Al-Ghazali
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| Iranian philosophy Medieval era |
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|---|---|
| Name: | Al-Ghazali |
| Birth: | 1058 |
| Death: | 1111 |
| School/tradition: | sufi |
| Influenced: | Sehrwardi, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Shah Waliullah[citation needed], Abdul-Qader Bedil |
Abu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī (1058-1111) (Persian: ابو حامد محمد ابن محمد غزالی), known as Algazel to the western medieval world, born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia (modern day Iran). He was a Muslim theologian, philosopher, and mystic of Persian origin[1] and remains as one of the most celebrated scholars in the history of Islamic thought.
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[edit] Biography
Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development of a systematic view of Sufism and its integration and acceptance in mainstream Islam. He was a scholar of orthodox Islam, belonging to the Shafi'i school of legal thought of Sunnite Islam and to the Asharite school of theology . Imam Ghazali received many titles: Sharaful A'emma (Arabic: شرف الائمه), Zainud din (Arabic: زین الدین), Hujjatul Islam, meaning "Proof of Islam" (Arabic: حجة الاسلام).
Al-Ghazali remains one of the most celebrated scholars in the history of Islamic thought. He lectured at the Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad (the highest ranked academy of the golden era of Islamic civilization) between 1091 and 1096. He was the scholar par excellence in the Islamic world. He had literally hundreds of scholars attending his lectures at the Nizamiyyah. His audience included scholars from other schools of jurisprudence. This position won him prestige, wealth and respect that even princes and viziers could not match.
After some years he distributed his wealth and left Baghdad to begin a spiritual journey that lasted over a decade. He went to Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron, Madinah, Mecca and back to Baghdad where he stopped briefly. He then left for Tus to spend the next several years in seclusion. He ended his seclusion for a short lecturing period at the Nizamiyyah of Nishapur in 1106. Later he returned to Tus where he remained until his death in December, 1111.
He is also viewed as the key member of the influential Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy and the most important refuter of Mutazilites. However, he chose a slightly different position in compare with Asharites; his beliefs and thoughts differ, in some aspects, from the orthodox Asharite school.[2] His 11th century book titled "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology, as Ghazali effectively discovered philosophical skepticism that would not be commonly seen in the West until René Descartes, George Berkeley and David Hume. The encounter with skepticism led Ghazali to embrace 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.
The Incoherence also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle and Plato. The book took aim at the falasifa, a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them Avicenna and Al-Farabi) who drew intellectually upon the Ancient Greeks. Ghazali bitterly denounced Aristotle, Socrates and other Greek writers as non-believers and labelled those who employed their methods and ideas as corrupters of the Islamic faith.
In the next century, Averroes drafted a lengthy rebuttal of Ghazali's Incoherence entitled the Incoherence of the Incoherence; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set.
Ghazali's influence has been compared to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas in Christian theology (he has been called the "Thomas Aquinas of Islam" by some), but the two differed greatly in methods and beliefs. Whereas Ghazali rejected non-Islamic philosophers such as Aristotle and saw it fit to discard their teachings on the basis of their "unbelief," Aquinas embraced them and incorporated ancient Greek and Latin thought into his own philosophical writings. It is also believed that René Descartes' ideas from his book called "Discourse on Methods" were influenced by Al-ghazali and very much similar to Al-ghazali's work. Thus, some scholars today believe that Descartes was being dishonest in terms of writing the "Discourse on Methods" without giving any academic reference to Al-ghazali's work in his book.
Al-ghazali wrote two of his works in Persian: Kimyayé Sa'ādat (The Alchemy of Happiness) and Nasihatul Mulook (Counseling Kings).
[edit] Criticism
Although many scholars have acknowledged and praised his efforts, they are still critical of many aspects of his teachings. ibn Taymiyyah said, "If we assume that someone narrated the view of the salaf but what he narrated is far removed from what the view of the salaf actually is, then he has little knowledge of the view of the salaf, such as Abu’l-Ma’aali, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ibn al-Khateeb and the like, who did not have enough knowledge of hadith to qualify them as ordinary scholars of hadith, let alone as prominent scholars in that field. For none of these people had any knowledge of al-Bukhari and Muslim and their hadiths, apart from what they heard, which is similar to the situation of the ordinary Muslim, who cannot distinguish between a hadiith which is regarded as sahih and mutawatir according to the scholars of hadith, and a hadith which is fabricated and false. Their books bear witness to that, for they contain strange things and most of these scholars of ‘ilm al-kalam (science of kalam) and Sufis who have drifted away from the path of the salaf admit that, either at the time of death or before death. There are many such well-known stories. This Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, despite his brilliance, his devotion to Allah, his knowledge of kalam and philosophy, his asceticism and spiritual practices and his Sufism, ended up in a state of confusion and resorted to the path of those who claim to find out things through dreams and spiritual methods."[3]
Similarly, Imam an-Nawawi wrote in his book, "Chapter explaining some important things for which Imam al-Ghazali was denounced in his books which were unacceptable to the scholars of his madhab and others, namely his odd statements such as what he said in Muqaddimat al-Mantiq at the beginning of al-Mustasfa: ‘This is the introduction to all knowledge, and whoever does not learn this, his knowledge cannot be trusted at all.’"
In addition, Abu 'Umar ibn as-Salah, a well-known Shafi'i scholar wrote, said, "A lot has been said about Abu Hamid, and a lot has been narrated from him. As for these books (meaning al-Ghazali’s books which contradict the truth) no attention should be paid to them. As for the man himself, we should keep quiet about him, and refer his case to Allah."[4]
[edit] Works
Al-Ghazali had mentioned the number of his works "more than 70", in one of his letters to Sultan Sanjar in the late years of his life. However, there are more than 400 books attributed to him today. Making a judgment on the number of his works and their attribution to Ghazali is a difficult step. Many western scholars such as William Montgomery Watt (The works attributed to Al-Ghazali), Maurice Bouyges (Essai de chronologie des oeuvres d'Al-Ghazali) and others prepared a list of his works along with their comments on each book.
Finally, Abdel Rahman Badawi, an Egyptian scholar, prepared a comprehensive list of Ghazali's works under 457 titles:
- from 1 to 72: works definitely written by Ghazali
- from 73 to 95: works which are doubtful to be attributed to him
- 96 - 127: works which are not those of Ghazali with most certainty
- 128 - 224: are the name of the Chapters or Sections of Ghazali's books, which are mistakenly called as an single book of him
- 225 - 273: books which are written by other authors regarding Ghazali's works
- 274 - 389: books of other unknown scholars/writers regarding Ghazali's personality and state
- 389 - 457: the name of the manuscripts of Ghazali's works in different libraries of the world
The following list is short list of his Major works:
[edit] Theology
- al-Munqidh min al-dalal
- Hujjat al-Haq (Proof of the Truth)
- al-Iqtisad fil-i`tiqad (Median in Belief)
- al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle)
- al-maqsad al-asna fi sharah asma' Allahu al-husna (The best means in explaining Allah's Beautiful Names)
- Jawahir al-Qur'an wa duraruh (Jewels of the Qur'an and its Pearls)
- Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Lights)
- Kitab al-arba'in fi usul al-din
[edit] Sufism
- Mizan al-'amal (Criterion of Action)
- Ihya'ul ulum al-din, "Revival of Religious Sciences", Ghazali's most important work
- Kimiya-ye sa'ādat (The Alchemy of Happiness) [a resumé of Ihya'ul ulum, in Persian]
- Bidayat al-hidayah (Beginning of Guidance)
- Nasihat al-muluk (Counseling Kings) [in Persian]
- al-Munqidh min al-dalal (Rescuer from Error)
- Sir al-'alamian wa kashf ma' fi al-darian (Secret of the two worlds and uncovering what is two abodes)
[edit] Philosophy
- Maqasid al falasifa (Aims of Philosophers) [written in the beginning of his life, in favour of philosophy and presenting the basic theories in Philosophy, mostly influenced by Avicenna's works]
- Tahafut al-Falasifa (Incoherence of philosophers), [in this book he refutes the Greek Philosophy aiming at Avicenna and Al-Farabi; and of which Ibn Rushd wrote his famous refutation Tahafut al-tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) ]
- al-Qistas al-mustaqim (The Correct Balance)
[edit] Jurisprudence
- al-Mustasfa fi 'ilm al-isul (The Clarified in Legal Theory)
- Al-wasit fi al-mathab (The medium in the Jurisprudential school)
- Kitab tahzib al-Isul (Prunning on Legal Theory)
- Fatawy al-Ghazali (Verdicts of al-Ghazali)
- Asas al-Qiyas (foundation of Analogical reasoning).
[edit] Logic
- Miyar al-Ilm fi fan al-mantiq (Criterion of Knowledge in Logic)
- Mihakk al-nazar f'l-mantiq (The Touchstone of Proof in Logic)
- al-Qistas al-mustaqim (The Correct Balance)
[edit] Literature
- Laoust, H: La politique de Gazali, 1970
- Campanini, M.: Al-Ghazzali, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy 1996
- Watt, W M.: Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali, Edinburgh 1963
- Marmura: Al-Ghazali The Incoherence of the Philosophers, (2nd ed.). Brigham: Printing Press. ISBN 0-8425-2466-5.
[edit] Quotations
From The Way of The Sufi by Idris Shah:
- Possessions - You possess only whatever will not be lost in a shipwreck.
- Gain and Loss - I should like to know what a man who has no knowledge has really gained [...] and what a man of knowledge has not gained.
From Mizan al-'Amal:
- "Forget all you've heard and clutch what you see-
At sunrise what use is Saturn to thee?"
[edit] References
- ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2006
- ^ R.M. Frank, Al-Ghazali and the Ash'arite School, Duke University Press, London 1994
- ^ Majmoo’ al-Fataawa, part 4, p. 71
- ^ Tabaqaat Ashaab al-Shafa’i
[edit] External links
- Al-Ghazali Web Site
- Full text of Incoherence of the Philosophers, from Al-Ghazali Website
- Extensive List of books by Al-Ghazali - Fons Vitae books
