Who Was Imam al-Ghazali? His Life, His Books and His Turn to Sufism

Imam al-Ghazali (1058-1111) is one of the most widely read scholars in the history of Islam. He studied law, theology and philosophy, rose to the head of the greatest madrasa in Baghdad, then gave up that post and lived for about ten years on the Sufi path. The book he wrote in those years, the Ihya Ulum al-Din, has been read in madrasas and Sufi lodges for nine hundred years. He was given the title Hujjat al-Islam, “the Proof of Islam”. In this article we will look first at his life, then at why he left Baghdad, then at his main books, and finally at what he thought Sufism is.

His Life

Al-Ghazali was born in 1058 in Tus, a town in the region of Khorasan in the northeast of present-day Iran. His father spun and sold wool and died early. Al-Ghazali and his brother Ahmad were entrusted to a friend of their father; Ahmad later became a well-known Sufi himself. Al-Ghazali took his first lessons in Tus, then went to Jurjan. He found his real teacher in Nishapur: Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni, the greatest Shafi’i jurist and Ash’ari theologian of the age. He stayed with him until al-Juwayni died in 1085.

After his teacher’s death al-Ghazali entered the circle of Nizam al-Mulk, the vizier of the Seljuk sultans. Nizam al-Mulk had founded a chain of madrasas in the Seljuk cities, called the Nizamiyya, and the largest of them was in Baghdad. In 1091 he appointed al-Ghazali head teacher of that madrasa. Al-Ghazali was thirty-three years old. Hundreds of students came to his lectures, his books passed from hand to hand, and his word carried weight at the caliph’s court. He had reached the highest place a scholar could reach.

Why He Left Baghdad

Al-Ghazali told the story of this period years later in a book called al-Munqidh min al-Dalal. The title means “The Deliverer from Error”, and in it al-Ghazali writes his own story. He says that while he was teaching he examined his own intention and saw that it was not purely for God. Under his teaching lay the wish for position and fame. This knowledge gave him no rest. For months he was torn between going and staying; in the morning he decided to leave, by evening he changed his mind. Finally, in the summer of 1095, his tongue seized up and he could not lecture. He could not eat or sleep. By his own account the physicians found no medicine and said, “This illness comes from the heart, and its cure is for the heart to be freed of its trouble.”

In November 1095 al-Ghazali left Baghdad, saying that he was going on the pilgrimage. He left the chair to his brother Ahmad, set aside what his family needed to live, and gave the rest away. He went first to Damascus, where he withdrew to a corner of the Umayyad Mosque and busied himself with disciplining his nafs and with dhikr. Then he went to Jerusalem, and from there on the Hajj. In these years he lived like a poor dervish. About ten years later, in 1106, at the vizier’s insistence, he began teaching again at the Nizamiyya of Nishapur. But he did not stay long; he returned to Tus, the town where he was born. There he built a small madrasa next to his house and a lodge for dervishes. In the mornings he read the Quran and hadith with his students, and afterwards he worked on the knowledge of the heart. He died in Tus in December 1111, at the age of fifty-three. According to his brother Ahmad, on his last morning he made his ablution and prayed, asked for his shroud, kissed it and laid it over his eyes, and said, “Gladly, to enter the presence of the King.”

His Main Books

Al-Ghazali is said to have written more than a hundred works. Four are still read today.

The Ihya Ulum al-Din is his greatest book, and its name means “The Revival of the Religious Sciences”. Al-Ghazali wrote it in the years after he left Baghdad. In his view the religious sciences were no longer alive: the jurists knew the rulings but had forgotten the purpose of the ruling, and the theologians learned to win arguments but did not mend their hearts. The book has four parts. The first part deals with acts of worship, the second with the manners of daily life (eating, marriage, earning a living, friendship), the third with the traits that lead a person to ruin (anger, envy, pride, riya, love of the world), and the fourth with the states that save (repentance, patience, gratitude, trust in God, love). Each part has ten books; forty books in all.

The Tahafut al-Falasifa, “The Incoherence of the Philosophers”, is al-Ghazali’s critique of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi. He first summarized their philosophy in a book called Maqasid al-Falasifa; the summary was so fair that when it was translated into Latin, readers in Europe took him for a follower of Ibn Sina. Then, in the Tahafut, he showed on twenty questions that what the philosophers claimed to have proved by reason they had not in fact proved. Three of these he judged to be unbelief: the view that the world is eternal, the view that God does not know particular things, and the denial of bodily resurrection in the hereafter. Al-Ghazali was not against logic or mathematics; he defends them in the introduction of the book. What he opposed was the claim that reason gives certain knowledge beyond its own limit. A century later Ibn Rushd answered this book with his Tahafut al-Tahafut.

The al-Munqidh min al-Dalal is the source of the story told above. In it al-Ghazali examines one by one the four groups that seek the truth: the theologians, the Batinis, the philosophers and the Sufis. In his view theology is useful for refuting wrong opinions but does not give the heart certain knowledge. The Batinis say that truth can only be learned from a hidden imam; al-Ghazali refutes this by reason. The philosophers make reason bigger than it is. In the Sufis he finds something else: their knowledge comes not from books but from living.

The Kimiya-yi Sa’adat, “The Alchemy of Happiness”, is a shorter version of the Ihya written in Persian for ordinary readers. Besides these, a short letter to a student called Ayyuha al-Walad and a guide to daily worship called Bidayat al-Hidaya have also been widely read.

What Sufism Is, According to al-Ghazali

In the al-Munqidh al-Ghazali makes a comparison about the Sufis. It is one thing to know what health is, and another to be healthy; to know the definition of being full is one thing, to be full is another. Theology and philosophy give the first kind of knowledge. Sufism is of the second kind. When al-Ghazali read the books of the Sufis he understood that their way could not be learned by reading, but only by living it, that is, by dhawq (tasting) and hal (state). This is why he left Baghdad: he wanted to live what he already knew.

In al-Ghazali’s understanding of Sufism the Sharia and the tariqa cannot be separated. In his view a person who abandons prayer and fasting and claims spiritual states is like someone building a house without a foundation, and a person who gives legal rulings without knowing the purpose of the ruling is half a scholar. Every page of the Ihya holds these two together. In the section on the states of the heart he defines the nafs, the ruh, the heart and the intellect one by one, and explains which meaning the Sufis intend when they say “nafs”. No other scholar placed Sufism so firmly inside the learning of the Ahl al-Sunna; today, when someone asks where Sufism stands within Islam, his is the first name that comes up.

Al-Ghazali was not a Sufi who looked down on reason. In his view reason clears the road, removes errors and brings a person as far as the door. Going in through the door is the work of the heart. His own life shows the order of these two steps: first thirty years of learning, then ten years of training the nafs, then the Ihya, which joined the two.

Sources

• Al-Ghazali, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (c. 1108)
• Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din (c. 1097)
• Al-Ghazali, Tahafut al-Falasifa (1095)
• Al-Subki, Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyya al-Kubra (entry on al-Ghazali)
• Mustafa Çağrıcı, “Gazzâlî”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 13