AL GHAZZALI
(AD 1058--1111)
Al Ghazzali is one of the deepest thinkers, greatest theologians and
profoundest moralists of Islam. In all Muhammadan lands he is celebrated
both as an apologist of orthodoxy and a warm advocate of Sufi mysticism.
Intimately acquainted with all the learning of his time, he was not only
one of the numerous oriental philosophers who traverse every sphere of
intellectual activity, but one of those rarer minds whose originality is
not crushed by their learning. He was imbued with a sacred enthusiasm
for the triumph of his faith, and his whole life was dedicated to one
purpose--the defence of Islam. As Browning says, "he made life consist
of one idea." His full name was Abu Hamid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn
Ahmed Algazzali, and he was born at Tus in Khorassan, 1058 A.D., where a
generation earlier Firdausi, the author of the Shahnama, had died. Tus
was already famous for learning and culture, and later on Ghazzali's own
fame caused the town to become a centre of pilgrimage for pious Moslems,
till it was laid in ruins by Genghis Khan, a century after Ghazzali's
death.
His birth occurred at a time when the power of the Caliphs had been long
on the wane, and the Turkish militia, like the Pretorian guards of the
later Roman empire, were the real dispensers of power. While the
political unity of Islam had been broken up into a number of
mutually-opposed states, Islam itself was threatened by dangers from
without. In Spain, Alphonso II. had begun to press the Moors hardly.
Before Ghazzali was forty, Peter the Hermit was preaching the First
Crusade, and during his lifetime Baldwin of Bouillon was proclaimed King
in the Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem. But more serious than these outer
foes was the great schism which had split Islam into the two great
opposing parties of Shiahs and Sunnis--a schism which was embittered and
complicated by the struggle of rival dynasties for power. While the
Shiites prevailed in Egypt and Persia, the Turks and Seljuks were
Sunnis. In Bagdad the seat of the Caliphate during the reign of Al
Kasim, when Ghazzali was a youth, fatal encounters between the two
contending factions were of daily occurrence. Ghazzali's native city was
Shiite, and not till Khorassan had been conquered by the Ghaznevides and
Seljuks did Sunni teaching prevail there. Yet, however bitterly Shiahs
and Sunnis might be opposed to each other, they both counted as orthodox
and were agreed as to the fundamental principles of Islam, nor did their
strife endanger the religion itself. But besides the two great parties
of Shiahs and Sunnis, a mass of heretical sects, classed under the
common name of Mutazilites, had sprung up within Islam. These heretics
had studied Aristotle and Greek philosophy in Arabic translations, and
for a long time all that the orthodox could do was to thunder anathemas
at them and denounce all speculation. But at last Al Asha'ari, himself
formerly a Mutazilite, renounced his heresies, and sought to defend
orthodoxy and confute the heretics on philosophical grounds.
The Mutazilites had cultivated the study of philosophy with especial
zeal, and therefore the struggle with them was a fierce one, complicated
as it was by political animosity. The most dangerous sect of all was
that of the Ismailians and Assassins, with their doctrine of a hidden
Imam or leader. In some of his works Ghazzali gives special attention to
confuting these.
The whole aspect and condition of Islam during Ghazzali's lifetime was
such as to cause a devout Moslem deep distress and anxiety. It is
therefore natural that a man who, after long and earnest search, had
found rest and peace in Islam, should have bent all the energies of his
enthusiastic character to oppose these destructive forces to the utmost.
Ghazzali is never weary of exhorting those who have no faith to study
the Muhammadan revelation; he defends religion in a philosophical way
against the philosophers, refutes the heretics, chides the laxity of the
Shiites, defends the austere principles of the Schafiites, champions
orthodoxy, and finally, by word and example, urges his readers towards
the mysticism and asceticism of the Sufis. His numerous writings are all
directed to one or another of these objects. As a recognition of his
endeavours, the Muhammadan Church has conferred upon him the title of
"Hujjat al Islam," "the witness of Islam."
It is a fact worthy of notice that when the power of the Caliphs was
shattered and Muhammadanism, already in a state of decline, precisely at
that period theology and all other sciences were flourishing.
The reason of this may be found in the fact that nearly all the
Muhammadan dynasties, however much they might be opposed to each other,
zealously favoured literature and science. Besides this, the more
earnest spirits, weary of the political confusions of the time, devoted
themselves all the more fervently to cultivating the inner life, in
which they sought compensation and refuge from outward distractions.
Ghazzali was the most striking figure among all these. Of his early
history not much is known. His father is said to have died while he was
a child, but he had a brother Abu'l Futuh Ahmed Alghazzali, who was in
great favour with the Sultan Malik Shah, and owing to his zeal for Islam
had won the title of "Glory of the Faith." From the similarity of their
pursuits we gather that the relationship between the brothers must have
been a close one. Ibn Khalliqan the historian informs us that later on
Abu'l Futuh succeeded his brother as professor, and abridged his most
important literary work, "The Revival of the religious sciences." While
still a youth, Ghazzali studied theology at Jorjan under the Imam Abu
Nasr Ismail. On his return journey from Jorjan to Tus, he is said to
have fallen into the hands of robbers. They took from him all that he
had, but at his earnest entreaty returned to him his note books, at the
same time telling him that he could know nothing really, if he could be
so easily deprived of his knowledge. This made him resolve for the
future to learn everything by heart.
Later on Ghazzali studied at Nishapur under the celebrated Abu'l-Maali.
Here also at the court of the Vizier Nizam-ul-mulk (the school-fellow of
Omar Khayyam) he took a distinguished part in those discussions on
poetry and philosophy which were so popular in the East. In 1091
Nizam-ul-mulk appointed him to the professorship of Jurisprudence in the
Nizamiya College at Bagdad, which he had founded twenty-four years
previously. Here Ghazzali lectured to a class of 300 students. In his
leisure hours, as he informs us in his brief autobiography, "Al munkidh
min uddallal" ("The Deliverance from error") he busied himself with the
study of philosophy. He also received a commission from the Caliph to
refute the doctrine of the Ismailians.
In the first chapter it has been mentioned how a deep-seated unrest and
thirst for peace led him, after many mental struggles, to throw up his
appointment and betake himself to religious seclusion at Damascus and
Jerusalem. This, together with his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina,
lasted nearly ten years. Ibn Khalliqan informs us that he also went to
Egypt and stayed some time in Alexandria. Here the fame of the
Almoravide leader in Spain, Yusuf ibn Tashifin, is said to have reached
Ghazzali, and to have made him think of journeying thither. This prince
had begun those campaigns in Spain against the Cid and other Christian
leaders which were destined to add Andalusia to his Moroccan dominions.
By these victories in the West he had to some extent retrieved the
decline of Islam in the East. It is natural to suppose that the
enthusiastic Ghazzali would gladly have met with this champion of
Muhammadanism. The news of Yusuf ibn Tashifin's death in 1106 seems to
have made him renounce his intention of proceeding to Spain.
The realisation of Ghazzali's wish to withdraw from public affairs and
give himself to a contemplative life was now interrupted. The requests
of his children and other family affairs, of which we have no exact
information, caused him to return home. Besides this, the continued
progress of the Ismailians, the spread of irreligious doctrines, and the
increasing religious indifference of the masses not only filled Ghazzali
and his Sufi friends with profound grief but determined them to stem the
evil with the whole force of their philosophy, the ardour of vital
conviction, and the authority of noble example.
In addition, the governor of Nishapur, Muhammad Ibn Malikshah, had asked
Ghazzali to proceed thither in order to help to bring about a religious
revival. Thus, after an absence of ten years, he returned to Nishapur to
resume his post as teacher. But his activity at this period was directed
to a different aim than that of the former one. Regarding the contrast
he speaks like a Muhammadan Thomas á Kempis. Formerly, he says, he
taught a knowledge which won him fame and glory, but now he taught a
knowledge which brought just the opposite. Inspired with an earnest
desire for the spiritual progress of his co-religionists and himself,
and convinced that he was called to this task by God, he prays the
Almighty to lead and enlighten him, so that he may do the same for
others.
How long Ghazzali occupied his professorship at Nishapur the second time
is not precisely clear. Only five or six years of his life remained, and
towards the close he again resigned his post to give himself up to a
life of contemplation to which he felt irresistibly drawn, in his
native city of Tus. Here he spent the rest of days in devotional
exercises in friendly intercourses with other Sufis and in religious
instruction of the young. He died, devout as he lived, in the
fifty-fourth year of his age, A.D. 1111. He founded a convent for Sufis
and a professorship of jurisprudence.
Ghazzali's activity as an author during his relatively short life was
enormous. According to the literary historians, he is the author of
ninety-nine different works. These are not all known to us, but there
are existing in the West a considerable quantity of them, some in Latin
and Hebrew translations, as he was much studied by the Jews in the
Middle Ages. A writer in the Jewish Encyclopædia says (_sub. voc._),
"From his 'Makasid-al-Falasifah' in which he expounded logic, physics
and metaphysics according to Aristotle, many a Jewish student of
philosophy derived much accurate information. It was not, however,
through his attacks on philosophy that Ghazzali's authority was
established among Jewish thinkers of the middle ages, but through the
ethical teachings in his theological works. He approached the ethical
idea of Judaism to such an extent that some supposed him to be actually
drifting in that direction."
Although Ghazzali was a Persian, both by race and birthplace, most of
his works are composed in Arabic, that language being as familiar to
Muhammadan theologians as Latin to those of Europe in the Middle Ages.
One of his most important works is the "Tahafut al falasifah,"
"Destruction of the Philosophers," which the great Averroes endeavoured
to refute. Somewhat in the style of Mr. Balfour's "Defence of
philosophic doubt," Ghazzali attempts to erect his religious system on
a basis of scepticism. He denies causation as thoroughly as Hume, but
asserts that the divine mind has ordained that certain phenomena shall
always occur in a certain order, and that philosophy without faith is
powerless to discover God. Although chiefly famous in the West as a
philosopher, he himself would probably have repudiated the title. He
tells us that his object in studying philosophy was to confute the
philosophers. His true element was not philosophy but religion, with
which his whole being was penetrated, and which met all his spiritual
needs. Even in his most heterogeneous studies he always kept before him
one aim--the confirmation, spread, and glorification of Islam.
It is true that more than one of his contemporaries accused him of
hypocrisy, saying that he had an esoteric doctrine for himself and his
private circle of friends, and an exoteric for the vulgar. His Sufistic
leanings might lend some colour to this accusation, it being a
well-known Sufi habit to cloak their teaching under a metaphorical veil,
wine representing the love of God, etc., as in Hafiz and Omar Khayyam.
Against this must be set the fact that in his autobiography written near
the close of his life, he constantly refers to his former works, which
he would hardly have done had he been conscious of any striking
discrepancy between his earlier and his later teaching. There is no
reason to doubt his previously-quoted statement that he "studied
philosophy in order to refute the philosophers."
He was, at any rate, intensely indignant at having his orthodoxy
impugned, as appears from a striking story narrated by the Arabic
historian Abu'l Feda. He tells us that Ghazzali's most important work,
"The revival of the religious sciences" had created a great sensation
when it reached Cordova. The Muhammadan theologians of Spain were
rigidly orthodox, and accused the work of being tainted by heresy. They
represented to the Caliph Ali Ibn Yusuf that not only this but all
Ghazzali's other works which circulated in Andalusia should be collected
and burnt, which was accordingly done. Not long after, a young Berber
from North Africa named Ibn Tumart wandered to Bagdad, where he attended
Ghazzali's lectures. Ghazzali noticing the foreigner, accosted him, and
inquired regarding religious affairs in the West, and how his works had
been received there. To his horror he learned that they had been
condemned as heretical and committed to the flames by order of the
Almoravide Caliph Ali. Upon this, Ghazzali, raising his hands towards
heaven, exclaimed in a voice shaken with emotion, "O God, destroy his
kingdom as he has destroyed my books, and take all power from him." Ibn
Tumart, in sympathy with his teacher, said, "O Imam[44] Ghazzali, pray
that thy wish may be accomplished by my means." And so it happened. Ibn
Tumart returned to his North African, proclaimed himself a Mahdi, gained
a large following among the Berbers, and overthrew Ali and the dynasty
of the Almoravides. This story is not entirely beyond doubt, but shows
the importance attached by Ghazzali's contemporaries to his influence
and teaching.
As an example of Ghazzali's ethical earnestness, we may quote the
following from his Ihya-ul-ulum ("Revival of the religious sciences").
He refers to the habit common to all Muhammadans of ejaculating, "We
take refuge in God." "By the fear of God," he says, "I do not mean a
fear like that of women when their eyes swim and their hearts beat at
hearing some eloquent religious discourse, which they quickly forget and
turn again to frivolity. There is no real fear at all. He who fears a
thing flees from it, and he who hopes for a thing strives for it, and
the only fear that will save thee is the fear that forbids sinning
against God and instils obedience to Him. Beware of the shallow fear of
women and fools, who, when they hear of the terrors of the Lord, say
lightly, 'We take refuge in God,' and at the same time continue in the
very sins which will destroy them. Satan laughs at such pious
ejaculations. They are like a man who should meet a lion in a desert,
while there is a fortress at no great distance away, and when he sees
the ravenous beast, should stand exclaiming, 'I take refuge in that
fortress,' without moving a step towards it. What will such an
ejaculation profit him? In the same way, merely ejaculating 'I take
refuge in God' will not protect thee from the terrors of His judgment
unless thou really take refuge in Him."
Ghazzali's moral earnestness is equally apparent in the following
extract from his work "Munqidh min uddallal" "The Deliverance from
error," in which he sets himself to combat the general laxity and
heretical tendencies of his time:--
"Man is composed of a body and a heart; by the word 'heart' I understand
that spiritual part of him which is the seat of the knowledge of God,
and not the material organ of flesh and blood which he possesses in
common with the animals. Just as the body flourishes in health and
decays in disease, so the heart is either spiritually sound or the prey
of a malady which ends in death.
"Now ignorance of God is a deadly poison, and the revolt of the passions
is a disease for which the knowledge of God and obedience to Him,
manifested in self-control, are the only antidote and remedy. Just as
remedies for the body are only known to physicians who have studied
their secret properties, so the remedies for the soul are devotional
practices as defined by the prophets, the effects of which transcend
reason.
"The proper work of reason is to confess the truth of inspiration and
its own impotence to grasp what is only revealed to the prophets; reason
takes us by the hand and hands us over to the prophets, as blind men
commit themselves to their guides, or as the desperately sick to their
physicians. Such are the range and limits of reason; beyond prophetic
truth it cannot take a step.
"The causes of the general religious languor and decay of faith in our
time are chiefly to be traced to four classes of people: (1)
Philosophers, (2) Sufis, (3) Ismailians[45], (4) the Ulema or scholastic
theologians. I have specially interrogated those who were lax in their
religion; I have questioned them concerning their doubts, and spoken to
them in these terms: 'Why are you so lukewarm in your religion? If you
really believe in a future life, and instead of preparing for it sell it
in exchange for the goods of this world, you must be mad. You would not
give two things for one of the same quality; how can you barter eternity
for days which are numbered? If you do not believe, you are infidels,
and should seek to obtain faith.'
"In answer to such appeals, I have heard men say, 'If the observance of
religious practices is obligatory, it is certainly obligatory on the
Ulema or theologians. And what do we find amongst the most conspicuous
of these? One does not pray, another drinks wine, a third devours the
orphans' inheritance, and a fourth lets himself be bribed into giving
wrong decisions, and so forth.'
"Another man giving himself out as a Sufi said that he had attained to
such a high pitch of proficiency in Sufism that for him religious
practice was no longer necessary. An Ismailian said, 'Truth is very
difficult to find, and the road to it is strewn with obstacles;
so-called proofs are mutually contradictory, and the speculations of
philosophers cannot be trusted. But we have an Imam (leader) who is an
infallible judge and needs no proofs. Why should we abandon truth for
error?' A fifth said, 'I have studied the subject, and what you call
inspiration is really a high degree of sagacity. Religion is intended as
a restraint on the passions of the vulgar. But I, who do not belong to
the common herd, what have I to do with such stringent obligations? I am
a philosopher; science is my guide, and dispenses me from submission to
authority.'
"This last is the fate of philosophic theists, as we find it expressed
in the writings of Avicenna and Farabi. It is no rare thing to find men
who read the Koran, attend public worship at the mosque, and outwardly
profess the greatest respect for the religious law, in private indulging
in the use of wine and committing other shameful actions. If we ask such
men how it comes that although they do not believe in the reality of
inspiration, they attend public worship, they say that they practise it
as a useful exercise and as a safeguard for their fortunes and families.
If we further ask them why they drink wine, which is absolutely
prohibited in the Koran, they say, "The only object of the prohibition
of wine was to prevent quarrelling and violence. Wise men like ourselves
are in no danger of such excesses, and we drink in order to brighten and
kindle our imaginative powers.'
"Such is the faith of these pretended Moslems and their example has led
many astray who have been all the more encouraged to follow these
philosophers because their opponents have often been incompetent."
In the above extracts Ghazzali appears as a reformer, and it would not
be difficult to find modern parallels for the tendencies which he
describes. Professor D.B. Macdonald compares him to Ritschl in the
stress which he lays on personal religious experience, and in his
suspicion of the intrusion of metaphysics into the domain of religion.
Although intensely in earnest, he was diffident of his powers as a
preacher, and in a surviving letter says, "I do not think myself worthy
to preach; for preaching is like a tax, and the property on which it is
imposed is the acceptance of preaching to oneself. He then who has no
property, how shall he pay the tax? and he who lacks a garment how shall
he cover another? and 'When is the stick crooked and the shadow
straight?' And God revealed to Jesus (upon whom be peace). Preach to
thyself, then if thou acceptest the preaching, preach to mankind, and if
not, be ashamed before Me."[46]
Like other preachers of righteousness, Ghazzali strove to rouse men out
of lethargy by laying stress on the terrors of the world to come and the
Judgment Day. He was not one of those who think fear too base a motive
to appeal to; he strikes the note of warning again and again. Towards
the close of his life he composed a short work on eschatology "Al Durra
al Fakhirah" ("The precious pearl") of a sufficiently lurid character.
In it he says: "When you watch a dead man and see that the saliva has
run from his mouth, that his lips are contracted, his face black, the
whites of his eyes showing, know that he is damned, and that the fact of
his damnation in the other world has just been revealed to him. But if
you see the dead with a smile on his lips, a serene countenance, his
eyes half-closed, know that he has just received the good news of the
happiness which awaits him in the other life.
"On the Day of Judgment, when all men are gathered before the throne of
God, their accounts are all cast up, and their good and evil deeds
weighed. During all this time each man believes he is the only one with
whom God is dealing. Though peradventure at the same moment God is
taking account of countless multitudes whose number is known to Him
only. Men do not see each other, nor hear each other speak."
Regarding faith, Ghazzali says in the Ihya-ul-ulum:
"Faith consists of two elements, patience and gratitude. Both are graces
bestowed by God, and there is no way to God except faith. The Koran
expounds the excellence of patience in more than seventy passages. The
Caliph Ali said, 'Patience bears the same relation to faith as the head
does to the body. He who has no head, has no body, and he who has no
patience has no faith.'"
Ghazzali's philosophy is the re-action of his intensely religious
personality against the naturalistic tendencies of men like Avicenna and
Averroes. They believed in the eternity of matter, and reduced God to a
bare First Cause. He also, though sympathising with the Sufis,
especially on the side of their asceticism, was opposed to Sufistic
Pantheism. He conceived God chiefly as an active Will, and not merely as
the Self existent.
While his contemporaries were busying themselves with metaphysical
theories concerning matter and creation, Ghazzali laid stress on
self-observation and self-knowledge ("He who knows himself, knows God").
As St. Augustine found deliverance from doubt and error in his inward
experience of God, and Descartes in self-consciousness, so Ghazzali,
unsatisfied with speculation and troubled by scepticism, surrenders
himself to the will of God. Leaving others to demonstrate the existence
of God from the external world, he finds God revealed in the depths of
his own consciousness and the mystery of his own free will.
He fared as innovators in religion and philosophy always do, and was
looked upon during his lifetime as a heretic. He admits himself that his
"Destruction of the philosophers" was written to expose their mutual
contradictions. But he has no mere Mephistophelic pleasure in
destruction; he pulls down in order to erect. He is not a mere sceptic
on the one hand, nor a bigoted theologian on the other, and his verdict
on the Mutazilite heretics of his day is especially mild. Acute thinker
though he was, in him will and feeling predominated over thought. He
rejected the dogmatic and philosophic systems of his contemporaries as
mere jejune skeletons of reality, and devoted the close of his life to
study of the traditions and the Koran.
Like Augustine, he finds in God-derived self-consciousness the
starting-point for the thought, and like him emphasizes the fundamental
significance of the will. He sees everywhere the Divine Will at work in
what philosophers call natural causes. He seeks the truth, but seeks it
with a certain consciousness of possessing it already within himself.
He is a unique and lonely figure in Islam, and has to this day been only
partially understood. In the Middle Ages his fame was eclipsed by that
of Averroes, whose commentary on Aristotle is alluded to by Dante, and
was studied by Thomas Aquinas and the schoolmen. Averroes' system was
rounded and complete, but Ghazzali was one of those "whose reach exceeds
their grasp"; he was always striking after something he had not
attained, and stands in many respects nearer to the modern mind than
Averroes. Renan, though far from sympathising with his religious
earnestness, calls him "the most original mind among Arabian
philosophers," and De Boer says, "Men like Ghazzali have for philosophy
this significance that they are a problem alike for themselves and for
philosophy, because they are a fragment of spiritual reality that
requires explanation. By the force of their personality they remove
what hinders them in the construction of their systems without troubling
about correctness. Later thinkers make it their business to explain the
impulses that guide such men both in their work of destruction and of
restoration. Original minds like his supply food for reflection to
future generations."
[44] Imam, _i.e._ leader.
[45] A sect which declared the impossibility of arriving at truth
except through an "Imam" or infallible guide.
[46] D.B. Macdonald "Life of Ghazzali."