Al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazali (c. 1058 – 19 December 1111), also known in Latin as Algazelus, was a Persian scholar and polymath who followed the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam. He worked as a jurisconsult, legal theorist, mufti, philosopher, theologian, logician, and mystic, and is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Islamic history. He is considered the mujaddid—a renewer of the faith—for the 11th century, a role that, according to a prophetic hadith, appears once every century to restore the Islamic community. His contemporaries held his writings in such high esteem that they gave him the title "Proof of Islam" (Ḥujjat al-Islām). He was also a prominent mujtahid within the Shafi'i legal school.

Much of his work arose from a spiritual crisis that began after he was appointed head of the Nizamiyya of Baghdad, then the most prestigious academic post in the Muslim world. He came to believe he had chosen status and ego over God, which led him to disappear from public life for over a decade. During this period, he wrote many of his major works. He felt that the Islamic spiritual tradition had grown stagnant and that the spiritual sciences taught by the earliest Muslims had been forgotten. This conviction inspired his magnum opus, *Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn* ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences"). Another key work, *Tahāfut al-Falāsifa* ("Incoherence of the Philosophers"), is a landmark in philosophy because it critiques Aristotelian science, a critique later developed in 14th-century Europe.

Al-Ghazali was born around 1058 in Tus, in the district of Khorasan. He was of Persian descent and was born in the town of Tabaran, shortly after the Seljuks entered Baghdad and ended the Shia Buyid amir al-umaras, marking the start of Seljuk influence over the Caliphate. As the Seljuk dynasty grew, Abu Suleiman Dawud Chaghri Beg married his daughter, Arslan Khatun Khadija, to Caliph al-Qa'im in 1056.

His first biographer, 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records that al-Ghazali began studying fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) with a local teacher named Ahmad al-Radhakani and with Abu ali Farmadi, a Naqshbandi Sufi from Tus. He later studied under al-Juwayni, a distinguished jurist and theologian considered the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time, in Nishapur, possibly after a period of study in Gurgan. After al-Juwayni died in 1085, al-Ghazali left Nishapur and joined the court of Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuk empire, likely based in Isfahan. Nizam al-Mulk gave him the titles "Brilliance of the Religion" and "Eminence among the Religious Leaders," and in July 1091 appointed him to the most prestigious and challenging professorial position of the era: the Nizamiyya of Baghdad.

In 1095, he experienced a spiritual crisis, abandoned his career, and left Baghdad, claiming he was going on pilgrimage to Mecca. He arranged for his family, gave away his wealth, and adopted an ascetic lifestyle. According to biographer Duncan B. Macdonald, he stepped away from scholastic work to confront spiritual experience and a more ordinary understanding of "the Word and the Traditions." After time in Damascus and Jerusalem, and a visit to Medina and Mecca in 1096, he returned to Tus, where he spent several years in uzla (seclusion). This seclusion meant he stopped teaching at state-sponsored institutions, but he continued to publish, receive visitors, and teach at the zawiya (private madrasa) and khanqah (Sufi lodge) he had built.

Fakhr al-Mulk, grand vizier to Ahmad Sanjar, pressed al-Ghazali to return to the Nizamiyya of Nishapur. He reluctantly agreed in 1106, rightly fearing resistance and controversy. He later went back to Tus and in 1110 declined an invitation from the grand vizier of the Seljuq Sultan Muhammad I to return to Baghdad. He died on 19 December 1111. According to al-Farisi, he had several daughters but no sons. He was buried near his home in Tus, Iran.

Al-Ghazali helped develop a systematic view of Sufism and worked to integrate it into mainstream Islam. He belonged to the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence and the Asharite school of theology. He held titles including Zayn al-Dīn and Ḥujjat al-Islām. He is seen as a key member of the influential Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy and the most important refuter of the Mutazilites, though his beliefs and thoughts differed in some aspects from orthodox Asharism.

In 1095, at the peak of his career as the leading scholar of the Islamic world's most prestigious institution, he stepped down for a journey that lasted ten years. He suffered from emotional and physical difficulties, including loss of appetite, indigestion, and trouble speaking during lectures. When leading medical practitioners could not cure him and all medicines failed, they concluded the cause was psychological and spiritual, and that only a spiritual remedy would work. He was critical of the social and spiritual state of his institution, his scholarly peers, and the political class. He initially said he was going on the Hajj pilgrimage to avoid attempts to stop his decision.