Ghazzālī - Ghazali: the Revival of Islam

SERIES EDITOR: PATRICIA CRONE, INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, PRINCETON

Abd al-Malik, Chase F. Robinson

Abd al-Rahman III, Maribel Fierro

Abu Nuwas, Philip Kennedy

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Christopher Melchert

Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, Usha Sanyal

Al-Mamun, Michael Cooperson

Al-Mutanabbi, Margaret Larkin

Amir Khusraw, Sunil Sharma

El Hajj Beshir Agha, Jane Hathaway

Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis, Shazad Bashir

Ibn Arabi, William C. Chittick

Ibn Fudi, Ahmad Dallal

Ikhwan al-Safa, Godefroid de Callatay

Shaykh Mufid, Tamima Bayhom-Daou

For current information and details of other books in the series, please visit www.oneworld-publications.com

GHAZALI

A Oneworld Book

Published by Oneworld Publications 2008
This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 9781851684144
ebook ISBN: 9781780742052

Copyright Eric Ormsby 2008

Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India

Oneworld Publications
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I n this book, I aim to convey the essentials of the life and thought of a religious genius too little known beyond the specialist world. For the breadth, subtlety and influence of his work, Ghazali deserves to be counted among the great figures in intellectual history, worthy to be ranked with Augustine and Maimonides, Pascal and Kierkegaard. This book is intended for readers with no previous knowledge of Ghazali or indeed of Islamic intellectual history. This means I have been obliged to summarize and simplify many crucial points, though not, I hope, to over-simplify.

I refer to Ghazalis works by their original Arabic titles, often in shortened form; these are listed in the table of abbreviations. In referring to Ghazalis masterpiece, the Ihya ulum al-din, I have sometimes referred to it as The Revival and sometimes as the Ihya. Ive tried wherever possible to key my references to existing English translations (which Ive occasionally modified); translations without attribution are my own. Since many Arabic names and terms used will be unfamiliar to non-specialist readers, Ive included brief descriptions of the various political entities and schools of thought they represent in the introduction.

I would like to thank Professor Patricia Crone for inviting me to contribute this volume to the series. I am grateful too for her comments and suggestions which have improved the work throughout. The anonymous reader for Oneworld offered several criticisms from which I have benefited and for which I express my thanks. Finally, I am grateful to Mike Harpley at Oneworld, who has been a most patient and helpful editor.

Asharite the school of Sunni theology founded by Ashari (d. 938).

Buyid Shiite dynasty in power from c. 932 to 1062, overthrown by the Seljuqs.

dhawq taste, a Sufi technical term for unmediated mystical experience.

Falsafa Islamic Aristotelean philosophy (from Greek philosophia).

Fatimids Shiite Ismaili dynasty in Egypt and N. Africa from 9091171.

fiqh Islamic law.

Hadith the attested words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.

Hanafi The school of Sunni law based on the teachings of Abu Hanifa.

Hanbali The school of Sunni law based on the teachings of Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

Imam Prayer leader; in Shiite tradition, the divinely designated guide of the community, sinless and infallible.

Ismaili Shiite sect which broke from mainstream Shiism after 762 and which acknowledges a line of seven imams; hence known as Seveners.

Kalam Islamic theology much given to dialectic and disputation (literally, discourse).

madhhab school of law or theology, e.g., the Hanbali school.

madrasa institution of learning, college, e.g., the Nizamiya madrasa.

Maliki the school of Sunni law deriving from the teachings of Malik ibn Anas.

Mutazili school of theology characterized by pronounced rationalism.

Seljuq Sunni Turkic dynasty in power from c. 1038 to 1194.

Shafiite the school of Sunni law based on the teachings of Shafii.

Sunna prescribed, normative behavior modeled on the example of the Prophet.

taqlid belief based on authority, rather than independent reasoning.

usul al-fiqh legal theory, the roots of the law.