IIBirth and Education
“Ghazali is without doubt the most remarkable figure in all Islam. His doctrine is the expression of his own personality. He abandoned the attempt to understand this world. But the religious problem he comprehended much more profoundly than did the philosophers of his time. These were intellectual in their methods, like their Greek predecessors, and consequently regarded the doctrines of Religion as merely the products of the conception or fancy or even caprice of the lawgiver. According to them Religion was either blind obedience, or a kind of knowledge which contained truth of an inferior order.“On the other hand Ghazali represents Religion as the experience of his inner Being. It is for him more than law and more than Doctrine; it is the Soul’s experience.”—“Philosophy in Islam,” T. J. DeBoer.
“Ghazali is without doubt the most remarkable figure in all Islam. His doctrine is the expression of his own personality. He abandoned the attempt to understand this world. But the religious problem he comprehended much more profoundly than did the philosophers of his time. These were intellectual in their methods, like their Greek predecessors, and consequently regarded the doctrines of Religion as merely the products of the conception or fancy or even caprice of the lawgiver. According to them Religion was either blind obedience, or a kind of knowledge which contained truth of an inferior order.
“On the other hand Ghazali represents Religion as the experience of his inner Being. It is for him more than law and more than Doctrine; it is the Soul’s experience.”
—“Philosophy in Islam,” T. J. DeBoer.
As already stated, Al-Ghazali was born and educated in Khorasan, Persia, and there also he spent the closing years of his life. Persia, as Huart expresses it, possessed “an intangible force, the Aryan genius, the powerful, imaginative, and creative mind of the great Indo-European family, the artistic, philosophic, and intellectual brain which, from the Abbasside period onward, so mightily affected Arab literature, enabling it to develop in every quarter of the Caliph’s realms, and to produce the enormous aggregate of works.” It was this Aryan genius which explains much of the powerful influence of Al-Ghazali upon Moslem thought, and the revival of that influence in our day when Islam is again facing disintegrating forces. At the time of Al-Ghazali, Persian influence was supreme. It pervaded everything. The Arabs had ceased to write. The realms of poetry, theology, and science, were dominated by those of Persian birth. All posts, administrative and legal, were held by men who were not Arabs, and yet the language they used was that of the Koran, and remained the sole literary language of the huge empire of the Caliphs. “All races, Persians,Syrians, Berbers from Maghrib, were melted and amalgamated in this mighty crucible.”
Al-Ghazali was a Persian by birth, an Aryan in his modes of thought, a Semite in his religion and he became a cosmopolitan by travel and education. His long residence in all the great centres of Islam of his day brought him into close touch with men of every school of thought and followers of all manners of religions and philosophies. When we remember this, we have the key to his enormous literary productiveness. His horizon stretched from Afghanistan to Spain, and from Kurdistan to Southern Arabia. What happened outside theDar ul Islamin infidel Europe was brought to the notice of all by the Crusades.
Men of learning had intercourse by correspondence with those of similar tastes in every part of the Moslem world. We have records of letters received by Al-Ghazali from Spain and Morocco as well as from Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. Questions of jurisprudence, philosophy, and theology were referred by Sultans to celebrated authorities for reply. All this produced the cosmopolitan atmosphere we find in his works.
The poet Moore describes Al-Ghazali’s native land as
“... the delightful Province of the Sun,The first of Persian lands he shines upon,Where, all the loveliest children of his beam,Flowerets and fruits blush over every stream,And, fairest of all streams, the Murga rovesAmong Merou’s bright palaces and groves.”
“... the delightful Province of the Sun,The first of Persian lands he shines upon,Where, all the loveliest children of his beam,Flowerets and fruits blush over every stream,And, fairest of all streams, the Murga rovesAmong Merou’s bright palaces and groves.”
“... the delightful Province of the Sun,The first of Persian lands he shines upon,Where, all the loveliest children of his beam,Flowerets and fruits blush over every stream,And, fairest of all streams, the Murga rovesAmong Merou’s bright palaces and groves.”
“... the delightful Province of the Sun,
The first of Persian lands he shines upon,
Where, all the loveliest children of his beam,
Flowerets and fruits blush over every stream,
And, fairest of all streams, the Murga roves
Among Merou’s bright palaces and groves.”
The East Gate, Damascus.
The East Gate, Damascus.
The East Gate, Damascus.
Khorasan, indeed, signifies “the land of the sun,” and was one of the four geographical divisions into which the ancient kingdom of the Sassanians was divided. They were named according to the cardinal points of the compass. After the Arab conquests the name was used both for a definite province and also in a looser sense for the whole eastern region of Persia. Even now the boundaries of the province are scarcely determined. The total area is about 150,000 square miles, and the present population not over 800,000. It was doubtless far more in Al-Ghazali’s day.
Towards the north and southwest Khorasan is mountainous. In the east the country is hilly, but between the mountain ranges there extend broad tracts of waste land. By far the most extensive of these saline wastes is the Dasht-i-Kabir, or Great Salt Desert of Khorasan. Throughout the province, and especially near Tus, the arid plains and the grassy valleys have been engaged in a perpetual struggle for the mastery. The shifting sands have already absorbed some towns and villages. There are scarcely any rivers, and the few streams are brackish and intermittent, losing themselves in the great salt desert. The salt brought down by the rivers is deposited in the marshes. The fierce summer heat dries these up until the winter floods occur again. This process being repeated for ages,in the course of time the whole stretch of soil over which the marsh extends has become incrusted with salt.
Travellers and students of climate seem to be agreed that the country offers unmistakable evidence of desiccation. Ruins of cities and villages are incredibly numerous and point to a larger population and better climate and irrigation in the days past. It would not be just to attribute the decay of Persia entirely to the devastations of war and the misrule of Islam.
“A comparison of the four provinces of Khorasan, Azerbaijan, Kirman, and Seyistan is instructive,” says Ellsworth Huntington.[17]Khorasan “has suffered from war more severely than has any other province of Persia. Its northern portion, where the rainfall is heaviest, and where the greatest amount of fighting has taken place, is to-day one of the most prosperous portions of Persia. It contains numerous ruins, but they are by no means such impressive features as are those farther south. The southern and drier part of the province is full of ruins, and has suffered great depopulation. Azerbaijan, which ... has suffered from war more than any province except Khorasan, is the most prosperous and thickly settled part of Persia. The relative abundance of its water supply renders its future hopeful. Seyistan has suffered fromwars, but less severely than the two preceding provinces. Nevertheless, it has been depopulated to a far greater extent. Its extreme aridity renders recovery well-nigh impossible, except along the Helmund. Kirman lies so remote behind its barriers of desert and mountains that it has suffered from war much less than any of the three other provinces. Yet its ruined cities and its appearance of hopeless depopulation are almost as impressive as those of Seyistan. If war and misgovernment are the cause of the decay of Persia, it is remarkable that the two provinces which have suffered most from war, and not less from misgovernment, should now be the most prosperous and least depopulated; while the two which have suffered less from war and no more from misgovernment have been fearfully, and, it would seem, irreparably depopulated.”
The surface of the province of Khorasan to-day consists mainly of highlands, the saline deserts, and the fruitful well-watered upland valleys. In these fruitful regions rice, cotton, saffron, but especially melons and other fruits, are raised in profusion. Other products are manna, gum, asafœtida for export to India, and turquois. The chief manufactures have always been sabres, pottery, carpets, woolen and cotton goods.
The town of Mashad, the present capital of Khorasan, has supplanted the older city and district of Tus, which was an ancient capital. Theruins of this city lie fifteen miles to the northwest. As early as the tenth century we have references to the birthplace of Al-Ghazali. Thus Misʾar Muhalhil (about 941A. D.) writes: “Tus is made up of the union of four towns, two of which are large and the other two of minor importance; its area is a square mile. It has beautiful monuments that date from the time of Islam, such as the house of Hamid, son of Kahtabah, the tomb of Ali, son of Musa, and that of Rashid in the environs (lit. gardens) of the town.” Istakhri (951A. D.), writing ten years later, speaks of Tus as a dependency with four large towns or settlements. He says: “Taking Tus as a dependency of the province of Nishapur, its towns are Radkan, Tabaran, Bazdghur, and Naukan, in which (latter) is the tomb of Ali, son of Musa ar-Riza (may the peace of God be upon him), and the tomb of Haroun ar-Rashîd.... The tomb of Ar-Riza is about one-quarter of afarsakhdistant towards the village called Sanabadh.” The best summary of the history of Tus and description of its present condition is given by Professor A. V. Williams Jackson in his most interesting book, “From Constantinople to the Home of Omar Khayyam.” He tells us that the name of the town is as old as the half-legendary warrior Tusa of the Avesta, who gave battle against Turan. Alexander the Great passed through it in pursuit of Bessus, the slayer of the last Darius. During the Zoroastrian sway,the city of Tus shared with Nishapur the distinction of being the seat of a Nestorian Christian bishop. When the Arab conquest of Persia came Tus fell before the invaders and it became a great Moslem centre, famous especially as the home of the poet Firdausi, who was born there about 935A. D.and died 1025A. D.
Professor Jackson thus describes the present ruined condition of the city: “The crumbling walls of the dead city were once broad and lofty ramparts of clay and rubble, much like those already mentioned at Bustam and Rei, but they had become much flattened with the lapse of ages, although traces of their towers were still to be seen, while their outline showed the contour of the town, which must have formed a very irregular quadrilateral, following roughly the points of the compass.... The scene, as we saw it, presented a strange paradox of the destructive effects of the hand of man, and the eternal power of nature to rise and bloom again. The devastating inroads of the Ghuzz hordes and the Mongol armies, aided by earthquakes, had indeed laid mighty Tus in ruins: but its dust still contains the resurrection seed of flowers and grain, bringing life anew in the midst of death. Acres of barley and fields of thick clover spread their rich green on all sides, in contrast with stretches of arid waste that told only too well the story of ruin wrought in the past.” Professor Jackson goes on to say: “It is clear thatthe ruined site of Tus we have been examining, with the Rudbar and Rizan Gates, formed part of the borough of Tabaran, an important section of the town in Firdausi’s day, when the city covered a large area comprising several thickly populated centres, as we know from the Oriental geographers of the tenth century, or the period covering the better portion of the poet’s life. It was in Tabaran that Al-Ghazali was buried, and there he must have had his home during the closing years of his life.”[18]
Religious disputation must have been the veryatmosphere of Tus. Christians were numerous and the MoslemShiahswere almost as strong as the orthodox. Some of their most celebrated writers and scholars, for example Abu Jaʾfar Muhammed, were born at Tus; and Ibn Abi Hatim, one of the earliest and most important critics of the science of Tradition, died at Tus in 939. In spite of its learned men, however, Tus did not have a high reputation, as we know from the following anecdote related of Ibn-Habbariyya. He was asked by an enemy of Nizam Al-Mulk to compose a satire on this ruler. “How can I attack a man to whose kindness I owe everything I see in my house?” asked the poet. However, on being pressed, he penned these lines:
“What wonder is it that Nizam Al-Mulk should rule,And that Fate should be on his side?Fortune is like the water-wheelWhich raises water from the well—None butoxencan turn it!”
“What wonder is it that Nizam Al-Mulk should rule,And that Fate should be on his side?Fortune is like the water-wheelWhich raises water from the well—None butoxencan turn it!”
“What wonder is it that Nizam Al-Mulk should rule,And that Fate should be on his side?Fortune is like the water-wheelWhich raises water from the well—None butoxencan turn it!”
“What wonder is it that Nizam Al-Mulk should rule,
And that Fate should be on his side?
Fortune is like the water-wheel
Which raises water from the well—
None butoxencan turn it!”
When the vizier was informed of this attack upon him, he merely remarked that the poet had simply intended to allude to his origin—he came from Tus in Khorasan, and, according to a popular saying, all the men of Tus were oxen (one would say asses, nowadays).
“The people of Khorasan,” says Chenery, “were renowned for their stinginess, and it is not surprising that the inhabitants of the mother townwere said to excel in it all the rest of the world. Witness the story, related in Saʾadi’s Gulistan, if I remember well, of the merchant of Merv, who would not allow his son to eat cheese, but made him rub his bread against the glass cover under which it was kept.”
To prove the stupidity of the Khorasanis to-day, Major P. M. Sykes[19]tells a story of three Persians who met and were all praising their own provinces. The Kermani said, “Kerman produces fruit of seven colours.” The Shirazi continued, “The waters of Ruknabad issue from the very rock.” But the poor Khorasani could only say, “From Khorasan come all the fools like myself.”
Yet Khorasan, in the words of Hujwiri, was that land “where the shadow of God’s favour rested,” as regards the teaching of the Mystics. He mentions nine leading Sufis who belong to Khorasan, and taught there before Al-Ghazali’s day, all of them distinguished for the “sublimity of their aspiration, the eloquence of their discourse, and the sagacity of their intelligence.” He then goes on to say: “It would be difficult to mention all the sheikhs of Khorasan. I have met three hundred in that province alone who had such mystical endowments that a single man of them would have been enough for the whole world. This is due tothe fact that the sun of love and the fortune of the Sufi Path is in the ascendant in Khorasan.”[20]
In view of such statements it is clear that Al-Ghazali owed much to his environment as well as to his own genius. He did not originate mysticism, but used what his predecessors had already written on the subject. The very chapter headings ofKashf al-Mahjubare the same as those found in Al-Ghazali’s books on mysticism.
According to Murtadha (who follows As-Subqi), Al-Ghazali’s full name was Abu Hamid Mohammed bin Mohammed bin Mohammed at-Tusi al-Ghazali, and he was born at Tus in the year of the Hegira 450 (A. D.1058). In regard to his name, it is related that others before him had the peculiarity of the family name three times repeated. “Ibn-Kutaibah states that Abu’l-Bakhtari’s name was Wahb b. Wahb b. Wahb, the same name thrice in one continuation; and that similar to this among the names of the Persian kings was that of Bahram b. Bahram b. Bahram; among the Talibis (the descendants of Abu-Talib) that of Hasan b. Hasan b. Hasan, and among the Ghassan that of al-Harith the junior b. al-Harith and the senior b. al-Harith.”[21]
Concerning the spelling of his name, whether it should be spelled with two z’s or with one, there has been long and strong dispute. Professor Macdonaldthinks the name should be speltGhazzaliand has given his arguments in a special essay.[22]This spelling is given by Ibn Khallikan in his biographical dictionary (d.A. D.1282). But apparently, according to the authority of As-Samʾani, the name is derived from Ghazala, a village near Tus, and is not a professional noun, such as are common among patronymics. Abu Saʾd ʾAbd al-Karim As-Samʾani was born only two years after Al-Ghazali’s death, and wrote a famous book of patronymics in eight volumes. He was, therefore, an expert in names and genealogies, and we may well accept his authority for the spelling of the name of the greatimam, who was his own countryman. The sheikhs of the Azhar University in Cairoallfollow this authority and writeAl-Ghazali.[23]
Some say that there had already been two scholars in the family, one an elder Al-Ghazali, at whose tomb in the cemetery of Tus prayer was answered. This was a paternal uncle of Ghazali’s father. The other was a son of the same. The story is told, apparently on the authority of Ghazali himself, that at the time of his father’s death he committed his two boys, Mohammed and Ahmed, to the care of a trusted Sufi friend for their education. He himself seems to have had unfulfilled desires in regard to his own education and was determined that his boys should have a better opportunity. So he left in trust what money he had for the purpose with this friend, who proved faithful and taught and cared for them until the money was all gone. Then he advised them to go to amadrasa, where, according to Moslem custom, they would receive food for their need and shelter. Ghazali used to tell the story of this experience in after life, and would add the remark, “We became students for the sake of something else than God,butHewas unwilling that it should be for the sake of anything but Himself.” This instance doubtless throws light on the motives for his studies and his great diligence. At the outset he was in search rather of reputation and wealth through learning than of piety.[24]
Of Al-Ghazali’s home life at Tus, and of his own family life afterwards, we know next to nothing. His name Abu Hamid was doubtless given him much later, and would seem to indicate that he had a son of that name who probably died in infancy. We know that he married before he was twenty and that at least three daughters survived him. Of his younger brother, however, who died fifteen years after he did (1126), and was buried at Kazvin, we know the following: He succeeded Al-Ghazali in the professorial chair at the Nizamiyya School. Like him, he was a mystic and preached his views with great eloquence as well as with a prolific pen. We are told that he was a man of splendid appearance, and had the gift of healing. So fond was he of public preaching that he neglected his judicial studies. He wrote an abridgement of his brother’s great work, and also a celebrated treatise on mysticism calledMinhaj al-albab(Path for Hearts), in which he deals with the advantages of poverty, and advocates the wearing of a special garb by the dervishes. Another of his books was in defense of music, calledBawariq al-ilma; but this was considered frivolous by strict Moslems, although the Sufis used music to produce the state of ecstasy.
Of Al-Ghazali’s mother we know nothing beyond the fact that she survived her husband and lived to see both her sons famous at Bagdad, whither apparently she accompanied or followed them. An interesting story is told of how, when Abu Hamid was at the height of his fame at Bagdad, his brother Ahmed not merely failed to show him proper respect, but acted in such a manner as to discredit him in the eyes of the people. The full account is worth giving. “He had a brother called Ahmed, surnamed Jamal-ud-Din, or, as others say, Zain-ud-Din, who, notwithstanding the high rank which his brother held, would not take part with him in the prayers (i. e., would not recognize him as a man fitted to lead the public prayers), even while thousands of the commonalty and nobility arranged themselves in ranks behind him. So he complained to his mother what he experienced at his brother’s hands, (saying) that it almost led to people doubting him, seeing that his brother was celebrated for his good conduct and piety, and he asked his mother to order him (Ahmed) to treat him as other people did. He complained about this repeatedly, and pressed his demand. His mother urged him (Ahmed) time and again to agree to this, and he agreed on condition that he stand apart from the ranks. TheImam accepted this condition, and when one of the appointed times of prayer arrived, the Imam went to the Mosque, and the people followed him, till, when the Imam began the prayer, and the people began it after him, Jamal-ud-Din followed him in the prayer in the distance. And while they were praying Jamal-ud-Din suddenly interrupted him. So this trial was worse than the first; and when he was asked the reason (of his conduct) he replied that it was impossible for him to take as his pattern an Imam whose heart was full of blood, indicating by this expression the vileness of one who took a share in the work of worldly men of learning.”[25]
Al-Ghazali must have begun his education at a very early age, and his studies at Tus met with such success that he went to the larger educational centre of Jurjan before the age of twenty, a distance of over one hundred miles, and no inconsiderable journey at that time.
In Al-Ghazali’s autobiography we have a glimpse of how he himself conceived the growth of a child in wisdom and stature. “The first sense revealed to man,” he says, “is touch, by means of which he perceives a certain group of qualities—heat, cold, moist, dry. The sense of touch does not perceive colours and forms, which are for it as though they did not exist. Next comes thesense of sight, which makes him acquainted with colours and forms; that is to say, with that which occupies the highest rank in the world of sensation. The sense of hearing succeeds, and then the senses of smell and taste. When the human being can elevate himself above the world of sense, towards the age of seven, he receives the faculty of discrimination; he enters then upon a new phase of existence and can experience, thanks to this faculty, impressions, superior to those of the senses, which do not occur in the sphere of sensation.”
Al-Ghazali must have been an early riser from his youth. In his “Beginner’s Guide to Religion and Morals” (Al Badayet) he writes: “When you awaken from sleep, endeavour to arise before early dawn, and may the first thing that enters your heart and your tongue be the remembrance of God Most High, saying, ‘Thanks be to God who hath given us life after the death of sleep. To Him do we return. He hath awakened us and awakened all nature. The greatness and the power belong to God; the majesty and the dominion to the Lord of the worlds. He hath awakened us to the religion of Islam and the testimony of His unity, and the religion of His Prophet Mohammed and the sect of our father Abraham, who was aHanifand a Moslem, and not a polytheist. O God, I ask Thee that Thou wouldst this day send me all good and deliver me from all evil. By Thee, O God, do wearise from sleep, and by Thee do we reach the even-tide. In Thee do we live and die and to Thee do we return.’ And when you put on your garments, remember that God desires you to cover your nakedness with them and to show forth God’s beauty to those around you.”
In another place in the same little volume he again inculcates early rising by saying: “Know that the night and the day consist of twenty-four hours. Let therefore your sleep during the night and day be not more than eight hours; for it will suffice you to think after you have lived sixty years that you have lost twenty years of it solely in sleep.”
He probably began to read even before the age of seven, for we find that his studies at Tus, and afterwards at Jurjan, apparently included not only religious science but also a thorough knowledge of Persian and Arabic. Of his religious studies we will speak later. He himself tells us that the philosophical sciences taught included “mathematics, logic, physics, metaphysics, politics, and moral philosophy.” And although he does not speak in his Confessions of his earliest studies, what he says in regard to mathematics throws a flood of light on his youthful scepticism. He says, “Mathematics comprises the knowledge of calculation, geometry, and cosmography: it has no connection with the religious sciences, and proves nothing for or against religion; it rests on a foundationof proofs which, once known and understood, cannot be refuted. Mathematics tend, however, to produce two bad results. The first is this: Whoever studies this science admires the subtlety and clearness of its proofs. His confidence in philosophy increases, and he thinks that all its departments are capable of the same clearness and solidity of proofs as mathematics. But when he hears people speak of the unbelief and impiety of mathematicians, of their professed disregard for the divine Law, which is notorious, it is true that, out of regard for authority, he echoes these accusations, but he says to himself at the same time that, if there was truth in religion, it would not have escaped those who have displayed so much keenness of intellect in the study of mathematics.”
Next, when he becomes aware of the unbelief and rejection of religion on the part of these learned men, he concludes that to reject religion is reasonable. “How many of such men gone astray I have met, whose sole argument was that just mentioned!” (p. 28).
Not only mathematics but astronomy and other sciences were then in alleged conflict with the facts of revelation. Al-Ghazali must have felt this very keenly, for he says: “The ignorant Moslem thinks the best way to defend religion is by rejecting all the exact sciences. Accusing their professors of being astray, he rejects their theories of the eclipses of the sun and moon, and condemns themin the name of religion. These accusations are carried far and wide, they reach the ears of the philosopher who knows that these theories rest on infallible proofs; far from losing confidence in them, he believes, on the contrary, that Islam has ignorance and the denial of scientific proofs for its basis, and his devotion to philosophy increases with his hatred to religion. It is therefore a great injury to religion to suppose that the defense of Islam involves the condemnation of the exact sciences. The religious law contains nothing which approves them or condemns them, and in their turn they make no attack on religion. The words of the Prophet: ‘The sun and moon are two signs of the power of God; they are not eclipsed for the birth or the death of any one; when you see these signs take refuge in prayer, and invoke the name of God’—these words I say, do not in any way condemn the astronomical calculations which define the orbits of these two bodies, their conjunction and opposition according to particular laws.”[26]We must remember in this connection that it was Omar Khayyam, the poet astronomer, who at this very time was leading many into scepticism.
After a knowledge of Arabic grammar, and memorizing the Koran, the diligent student would take up its critical and devotional study. Al-Ghazali’s teachers undoubtedly emphasized, as hedid himself, the importance of correct reading of the sacred volume. In one of the most beautiful passages in hisIhya, Al-Ghazali himself notes the following points: The reader must be clean outwardly, and respect the book with outward reverence. He must read the proper quantity. He quotes with approval the practice of Saʾad and Othman, that the Koran should be read through once a week. One should use chanting (tartil), for this is helpful to the memory, and makes us read slowly, and rapid reading is not approved. One should read it with weeping,i. e., sorrow for sins. One should give the proper responses in the proper places. One should use the opening prayer before beginning to read. It may be read secretly or aloud. It must be read beautifully—according to the Tradition: “Adorn the Koran by the sweetness of your voice;” or another Tradition: “He who does not sing the Koran is not of our religion.” One day when the Prophet heard Abu Musa reading the Koran he said: “Verily, to this reader God has given the voice of David when he wrote the Psalms.”
We may believe that Yusuf Nassaj, his first teacher, who was a mystic, as well as, later, the Imam al-Haramain, laid considerable emphasis on the points here mentioned. The atmosphere in which Al-Ghazali was educated, we must never forget, was that of mysticism.
The study of the Koran was followed by thatof the Traditions, of which the standard collections were already in circulation. After this, a youth in Al-Ghazali’s day would begin the study ofFiqh, or Moslem jurisprudence. We know from the contents of the standard works on this subject, written before Al-Ghazali’s time, and later by himself, what engrossed the attention in the schools of Tus and Jurjan.[27]His first lesson would be on ceremonial purity by the use of ablution, the bath, the tooth-pick and the various circumstances of legal defilement whenghaslor complete ablution is prescribed; of the ailments of women and the duration of pregnancy. Then came the second part of the book on prayer, its occasions, conditions, and requirements, including the four things in which the prayer of a woman differs from that of a man. He would learn all about the poor-rate (zakat), about fasting and pilgrimage, about the laws of barter and sale and debt; about inheritance and wills—a most difficult and complicated subject. Then the pupil would pass on to marriage and divorce, a very large subject, and one on which Moslem law books show no reserve, and leave no detail unmentioned. Then would follow the laws in regard to crime and violence, Holy War, and the ritual of sacrifice at the Great Feast. The last three chapters of books onFiqhgenerally deal with oaths, evidence, and the manumission of slaves.[28]
From his youth up Al-Ghazali belonged to the Shafiʾ School, one of the four orthodox systems of jurisprudence. The Imam ash-Shafiiʾ, whose tomb at Cairo was afterwards visited by Al-Ghazali, and is still a place of pilgrimage, died inA. H.204. He chose thevia mediabetween the slavery of tradition and the freedom of logic and deduction in Moslem law. According to Macdonald, “Ash-Shafiʾi was without question one of the greatest figures in the history of law. Perhaps he had not the originality and keenness of Abu Hanifa; but he had a balance of mind and temper, a clear vision and full grasp of means and ends, that enabled him to say what proved to be the last word in the matter. After him came attempts to tear down; but they failed. The fabric of the Muslim canon law stood firm.” The adherents of the school of Shafiiʾ now number some sixty million persons, of whom about a half are in the Netherland Indies, and the rest in Egypt, Syria, Hadramaut, Southern India, and Malaysia. Among all of these Al-Ghazali the Shafiʾite naturally holds a place of supreme honour.
An interesting story is told in connection with his studies under the Imam Abu Nasr al-Ismaʾili. He took copious notes under this celebrated teacher, but neglected to memorize what he had written. This seems to have been a characteristic of his, according to Macdonald, because his quotations are often exceedingly careless; and one ofthe charges brought against him by his assailants afterwards was that he falsified tradition. “On his way back to Tus from Jurjan, however, he got his lesson. He tells the story himself. Robbers fell upon him, stripped him, and even carried off the bag with his manuscripts. This was more than he could stand; he ran after them, clung to them though threatened with death, and entreated the return of the notes—they were of no use to them. Al-Ghazali had a certain quality of dry humour, and was evidently tickled by the idea of these thieves studying law. The robber chief asked him what were these notes of his. Said Al-Ghazali with great simplicity: ‘They are writings in that bag; I travelled for the sake of hearing them and writing them down, and knowing the science in them.’ Thereat the robber chief laughed consumedly, and said: ‘How can you profess to know the science in them, when we have taken them from you and stripped you of the knowledge, and there you are without any science?’ But he gave them him back. ‘And,’ says Al-Ghazali, ‘this man was sent by God to teach me.’ So Al-Ghazali went back to Tus, and spent three years there committing his notes to memory as a precaution against future robbers.”[29]
Shortly afterwards Al-Ghazali left Tus a second time to pursue his studies at Nishapur under themost celebrated teacher of that period in this great literary centre. Nishapur was situated forty-nine miles west of Tus, and was captured by the Arabs inA. H.31. Yakut, in his geographical dictionary, says that of all the cities he had visited this was the finest. It was in this city that Hamadhani wrote his four-hundredMaqamatand vanquished his great literary rival.
Other great names are connected with the city, among them Omar Khayyam the poet, the Koran commentator Ahmed al-Thaʾlabi, and Maidani the author of the well-known collection of Arabic proverbs.
The older name of the town or district was Abrashahr. The importance of the place under the Sasanians was in part religious; one of the three holiest fire temples was in its neighbourhood. Nishapur under the Moslems contained a large Arab element; it became the capital of Khorasan, and greatly increased in prosperity, under the almost independent princes of the house of Tahir (A. D.820-873). Istakhri describes it as a well-fortified town, a league square, with a great export of cotton goods and raw silk. In the decline of the empire the city had much to suffer from the Turkomans, whose raids have in modern times destroyed the prosperity of this whole region. In 1153 it was utterly ruined by the Ghuzz Turkomans, but soon rose again, because, as Yakut remarks, its position gave it command of the entire caravan trade withthe East. It was taken and razed to the ground by Mongols in 1221, but a century later Ibn Batuta found the city again flourishing, with four colleges, numerous students, and an export of silk-stuffs to India. Nishapur was famous for its fruits and gardens which gave it the epithet of “little Damascus.”
We have an interesting portrait of Al-Ghazali’s chief teacher while he was at Nishapur,—Abul-Maʾali ʿAbdal-Malik Al-Juwaini Imam al-Haramain. He was born at Bushtaniqan, near Nishapur, on the twelfth of February, 1028, and was one of the most learned and celebrated teachers of Moslem law in his day. “On the death of his father, Abu Muhammed ʿAbdallah ibn Yusuf, who was a teacher in the latter town, he took his place, though barely twenty years of age.” But this was a time of literary prodigies due to precocious talent and prodigious power of memory. “To complete his own studies, and to make the sacred pilgrimage, he went to Bagdad and thence to the two holy cities, Mecca and Medina, where he taught for four years; hence his surname, which signifies ‘the teacher of the two holy places.’ When he returned to Nishapur, Nizam Al-Mulk founded a school for him, in which he gave courses of lessons till his death, which overtook him on the twentieth of August, 1085, while on a visit to his native village, whither he had gone in the hope of recovering from an illness. Along with his professorialduties, he had discharged those of a preacher. At Nishapur he held gatherings every Friday, at which he preached sermons, and presided over discussions on various doctrinal points: to these occupations he added that of managing thewaqfs, or landed property devoted to the support of pious undertakings. For more than thirty years he continued in undisputed possession of these various posts. When he died, the mourning was general; the great pulpit of the Mosque from which he had delivered his sermons was broken up, and his pupils, to the number of four hundred and one, destroyed their pens and ink-horns, and gave up their studies for a year.”[30]It is certain that Al-Ghazali sat at his feet as a learner, both at Nishapur and Bagdad, and we may imagine that he had a part also in the general mourning at the death of the Imam, the manuscript of whose masterpiece,Nihayat al-Matlab(Finality of Inquiry), is still preserved in Cairo in the Sultania Library.
At Nishapur, Al-Ghazali was one of the favourite pupils of this Imam, and here his studies were of the broadest, embracing theology, dialectics, philosophy and logic. He was a teacher as well as a student, for we are told that he would “read to his fellow students and teach them, until in a short time he became infirm and weak.” Under the double task his health failed, but he did not give up his studies. The Imam once said of him, andtwo other notable pupils: “Al-Ghazali is a sea to drown in, Al-Kiya is a tearing lion, and Al-Khawafi is a burning fire.” Another saying of his about the same three was: “Whenever they contend together, the proof belongs to Al-Khawafi, the warlike attacks to Al-Ghazali, and clearness to Al-Kiya.” To this time of his life belongs the remark also, made by some one unnamed, “The youth Al-Ghazali showed externally a vain-glorious disposition, but underneath there was something that when it did appear showed graceful expression and delicate allusion, soundness of attention, and strength of character.”
“I cannot ascertain,” says Macdonald in speaking of this period of Al-Ghazali’s life, “whether while he was still at Nishapur he touched those depths of scepticism of which he speaks in theMunqidh. They must certainly have been reached some time before the yearA. H.484, and must have been the outcome of a long drift of development; but probably so long as he was under the influence of the Imam-al-Haramain, a devout Sufi, he would be held more or less fast to the old faith.”
Of these struggles of his soul in an age of doubt and how he found relief the next chapter will tell us.