sidenote: THE SEEKERS OF HIS TIME]
When he looked around, he saw that those who gave themselves to the
search for truth might be divided into four groups. There were the
scholastic theologians, who were much like the theologians of all times
and faiths. Second, there were the Ta‘limites, who held that to reach
truth one must have an infallible living teacher, and that there was
such a teacher. Third, there were the followers of philosophy, basing
on logical and rational proofs. Fourth, there were the Sufis, who held
that they, the chosen of God, could reach knowledge of Him directly in
ecstasy. With all these he had, of course, been acquainted to a greater
or less degree; but now he settled down to examine them one by one, and
find which would lead him to a certainty to which he could hold, whatever
might come. He felt that he could not go back to the unconscious faith of
his childhood; _that_ nothing could restore. All his mental being must be
made over before he could find rest. He began with scholastic theology,
but found no help there. Grant the theologians their premises and they
could argue; deny them and there was no common ground on which to meet.
Their science had been founded by al-Ash‘ari to meet the Mu‘tazilites;
it had done that victoriously, but could do no more. They could hold the
faith against heretics, expose their inconsistencies; against the sceptic
they availed nothing. It is true that they had attempted to go further
back and meet the students of philosophy on their own ground; to deal
with substances and attributes and first principles generally; but their
efforts had been fruitless. They lacked the necessary knowledge of the
subject, had no scientific basis, and were constrained eventually to fall
back on authority. After study of them and their methods it became clear
to al-Ghazzali that the remedy for his ailment was not in scholastic
theology.
[Sidenote: MATERIALISTS; DEISTS; THEISTS]
Then he turned to philosophy. He had seen already that the weakness
of the theologians lay in their not having made a sufficient study of
primary ideas and the laws of thought. Three years he gave up to this.
He was at Baghdad at the time, teaching law and writing legal treatises,
and probably the three years extended from the beginning of 484 to the
beginning of 487. Two years he gave, without a teacher, to the study of
the writings of the different schools of philosophy, and almost another
to meditating and working over his results. He felt that he was the
first Muslim doctor to do this with the requisite thoroughness. And it
is noteworthy that at this stage he seems to have again felt himself to
be a Muslim, and in an enemy’s country when he was studying philosophy.
He speaks of the necessity of understanding what is to be refuted; but
this may be only a confusion between his attitude when writing after
500, and his attitude when investigating and seeking truth, fifteen
years earlier. He divides the followers of philosophy in his time into
three: Materialists, Deists (_Tabi‘is, i.e._ Naturalists), and Theists.
The materialists reject a creator; the world exists from all eternity;
the animal comes from the egg and the egg from the animal. The wonder
of creation compels the deists to admit a creator, but the creature is
a machine, has a certain poise (_i‘tidal_) in itself which keeps it
running; its thought is a part of its nature and ends with death. They
thus reject a future life, though admitting God and His attributes.
He deals at much greater length with the teachings of those whom he calls
theists, but through all his statements of their views his tone is not
that of a seeker but that of a partisan; he turns his own experiences
into a warning to others, and makes of their record a little guide to
apologetics. Aristotle he regards as the final master of the Greek
school; his doctrines are best represented for Arabic readers in the
books of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi; the works of their predecessors on this
subject are a mass of confusion. Part of these doctrines must be stamped
as unbelief, part as heresy, and part as theologically indifferent. He
then divides the philosophical sciences into six, mathematics, logic,
physics, metaphysics, political economy, ethics; and discusses these in
detail, showing what must be rejected, what is indifferent, what dangers
arise from each to him who studies or to him who rejects without study.
Throughout, he is very cautious to mark nothing as unbelief that is
not really so; to admit always those truths of mathematics, logic, and
physics that cannot intellectually be rejected; and only to warn against
an attitude of intellectualism and a belief that mathematicians, with
their success in their own department, are to be followed in other
departments, or that all subjects are susceptible of the exactness and
certainty of a syllogism in logic. The damnable errors of the theists are
almost entirely in their metaphysical views. Three of their propositions
mark them as unbelievers. _First_, they reject the resurrection of the
body and physical punishment hereafter; the punishments of the next
world will be spiritual only. That there will be spiritual punishments,
al-Ghazzali admits, but there will be physical as well. _Second_, they
hold that God knows universals only, not particulars. _Third_, they
hold that the world exists from all eternity and to all eternity. When
they reject the attributes of God and hold that He knows by His essence
and not by something added to His essence, they are only heretics and
not unbelievers. In physics he accepts the constitution of the world as
developed and explained by them; only all is to be regarded as entirely
submitted to God, incapable of self-movement, a tool of which the Creator
makes use. Finally, he considers that their system of ethics is derived
from the Sufis. At all times there have been such saints, retired from
the world—God has never left himself without a witness; and from their
ecstasies and revelations our knowledge of the human heart, for good and
for evil, is derived.
[Sidenote: FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY]
Thus in philosophy he found little light. It did not correspond entirely
to his needs, for reason cannot answer all questions nor unveil all the
enigmas of life. He would probably have admitted that he had learned much
in his philosophical studies—so at least we may gather from his tone; he
never speaks disrespectfully of philosophy and science in their sphere;
his continual exhortation is that he who would understand them and refute
them must first study them; that to do otherwise, to abuse what we do
not know, brings only contempt on ourselves and on the cause which we
champion. But with his temperament he could not found his religion on
intellect. As a lawyer he could split hairs and define issues; but once
the religious instinct was aroused, nothing could satisfy him but what he
eventually found. And so, two possibilities and two only were before him,
though one was hardly a real possibility, if we consider his training
and mental powers. He might fall back on authority. It could not be the
authority of his childish faith, “Our fathers have told us,” he himself
confesses, could never again have weight with him. But it might be some
claimer of authority in a new form, some infallible teacher with a
doctrine which he could accept for the authority behind it. As the Church
of Rome from time to time gathers into its fold men of keen intellect
who seek rest in submission, and the world marvels, so it might have
been with him. Or again, he might turn directly to God and to personal
intercourse with Him; he might seek to know Him and to be taught of Him
without any intermediary, in a word to enter on the path of the mystic.
He came next to examine the doctrine of the Ta‘limites. They, a somewhat
outlying wing of the Fatimid propaganda, had come at this time into
alarming prominence. In 483 Hasan ibn as-Sabbah had seized Alamut and
entered on open rebellion. The sect of the Assassins was applying its
principles. But the poison of their teaching was also spreading among
the people. The principle of authority in religion, that only by an
infallible teacher could truth be reached and that such an infallible
teacher existed if he could only be found, was in the air. For
himself, al-Ghazzali found the Ta‘limites and their teaching eminently
unsatisfactory: They had a lesson which they went over parrot-fashion,
but beyond it they were in dense ignorance. The trained theologian and
scholar had no patience with their slackness and shallowness of thought.
He labored long, as ash-Shahrastani later confesses that he, too, did,
to penetrate their mystery and learn something from them; but beyond the
accustomed formulæ there was nothing to be found. He even admitted their
contention of the necessity of a living, infallible teacher, to see what
would follow—but nothing followed. “You admit the necessity of an Imam,”
they would say. “It is your business now to seek him; we have nothing to
do with it.” But though neither al-Ghazzali nor ash-Shahrastani, who died
43 (lunar) years after him, could be satisfied with the Ta‘limites, many
others were. The conflict was hot, and al-Ghazzali himself wrote several
books against them.
[Sidenote: STUDY OF SUFIISM]
The other possibility, the path of the mystic, now lay straight before
him. In the _Munqidh_ he tells us how, when he had made an end of the
Ta‘limites, he began to study the books of the Sufis, without any
suggestion that he had had a previous acquaintance with them and their
practices. But probably this means nothing more than it does when he
speaks in a similar way of studying the scholastic theologians; namely,
that he now took up the study in earnest and with a new and definite
purpose. He therefore read carefully the works of al-Harith al-Muhasibi,
the fragments of al-Junayd, ash-Shibli, and Abu Yazid al-Bistami. He had
also the benefit of oral teaching; but it became plain to him that only
through ecstasy and the complete transformation of the moral being could
he really understand Sufiism. He saw that it consisted in feelings more
than in knowledge, that he must be initiated as a Sufi himself; live
their life and practise their exercises, to attain his goal.
On the way upon which he had gone up to this time, he had gained three
fixed points of faith. He now believed firmly in God, in prophecy, and in
the last judgment. He had also gained the belief that only by detaching
himself from this world, its life, enjoyments, honors, and turning to God
could he be saved in the world to come. He looked on his present life,
his writing and his teaching, and saw of how little value it was in the
face of the great fact of heaven and hell. All he did now was for the
sake of vainglory and had in it no consecration to the service of God. He
felt on the edge of an abyss. The world held him back; his fears urged
him away. He was in the throes of a conversion wrought by terror; his
religion, now and always, in common with all Islam, was other-worldly. So
he remained in conflict with himself for six months from the middle of
488. Finally, his health broke down under the strain. In his feebleness
and overthrow he took refuge with God, as a man at the end of his
resources. God heard him and enabled him to make the needed sacrifices.
He abandoned all and wandered forth from Baghdad as a Sufi. He had put
his brilliant present and brilliant future absolutely behind him; had
given up everything for the peace of his soul. This date, the end of 488,
was the great era in his life; but it marked an era, too, in the history
of Islam. Since al-Ash‘ari went back to the faith of his fathers in 300,
and cursed the Mu‘tazilites and all their works, there had been no such
epoch as this flight of al-Ghazzali. It meant that the reign of mere
scholasticism was over; that another element was to work openly in the
future Church of Islam, the element of the mystical life in God, of the
attainment of truth by the soul in direct vision.
[Sidenote: ON THE PATH OF THE SUFIS]
He went to Syria and gave himself up for two years to the religious
exercises of the Sufis. Then he went on pilgrimage, first to Jerusalem;
then to the tomb of Abraham at Hebron; finally to Mecca and al-Madina.
With this religious duty his life of strict retirement ended. It is
evident that he now felt that he was again within the fold of Islam.
In spite of his former resolution to retire from the world, he was
drawn back. The prayers of his children and his own aspirations broke
in upon him, and though he resolved again and again to return to the
contemplative life, and did often actually do so, yet events, family
affairs, and the anxieties of life, kept continually disturbing him.
This went on, he tells us, for almost ten years, and in that time there
were revealed to him things that could not be reckoned and the discussion
of which could not be exhausted. He learned that the Sufis were on the
true and only path to the knowledge of God; that neither intelligence
nor wisdom nor science could change or improve their doctrine or their
ethics. The light in which they walk is essentially the same as the light
of prophecy; Muhammad was a Sufi when on his way to be a prophet. There
is none other light to light any man in this world. A complete purifying
of the heart from all but God is their Path; a seeking to plunge the
heart completely in the thought of God, is its beginning, and its end is
complete passing away in God. This last is only its end in relation to
what can be entered upon and grasped by a voluntary effort; in truth, it
is only the first step in the Path, the vestibule to the contemplative
life. Revelations (_mukashafas_, unveilings) came to the disciples from
the very beginning; while awake they see angels and souls of prophets,
hear their voices and gain from them guidance. Then their State (_hal_,
a Sufi technicality for a state of ecstasy) passes from the beholding of
forms to stages where language fails and any attempt to express what is
experienced must involve some error. They reach a nearness to God which
some have fancied to be a _hulul_, fusion of being, others an _ittihad_,
identification, and others a _wusul_, union; but these are all erroneous
ways of indicating the thing. Al-Ghazzali notes one of his books in
which he has explained wherein the error lies. But the thing itself is
the true basis of all faith and the beginning of prophecy; the _karamat_
of the saints lead to the miracles of the prophets. By this means the
possibility and the existence of prophecy can be proved, and then the
life itself of Muhammad proves that he was a prophet. Al-Ghazzali goes
on to deal with the nature of prophecy, and how the life of Muhammad
shows the truth of his mission; but enough has been given to indicate his
attitude and the stage at which he had himself arrived.
During this ten years he had returned to his native country and to his
children, but had not undertaken public duty as a teacher. Now that was
forced upon him. The century was drawing to a close. Everywhere there
was evident a slackening of religious fervor and faith. A mere external
compliance with the rules of Islam was observed, men even openly defended
such a course. He adduces as an example of this the _Wasiya_ of Ibn Sina.
The students of philosophy went their way, and their conduct shook the
minds of the people; false Sufis abounded, who taught antinomianism;
the lives of many theologians excited scandal; the Ta‘limites were
still spreading. A religious leader to turn the current was absolutely
needed, and his friends looked to al-Ghazzali to take up that duty;
some distinguished saints had dreams of his success; God had promised a
reformer every hundred years and the time was up. Finally, the Sultan
laid a command upon him to go and teach in the academy at Naysabur, and
he was forced to consent. His departure for Naysabur fell at the end of
499, exactly eleven years after his flight from Baghdad. But he did not
teach there long. Before the end of his life we find him back at Tus, his
native place, living in retirement among his disciples, in a Madrasa or
academy for students and a Khanqah or monastery for Sufis.
[Sidenote: THE TAHAFUT]
There he settled down to study and contemplation. We have already seen
what theological position he had reached. Philosophy had been tried and
found wanting. In a book of his called _Tahafut_, or “Destruction,” he
had smitten the philosophers hip and thigh; he had turned, as in earlier
times al-Ash‘ari, their own weapons against them, and had shown that with
their premises and methods no certainty could be reached. In that book
he goes to the extreme of intellectual scepticism, and, seven hundred
years before Hume, he cuts the bond of causality with the edge of his
dialectic and proclaims that we can know nothing of cause or effect,
but simply that one thing follows another. He combats their proof of
the eternity of the world, and exposes their assertion that God is its
creator. He demonstrates that they cannot prove the existence of the
creator or that that creator is one; that they cannot prove that He is
incorporeal, or that the world has any creator or cause at all; that they
cannot prove the nature of God or that the human soul is a spiritual
essence. When he has finished there is no intellectual basis left for
life; he stands beside the Greek sceptics and beside Hume. We are thrown
back on revelation, that given immediately by God to the individual soul
or that given through prophets. All our real knowledge is derived from
these sources. So it was natural that in the latter part of his life he
should turn to the traditions of the Prophet. The science of tradition
must certainly have formed part of his early studies, as of those of all
Muslim theologians, but he had not specialized in it; his bent had lain
in quite other directions. His master, the Imam al-Haramayn, had been no
student of tradition; among his many works is not one dealing with that
subject. Now he saw that the truth and the knowledge of the truth lay
there, and he gave himself, with all the energy of his nature, to the new
pursuit.
The end of his wanderings came at Tus, in 505. There he died while
seeking truth in the traditions of Muhammad, as al-Ash‘ari, his
predecessor, had done. The stamp of his personality is ineffaceably
impressed on Islam. The people of his time reverenced him as a saint and
wonder-worker. He himself never claimed to work _karamat_ and always
spoke modestly of the light which he had reached in ecstasy. After
his death legends early began to gather round him, and the current
biographies of him are untrustworthy to a degree. It says much for the
solidity of his work that he did not pass into a misty figure of popular
superstition. But that work remained and remains among his disciples and
in his books. We must now attempt to estimate its bearing and scope.
[Sidenote: VOLITION AS A BASIS]
For him, as for the mutakallims in general, the fundamental thing in the
world and the starting-point of all speculation is will. The philosophers
in their intellectualism might picture God as thought—thought thinking
itself and evolving all things thereby. Their source was Plotinus; that
of the Muslims was the terrific “Be!” of creation. But how can we know
this will of God if we are simply part of what it has produced? In
answering this, al-Ghazzali and his followers have diverged from the rest
of Islam, but not into heresy. Their view is admitted to be a possible
interpretation of Qur’anic passages, if not that commonly held. The soul
of man, al-Ghazzali taught, is essentially different from the rest of
the created things. We read in the Qur’an (xv, 29; xxxviii, 72) that God
breathed into man of His spirit (_ruh_). This is compared with the rays
of the sun reaching a thing on the earth and warming it. In virtue of
this, the soul of man is different from everything else in the world. It
is a spiritual substance (_jawhar ruhani_), has no corporeality, and is
not subject to dimension, position or locality. It is not in the body or
outside of the body; to apply such categories to it is as absurd as to
speak of the knowledge or ignorance of a stone. Though created, it is
not shaped; it belongs to the spiritual world and not to this world of
sensible things. It contains some spark of the divine and it is restless
till it rests again in that primal fire; but, again, it is recorded in
tradition that the Prophet said, “God Most High created Adam in His own
form (_sura_).” Al-Ghazzali takes that to mean that there is a likeness
between the spirit of man and God in essence, quality, and actions.
Further, the spirit of man rules the body as God rules the world.
Man’s body is a microcosm beside the macrocosm of this world, and they
correspond, part by part. Is, then, God simply the _anima mundi_? No,
because He is the creator of all by His will, the sustainer and destroyer
by His will. Al-Ghazzali comes to this by a study of himself. His primary
conception is, _volo ergo sum_. It is not thought which impresses him,
but volition. From thought he can develop nothing; from will can come the
whole round universe. But if God, the Creator, is a Willer, so, too, is
the soul of man. They are kin, and, therefore, man can know and recognize
God. “He who knows his own soul, knows his Lord,” said another tradition.
This view of the nature of the soul is essential to the Sufi position
and is probably borrowed from it. But there are in it two possibilities
of heresy, if the view be pushed any further. It tends (1) to destroy
the important Muslim dogma of God’s Difference (_mukhalafa_) from all
created things, and (2) to maintain that the souls of men are partakers
of the divine nature and will return to it at death. Al-Ghazzali labored
to safeguard both dangers, but they were there and showed themselves
in time. Just as the Aristotelian + neo-Platonic philosophers reached
the position that the universe with all its spheres was God, so, later,
Sufis came to the other pantheistic position that God was the world.
Before the atomic scholastics the same danger also lay. It is part of
the irony of the history of Muslim theology that the very emphasis on
the transcendental unity should lead thus to pantheism. Al-Ghazzali’s
endeavor was to strike the _via media_. The Hegelian Trinity might have
appealed to him.
[Sidenote: DIVINE ORIGIN OF SCIENCES]
To return, his views on science, as we have already seen, were the same
as those of the contemporary students of natural philosophy. Their
teachings he accepted, and, so far, he can be compared to a theologian
of the present day, who accepts evolution and explains it to suit
himself. His world was framed on what is commonly called the Ptolemaic
system. He was no flat-earth man like the present Ulama of Islam; God
had “spread out the earth like a carpet,” but that did not hinder him
from regarding it as a globe. Around it revolve the spheres of the seven
planets and that of the fixed stars; Alphonso the Wise had not yet added
the crystalline sphere and the _primum mobile_. All that astronomers and
mathematicians teach us of the laws under which these bodies move is
to be accepted. Their theory of eclipses and of other phenomena of the
heavens is true, whatever the ignorant and superstitious may clamor. Yet
it is to be remembered that the most important facts and laws have been
divinely revealed. As the weightiest truths of medicine are to be traced
back to the teaching of the prophets, so there are conjunctions in the
heavens which occur only once in a thousand years and which man can yet
calculate because God has taught him their laws. And all this structure
of the heavens and the earth is the direct work of God, produced out of
nothing by His will, guided by His will, ever dependent for existence on
His will, and one day to pass away at His command. So al-Ghazzali joins
science and revelation. Behind the order of nature lies the personal,
omnipotent God who says, “Be!” and it is. The things of existence do not
proceed from Him by any emanation or evolution, but are produced directly
by Him.
[Sidenote: THE THREE WORLDS]
Further, there is another side of al-Ghazzali’s attitude toward the
physical universe that deserves attention, but which is very difficult
to grasp or express. Perhaps it may be stated thus: Existence has
three modes; there is existence in the _alam al-mulk_, in the _alam
al-jabarut_, and in the _alam al-malakut_. The first is this world of
ours which is apparent to the senses; it exists by the power (_qudra_)
of God, one part proceeding from another in constant change. The _alam
al-malakut_ exists by God’s eternal decree, without development,
remaining in one state without addition or diminution. The _alam
al-jabarut_ comes between these two; it seems externally to belong to
the first, but in respect of the power of God which is from all eternity
(_al-qudra al-azaliya_) it is included in the second. The soul (_nafs_)
belongs to the _alam al-malakut_, is taken from it and returns to it. In
sleep and in ecstasy, even in this world, it can come into contact with
the world from which it is derived. This is what happens in dreams—“sleep
is the brother of death,” says al-Ghazzali; and thus, too, the saints
and the prophets attain divine knowledge. Some angels belong to the
world of _malakut_; some to that of _jabarut_, apparently those who
have shown themselves here as messengers of God. The things in the
heavens, the preserved tablet, the pen, the balance, etc., belong to the
world of _malakut_. On the one hand, these are not sensible, corporeal
things, and, on the other, these terms for them are not metaphors. Thus
al-Ghazzali avoids the difficulty of Muslim eschatology with its bizarre
concreteness. He rejects the right to allegorize—these things are real,
actual; but he relegates them to this world of _malakut_. Again, the
Qur’an, Islam, and Friday (the day of public worship) are personalities
in the world of _malakut_ and _jabarut_. So, too, the world of _mulk_
must appear as a personality at the bar of these other worlds at the last
day. It will come as an ugly old woman, but Friday as a beautiful young
bride. This personal Qur’an belongs to the world of _jabarut_, but Islam
to that of _malakut_.
But just as those three worlds are not thought of as separate in time,
so they are not separate in space. They are not like the seven heavens
and seven earths of Muslim literalists, which stand, story-fashion, one
above the other. Rather they are, as expressed above, modes of existence,
and might be compared to the speculations on another life in space of n
dimensions, framed, from a very different starting-point and on a basis
of pure physics, by Balfour Stewart and Tait in their “Unseen Universe.”
On another side they stand in close kinship to the Platonic world of
ideas, whether through neo-Platonism or more immediately. Sufiism at its
best, and when stripped of the trappings of Muslim tradition and Qur’anic
exegesis, has no reason to shrink from the investigation either of the
physicist or of the metaphysician. And so it is not strange to find that
all Muslim thinkers have been tinged with mysticism to a greater or less
degree, though they may not all have embraced formal Sufiism and accepted
its vocabulary and system. This is true of al-Farabi, who was avowedly a
Sufi; true also of Ibn Sina, who, though nominally an Aristotelian, was
essentially a neo-Platonist, and admitted the possibility of intercourse
with superior beings and with the Active Intellect, of miracles and
revelations; true even of Ibn Rushd, who does not venture to deny the
immediate knowledge of the Sufi saints, but only argues that experience
of it is not sufficiently general to be made a basis for theological
science.
In ethics, as we have already seen, the position of al-Ghazzali is a
simple one. All our laws and theories upon the subject, the analysis of
the qualities of the mind, good and bad, the tracing of hidden defects
to their causes—all these things we owe to the saints of God to whom
God Himself has revealed them. Of these there have been many at all
times and in all countries, and without them and their labors and the
light which God has vouchsafed to them, we could never know ourselves.
Here, as everywhere, comes out al-Ghazzali’s fundamental position that
the ultimate source of all knowledge is revelation from God. It may
be major revelation, through accredited prophets who come forward as
teachers, divinely sent and supported by miracles and by the evident
truth of their message appealing to the human heart, or it may be minor
revelation—subsidiary and explanatory—through the vast body of saints of
different grades, to whom God has granted immediate knowledge of Himself.
Where the saints leave off, the prophets begin; and, apart from such
teaching, man, even in physical science, would be groping in the dark.
[Sidenote: AGNOSTIC ATTITUDE]
This position becomes still more prominent in his philosophical system.
His agnostic attitude toward the results of pure thought has been already
sketched. It is essentially the same as that taken up by Mansel in his
Bampton lectures on “The Limits of Religious Thought.” Mansel, a pupil
and continuator of Hamilton, developed and emphasized Hamilton’s doctrine
of the relativity of knowledge, and applied it to theology, maintaining
that we cannot know or think of the absolute and infinite, but only of
the relative and finite. Hence, he went on to argue, we can have no
positive knowledge of the attributes of God. This, though disguised by
the methods and language of scholastic philosophy, is al-Ghazzali’s
attitude in the _Tahafut_. Mansel’s opponents said that he was like a man
sitting on the branch of a tree and sawing off his seat. Al-Ghazzali, for
the support of his seat, went back to revelation, either major, in the
books sent down to the prophets, or minor, in the personal revelations
of God’s saints. Further, it was not only in the Muslim schools that
this attitude toward philosophy prevailed. Yehuda Halevi (d. A.D. 1145;
al-Ghazzali, d. 1111) also maintains in his _Kusari_ the insufficiency of
philosophy in the highest questions of life, and bases religious truth on
the incontrovertible historical facts of revelation. And Maimonides (d.
A.D. 1204) in his _Moreh Nebuchim_ takes essentially the same position.
Of his views on dogmatic theology little need be said. Among modern
theologians he stands nearest to Ritschl. Like Ritschl, he rejects
metaphysics and opposes the influence of any philosophical system on
his theology. The basis must be religious phenomena, simply accepted
and correlated. Like Ritschl, too, he was emphatically ethical in his
attitude; he lays stress on the _value for us_ of a doctrine or a piece
of knowledge. Our source of religious knowledge is revelation, and
beyond a certain point we must not inquire as to the how and why of that
knowledge. To do so would be to enter metaphysics and the danger-zone
where we lose touch with vital realities and begin to use mere words. On
one point he goes beyond Ritschl, and, on another, Ritschl goes beyond
him. In his devotion to the facts of the religious consciousness Ritschl
did not go so far as to become a mystic, indeed rejected mysticism with
a conscious indignation; al-Ghazzali did become a mystic. But, on the
other hand, Ritschl refused absolutely to enter upon the nature of God or
upon the divine attributes—all that was mere metaphysics and heathenism;
al-Ghazzali did not so far emancipate himself, and his only advance was
to keep the doctrine on a strictly Qur’anic basis. So it stands written;
not, so man is compelled by the nature of things to think.
[Sidenote: WORK AND INFLUENCE]
His work and influence in Islam may be summed up briefly as follows:
_First_, he led men back from scholastic labors upon theological
dogmas to living contact with, study and exegesis of, the Word and
the traditions. What happened in Europe when the yoke of mediæval
scholasticism was broken, what is happening with us now, happened in
Islam under his leadership. He could be a scholastic with scholastics,
but to state and develop theological doctrine on a Scriptural basis was
emphatically his method. We should now call him a Biblical theologian.
_Second_, in his teaching and moral exhortations he reintroduced the
element of fear. In the _Munqidh_ and elsewhere he lays stress on the
need of such a striking of terror into the minds of the people. His was
no time, he held, for smooth, hopeful preaching; no time for optimism
either as to this world or the next. The horrors of hell must be kept
before men; he had felt them himself. We have seen how other-worldly
was his own attitude, and how the fear of the Fire had been the supreme
motive in his conversion; and so he treated others.
_Third_, it was by his influence that Sufiism attained a firm and assured
position in the Church of Islam.
_Fourth_, he brought philosophy and philosophical theology within the
range of the ordinary mind. Before his time they had been surrounded,
more or less, with mystery. The language used was strange; its vocabulary
and terms of art had to be specially learned. No mere reader of the
Arabic of the street or the mosque or the school could understand at once
a philosophical tractate. Greek ideas and expressions, passing through a
Syriac version into Arabic, had strained to the uttermost the resources
of even that most flexible tongue. A long training had been thought
necessary before the elaborate and formal method of argumentation could
be followed. All this al-Ghazzali changed, or at least tried to change.
His _Tahafut_ is not addressed to scholars only; he seeks with it a wider
circle of readers, and contends that the views, the arguments, and the
fallacies of the philosophers should be perfectly intelligible to the
general public.
Of these four phases of al-Ghazzali’s work, the first and the third
are undoubtedly the most important. He made his mark by leading Islam
back to its fundamental and historical facts, and by giving a place
in its system to the emotional religious life. But it will have been
noticed that in none of the four phases was he a pioneer. He was not
a scholar who struck out a new path, but a man of intense personality
who entered on a path already blazed and made it the common highway. We
have here his character. Other men may have been keener logicians, more
learned theologians, more gifted saints; but he, through his personal
experiences, had attained so overpowering a sense of the divine realities
that the force of his character—once combative and restless, now narrowed
and intense—swept all before it, and the Church of Islam entered on a new
era of its existence.
So much space it has been necessary to give to this great man. Islam has
never outgrown him, has never fully understood him. In the renaissance
of Islam which is now rising to view his time will come and the new life
will proceed from a renewed study of his works.
[Sidenote: LATER ASH‘ARITES]
From this time on, the Ash‘arites may be fairly regarded as the dominant
school so far as the East is concerned. Saladin (d. 589) did much to aid
in the establishment of this hegemony. He was a devout Muslim with the
taste of an amateur for theological literature. Anecdotes tell how he had
a special little catechism composed, and used himself to instruct his
children in it. He founded theological academies in Egypt at Alexandria
and Cairo, the first there except the Fatimid Hall of Science. One of the
few blots on his name is the execution of the pantheistic Sufi, Shihab
ad-Din as-Suhrawardi, at Aleppo in 587. Meanwhile, in the farther East,
Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi (d. 606) was writing his great commentary on the
Qur’an, the _Mafatih al-Ghayb_, “The Keys of the Unseen,” and carrying
on the work of al-Ghazzali. The title of his commentary itself shows the
dash of mysticism in his teaching, and he was in correspondence with Ibn
Arabi, the arch-Sufi of the time. He studied philosophy, too, commented
on works of Ibn Sina, and fought the philosophers on their own ground
as al-Ghazzali had done. Kalam and philosophy are now, in the eyes of
the theologians, a true philosophy and a false. Philosophy has taken the
place of Mu‘tazilism and the other heresies. The enemies of the faith
are outside its pale, and the scholasticizing of philosophy goes on
steadily. According to some, a new stage was marked by al-Baydawi (d.
685), who confused inextricably philosophy and kalam, but the newness
can have been comparative only. A century later al-Iji (d. 756) writes
a book, _al-Mawaqif_, on kalam, half of which is given to metaphysics
and the other half to dogmatics. At-Taftazani is another name worthy of
mention. He died in 791, after a laborious life as a controversialist and
commentator. When we reach Ibn Khaldun (d. 808), the first philosophical
historian and the greatest until the nineteenth century of our era, we
find that kalam has fallen again from its high estate. It has become a
scholastic discipline, useful only to repel the attacks of heretics and
unbelievers; and of heretics, says Ibn Khaldun, there are now none left.
Reason, he goes on, cannot grasp the nature of God; cannot weigh His
unity nor measure His qualities. God is unknowable and we must accept
what we are told about Him by His prophets. Such was the result of the
destruction of philosophy in Islam.