Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical

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years,” can be understood. This alternative understanding is less likely in my

opinion, but it must be mentioned and discussed. The vow at Hebron stands

in connection to al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s decision to break his close association with the

Seljuq rulers and resign from his teaching position at the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa

in Baghdad. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ left that job and Baghdad in Dhu

¯ l-Qa ¶da 488 / Novem-

ber 1095, almost exactly one year before the vow at Hebron was made. When

in his autobiography Deliverer from Error ( al-Munqidh min al-d.ala¯l ) al-Ghaza¯lı¯

writes about his return to teaching at the Niz.a¯miyya school in Nishapur, he says

that this happened in Dhu

¯ l-Qa ¶da 499 / July–August 1106. He continues: “The

period of seclusion ( ¶uzla ) amounted to eleven years.”

The fact that he counts

to his readers the number of lunar years he did not teach at state-sponsored

schools is signiﬁ cant. In al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s own understanding, the date for when he

began to keep the vow at Hebron may have not been the date that he made the

vow. He might have understood that he began keeping the vow retroactively,

so to speak, since his departure from Baghdad. Thus, he may have meant to

say that he “kept that vow” since Dhu

¯ l-Qa ¶da 488 / November 1095. If this was

the case, the letter would have been written a year earlier in the last months of

500 / June–July 1108. Subsequently his birth would fall in 447/1055–56, if one

assumes his age of ﬁ fty-three years is given in lunar years, or 446/1054–55 if

one assumes solar years.

a l ife b e t w e e n p ubl ic a nd p r i vat e ins t r uc t ion

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Judged from the information given in this letter to Sanjar, al-Ghaza¯lı¯

was born between 446/1054 and 448/1057. His most likely year of brith was

448/1056–57, two years before the date that currently appears in the literature.

The period of 446/1054 to 448/1057 concurs with al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s own informa-

tion given in his autobiography, Deliverer from Error . There, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says that

he was “over ﬁ fty” when he composed the book.

According to the traditional

chronology of his life, which puts his birth in 450/1058–59, the Deliverer could

not have been written before 501/1107; “over ﬁ fty” assumes that he was at least

ﬁ fty-one lunar years old when he wrote the book. Yet in this book, al-Ghaza¯lı¯

refers vividly to the events at the end of the year 499 / summer 1106, when he

returned to public teaching in Nishapur. The Deliverer was more likely written

soon after this event, since it partly functions as an apologia for what appeared

to some to be a break of his vow in Hebron.

In addition, the author makes the

point that he should be regarded as the “renewer” ( muh.yı¯ ) of the sixth Muslim

century.

The beginning of the new century is identiﬁ ed as the turn from 499

to 500 AH , which fell on September 2, 1106. Therefore, all internal indications

of the text point toward a publication soon after the beginning of the year 500

AH . According to the traditional chronology, however, that would be impossi-

ble since al-Ghaza¯lı¯ may have barely turned ﬁ fty and was certainly not yet “over

ﬁ fty.” If he was born between 446/1055 and 448/1057, however, he had by this

time already passed his ﬁ fty-ﬁ rst, ﬁ fty-second, or ﬁ fty-third birthday—either in

lunar or in solar years—and the words “over ﬁ fty” are well justiﬁ ed.

Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s birthplace T.a¯bara¯n was one of two major towns within the dis-

trict of T.u¯s, the other being Nu¯qa¯n, which was situated a few miles south of

T.a¯bara¯n. During the sixth/twelfth century, Meshed (Mashhad) grew around

the pilgrimage site of the Shiite Ima¯m ¶Alı¯ al-Rid.a¯ (or: Riz

a¯), who was bur-

ied in Sana¯ba¯dh near Nu

¯qa¯n in 203/818.

All these places were referred to as

T.u¯s, which according to Ya¯qu¯t had more than a thousand “villages” ( qarya ).

¯qa¯n was gradually replaced by Meshed and eventually became a suburb of it.

Three hundred years later, after the destruction of T.a¯bara¯n in 791/1389 during

an anti-Timurid uprising, Meshed would also replace al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s hometown.

T.a¯bara¯n was not rebuilt, and its water channels were redirected to Meshed.

It was during al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s lifetime that people began to refer to Nu

¯qa¯n, the

second town of T.u¯s, as Meshed, a name al-Ghaza¯lı¯, however, never used. Oth-

ers among his contemporaries, however, weren’t shy to use “Meshed” or even

“Meshed, the holy city of Riz

a¯.”

Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Early Years and His Education

Little is known about al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s childhood, even less about his family. In the

seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries, some Sha¯ﬁ ¶ite scholars in

Damascus made efforts to determine the occupation of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s father. By

then, however, it was already too late to get reliable information about this.

2 6 a l - gh a z a

¯ l 1

¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y

When al-Subkı¯ claims that al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s father was a spinner ( ghazza¯l ) of wool,

he makes a leap of faith based on a spurious etymology of the family’s name.

The nisba or family name “al-Ghaza¯lı¯” had been in use for several generations,

and its most distinguished bearer was not the ﬁ rst famous scholar who wore it.

Another jurist by the name of al-Ghaza¯lı¯ lived two or three generations before

him and may have been either his paternal granduncle or his great granduncle.

The elder al-Ghaza¯lı¯ is said to have died in 435/1043–44 and was an inﬂ uential

teacher in T.u¯s, an author of books that have not survived.

Later Muslim historians, however, gave another much humbler impres-

sion of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s family. Al-Subkı¯ tells us about the poverty of his father and

how he made deathbed arrangements for his two young sons, Muh.ammad

and Ah.mad. The fatherless children were given up to the foster care of a Suﬁ

friend of the family. Their small inheritance forced them to enter a madrasa for

care. Thus, they entered into Muslim learning not for the sake of God, as al-

Ghaza¯lı¯ is quoted as saying, but for the sake of food.

This story became a stock

element of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s biography, reﬂ ecting his and his younger brother’s later

attraction both to poverty and to Suﬁ sm. Al-Subkı¯ gives no proper source for

it. He reports it in the ﬁ rst person and claims that this is “just as al-Ghaza¯lı¯

used to tell it.”

The story can be traced back to the lost part of Ibn al-Najja¯r’s

(d. 643/1245) Appendix to the History of Baghdad ( Dhayl ta 7rı¯

kh Baghda¯d ) which

probably took it from al-Sam ¶a¯nı¯’s lost work with the same title. Al-Dhahabı¯,

who is our oldest extant source of this information, quotes one of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s

students, who heard him mentioning that when his father died he left little

for his brother and him.

On this occasion al-Ghaza¯lı¯ supposedly said: “We

acquired knowledge for reasons other than the sake of God; but knowledge

refuses to be for anything else than for the sake of God.” Although this sen-

tence may reﬂ ect his upbringing, it is actually a well-known quote that appears

both in al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Revival of the Religious Sciences as well as in his Scale of Ac-

tion ( Mı¯za¯n al- ¶amal ). There the author attributes it “to one (or: some) of those

who found truth” ( ba ¶d. al-muh.aqqiqı¯n ).

It is puzzling that al-Sam ¶a¯nı¯, who is most likely the ﬁ rst authority to report

the tale, was unable to identify the unnamed Suﬁ who cared for the children.

Al-Sam ¶a¯nı¯ had an intimate familiarity of the intellectual life in T.u¯s during

this period. Since we do not have the original text of al-Sam ¶a¯nı¯’s version, we

cannot say whether he implied it to be dubious. In my opinion, the historicity

of the whole story is doubtful. Al-Subkı¯ turns it into an emotional tale with

the literary tropes of a father’s deathbed remorse and two young orphans who

turn toward knowledge simply to survive. Here, there is no role for al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s

mother, who supposedly survived her husband and must have cared for her

children. Yet some of these bare facts may be true; al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s father likely

did die during his sons’ childhood and left little for their education. These trap-

pings may have given rise to further embellishments such as the Suﬁ friend

of the family. Indeed, in this anecdote, the anonymous Suﬁ may stand in as

a cipher for the famous Abu

¯ ¶Alı¯ al-Fa¯ramadhı¯ (d. 477/1084), whose youthful

inﬂ uence al-Ghaza¯lı¯ acknowledged later during his life and whose role will be

explained later.

a l ife b e t w e e n p ubl ic a nd p r i vat e ins t r uc t ion

2 7

In his biography, ¶Abd al-Gha¯ﬁ r al-Fa¯risı¯ does not mention any of this and

sticks to the bare facts of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s education. There is no Suﬁ friend here;

rather, it begins with the study of ﬁ qh under a local teacher named Ah.mad al-

Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯.

Al-Subkı¯ says that this al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯ had himself studied with “al-

Ghaza¯lı¯ the elder.” An Ah.mad al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯ from T.a¯bara¯n-T.u¯s was a member

of the generation of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s teachers, but it is not clear whether he was a

scholar.

There was, however, another al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯ in that generation who

was a well-known scholar. ¶Abd al-Gha¯ﬁ r mentions the scholar Abu¯ Sa ¶d ¶Abd

al-Malik al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯. He was the maternal uncle of the powerful grand vizier

Niz.a¯m al-Mulk (d. 485/1092).

His half-brother, Abu¯ l-Qa¯sim ¶Abdalla¯h ibn ¶Alı¯

(d. 499/1105–6), was a very important scholar and might have held the posi-

tion of head teacher of the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa in Nishapur between 493/1100

and al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s later appointment in 499/1106.

We will see that Niz.a¯m

al-Mulk was one of the most important personalities for al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s intel-

lectual development. He served as grand vizier over a period of almost thirty

years between 455/1063 and his violent death in 485/1092. Second in power

only to the Seljuq Sultans Alp-Arslan (reg. 455–65 / 1063–72) and Maliksha¯h

(reg. 465–485 / 1072–92), Niz.a¯m al-Mulk formulated the religious policy for

an area that stretched from Asia Minor to Afghanistan. In the intellectual cent-

ers of the Seljuq Empire, he founded religious madrasas (so-called Niz.a¯miyya

madrasas), which institutionalized the teaching of Sunni jurisprudence and

Ash ¶arite theology.

Niz.a¯m al-Mulk hailed from Ra¯dhaka¯n, a village at the

northern edge of T.u¯s.

His whole family became very inﬂ uential among the

religious scholars in Khorasan and at the Seljuq court.

Their full names support the assumption that ¶Abd al-Malik al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯

was a brother of Ah.mad. Regardless of whether Ah.mad or ¶Abd al-Malik al-

Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯ was al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s ﬁ rst teacher, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ likely made connections

with the wider family of Niz.a¯m al-Mulk. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s early teacher in T.a¯bara¯n-

T.u¯s was probably far less humble than al-Subkı¯ assumed. He may have had

family ties to the most important Sha¯ﬁ ¶ite scholars of Khorasan during his

time, perhaps even to the great vizier. Niz.a¯m al-Mulk was a Sha¯ﬁ ¶ite jurist edu-

cated in T.u¯s, a district small enough for all Sha¯ﬁ ¶ite scholars to know one an-

other well.

¶Abd al-Gha¯ﬁ r says that after al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s education under al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯,

he went to study with al-Juwaynı¯ in Nishapur, the next major city, about ﬁ fty

kilometers south of T.u¯s and separated from it by a high mountain range.

arrived there within a group of students from T.u¯s. Al-Subkı¯ and other later

historians say that before coming to Nishapur, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ went to study with

someone named Abu

¯ l-Nas.r al-Isma¯ ¶ı¯lı¯ in Gurga¯n, who is not mentioned in

any other context.

Al-Subkı¯ also tells an anecdote on al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s early education that he traces

back to As ¶ad al-Mayhanı¯ (d. 523/1129 or 527/1132–33), a prominent colleague

and follower of al-Ghaza¯lı¯ who met with him during his later years in T.u¯s.

Al-Subkı¯ mentions a second source for the anecdote, namely the vizier Niz.a¯m

al-Mulk. This story has since gained some prominence—some scholars regard

it as very signiﬁ cant

—and its origin should be looked at closely: Al-Subkı¯’s

2 8 a l - gh a z a

¯ l 1

¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y

two sources, As ¶ad al-Mayhanı¯ and Niz.a¯m al-Mulk, are probably just a single

source. The historian al-Sam ¶a¯nı¯, whose family was close to As ¶ad al-Mayhanı¯,

is the ﬁ rst to report the story in a tarjama on Niz.a¯m al-Mulk in his lost Appendix

to the History of Baghdad . We have his report preserved in a quotation from the

historian of Aleppo Ibn al- ¶Adı¯m (d. 660/1262). There, al-Sam ¶a¯nı¯ says that in

a stack of papers left by his father he found an anecdote about how Niz.a¯m al-

Mulk taught his nephew that making notes alone is not sufﬁ cient learning. The

nephew was Shiha¯b al-Isla¯m ¶Abd al-Razza¯q (d. 525/1130), who later became a

famous vizier and who during the time of this anecdote had just started study-

ing ﬁ qh :

[Niz.a¯m al-Mulk] told the story of how the Ima¯m Abu¯ H.a¯mid

al-Ghaza¯lı¯, the Suﬁ once traveled to Abu

¯ Nas.r al-Isma¯ ¶ı¯lı¯ in Gurga¯n

and how he took notes from him ( ¶allaqa ¶anhu ). When he returned to

T.u¯s, he was robbed on the road and his notes ( ta ¶lı¯q ) were taken away

from him. He said to the captain of the highway-robbers: “Return my

notes ( ta ¶lı¯

qa ) to me!” He asked: “What are these notes?” Al-Ghaza¯lı¯

answered: “A bag in which are the books of my studies.” [Al-Ghaza¯lı¯

said:] “And I told him my story. So he asked me: ‘How can it be that

you have learned things that you get rid of when this bag is taken

away from you? And now you remain without knowledge?’ Then he

returned it to me. I said: ‘He was sent by God to alert me and guide

me towards what is best for me. And when I entered T.u¯s, I turned

my attention to this for three years until I had memorized all my

notes in a way, would I have been robbed I would not have been

deprived of my knowledge.’ ”

This anecdote next appears in Ibn al-Najja¯r’s Appendix to the History of Baghdad ,

a book whose full version is also lost.

It features in the tarjama on al-Ghaza¯lı¯,

and from here, it spread widely within the biographical literature on this great

scholar. Al-Subkı¯ represents just the latest stage.

There are several factors that make the authenticity of this anecdote doubt-

ful: ¶Abd al-Gha¯ﬁ r never mentions al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s studies in Gurga¯n, the teacher is

not correctly identiﬁ ed, and the context of the report is anecdotal, pedagogical,

and somewhat ahistorical. Most important, however, the nephew addressed by

Niz.a¯m al-Mulk is only ten years younger than al-Ghaza¯lı¯ and studied himself

with al-Juwaynı¯, indicating that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ could not yet have been a famous

Suﬁ when the story was allegedly told. Although the story’s age does give it

some credibility—it goes back almost to the days of al-Ghaza¯lı¯ and contains

verbatim quotes—the topical nature of the story makes its historicity dubious.

It is just as possible that the real experience of a less prominent scholar could

have circulated among people in T.u¯s or elsewhere and become connected to

the famous al-Ghaza¯lı¯ simply because it ﬁ t the impression that contemporaries

had about his personality.

In his letter to Sanjar mentioned above, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says that he started his

deeper education at the age of thirteen. Using one of his favorite metaphors to

a l ife b e t w e e n p ubl ic a nd p r i vat e ins t r uc t ion

2 9

compare knowledge with deep and dangerous water, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ writes about

himself that since that age, “he had been diving into the sea of religious sci-

ences.”

This quotation may well refer to the beginning of his studies with

al-Ra¯dhaka¯nı¯ in T.u¯s, which would place it at 461/1069. A few years later he

would arrive in al-Juwaynı¯’s class in Nishapur. His famous student-colleague

al-Kiya¯ 7 al-Harra¯sı¯ (d. 504/1110), who was born in 450/1158, two or three years

after al-Ghaza¯lı¯, entered al-Juwaynı¯’s seminar in 468/1075–76 at the age of

seventeen.

In his autobiography, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ brieﬂ y comments on the beginnings of

his intellectual life. “The thirst for understanding the essense of things was

my persistent habit from my early years and the prime of my life.” This yearn-

ing, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says, was not a matter of choosing but a personal instinct and a

natural disposition ( gharı¯

za wa-ﬁ t.ra ) that God had given him. This disposition

allowed him to scrutinize the intellectual environment he grew up with and to

thow off “the bounds of emulating others” ( ra¯bit.at al-taqlı¯d ). He broke with the

convictions he inherited, he says, when he was still a boy ( ¶ahd sinn al-s.iba¯ ).

Later, ¶Abd al-Gha¯ﬁ r al-Fa¯risı¯ would write that the young al-Ghaza¯li he had

known had shown some “ﬁ lthy strains” ( za ¶a¯rra ) in his character. He was full of

haughtiness and looked down at people with deﬁ ance. “He had a vain pride and

was blinded by the ease with which God had provided him to handle words,

thoughts, expressions, and the pursuit of glory.”

Al-Juwaynı¯ was the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time, an au-

thority in both Muslim law ( ﬁ qh ) and theology. Around 455/1063, only ﬁ ve

years before al-Ghaza¯lı¯ started studying with him, he had returned from his

exile at Mecca and Medina. Ten years prior, in 445/1053, he had ﬂ ed from

Khorasan to escape the persecution of Ash ¶arites under the newly ascended

Seljuqs and their sultan, Toghril-Bey (reg. 432/1040–455/1063).

After Toghril -

Bey’s death and Niz.a¯m al-Mulk’s ascension to the vizierate of the Seljuq Em-

pire in 455/1063, this policy was reversed. Niz.a¯m al-Mulk was sympathetic

to Ash ¶arism, and he actively supported this school.

Marw, Baghdad, Herat,

and Nishapur saw the founding of Niz.a¯miyya madrasas, institutions open to

the theological tradition of al-Ash ¶arı¯ (d. 324/935–36). The main chair at the

Niz.a¯miyya madrasa in Nishapur was offered to al-Juwaynı¯.

Al-Juwaynı¯’s teaching activity at the Niz.a¯miyya in Nishapur proved a

turning point in the history of Ash ¶arite theology. Although generations of

Ash ¶arites—including al-Ash ¶arı¯, the school’s founder—had understood the tra-

dition of Greek philosophy to pose a signiﬁ cant challenge to the epistemologi-

cal ediﬁ ce of Muslim theology, none of al-Juwaynı¯’s predecessors had seriously

studied the works of this school of thought. By the time of the mid-ﬁ fth/eleventh

century, the philosophical tradition in Islam had evolved from its foundational

texts—translations of Aristotle and their commentaries—to being dominated

by the works of the Muslim philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sı¯na¯, d. 428/1037).

Al-Juwaynı¯ was the ﬁ rst Muslim theologian who seriously studied Avicenna’s

books. On the one hand, al-Juwaynı¯ fully realized the methodological chal-

lenge of the Aristotelian methods of demonstration ( apodeixis / burha¯n ) as used

by Avicenna. The Muslim philosophers ( fala¯sifa ) claimed, for instance, that

3 0 a l - gh a z a

¯ l 1

¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y

through a chain of conclusive arguments, one can prove demonstrably that the

world is pre-eternal ( qadı¯

m ), and one can thus disprove the claim of the theolo-

gians that the world is created in time ( h.a¯dith ). On the other hand, al-Juwaynı¯

also understood that the works of Avicenna and other fala¯sifa contained solu-

tions to many theological problems the Ash ¶arite school had wrestled with for

centuries.

There can be little doubt that al-Ghaza¯li started to read philosophical lit-

erature many years before he published books about it. His preoccupation

with this literature likely began in the seminary of al-Juwaynı¯,

where read-

ing philosophical literature may have been part of the higher curriculum. The

works of other scholars with a shared education reveal a detailed familiarity

with the arguments of Aristotle and his Muslim followers.

Al-Juwaynı¯ him-

self had devoted much effort to a proper study and refutation of the fala¯sifa ’s

arguments about the eternity of the world.

Despite his disagreements, he was

himself inﬂ uenced by Avicenna’s distinction of being in (1) the being that is

necessary by virtue of itself ( wa¯jib al-wuju

¯d ) and (2) the beings that are only

contingent by themselves ( mumkin al-wuju

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