Transcriber’s Note: The author’s transliteration of Arabic words into English is inconsistent, and often wrong in its usage of the ʾ and ʿ characters. They have been left as printed (except where such marks were missing entirely, in which case they have been supplied correctly).

On [page 143] ‎‏غزاّلي‏‎ was changed to ‎‏غزّالي‏‎.

A Moslem Seeker After God

By
S. M. Zwemer, F. R. G. S.

Mohammed or Christ. Illustrated.

Introduction by Rt. Rev. C. H. Stileman, M. A., sometime Bishop of Persia

An account of the rapid spread of Islam in all parts of the globe, the methods employed to obtain proselytes, its immense press, its strongholds, and suggested means to be adopted to counteract the evil.

The Disintegration of Islam. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth

Dr. Zwemer traces the collapse of Islam as a political power in Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as the inevitable effect of the impact of Western civilization.

Childhood in the Moslem World. Illustrated, 8vo, cloth

Both in text and illustrations, Dr. Zwemer’s new book covers much ground hitherto lying untouched in Mohammedan literature.

Arabia: The Cradle of Islam. Maps and numerous Illustrations, cloth

“The comprehensive scope of the volume covers a wide range of interest, scientific and commercial, historical and literary, sociological, religious.”—Outlook.

By A. E. and S. M. Zwemer

Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country. Arabia in Picture and Story. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth

“Dr. and Mrs. Zwemer are charming guides. We commend the book highly for interest and information.”—Missionary Review of the World.

Topsy-Turvy Land. Arabia Pictured for Children. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth

“A book of pictures and stories for big children and small grown-up folk, for all who love Sinbad the Sailor and his strange country.”—Boston Globe.

The old ruined Mosque at Tus, Persia, probably dating from the Eleventh Century.

The supposed grave of Abu Hamid Al Ghazali at Tus.

A Moslem Seeker
After God:

Showing Islam at its Best
in
the Life and Teaching of Al-Ghazali
Mystic and Theologian of the
Eleventh Century

By
SAMUEL M. ZWEMER
Author of “The Disintegration of Islam,” “Childhood
in the Moslem World,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED

New York Chicago
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1920, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

To the Faculties and Students
of the
Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, N. J.
and the
College of Missions, Indianapolis, Ind.
where the several chapters of this
book were given as lectures
1918-1920

Introduction

By Dr. J. Rendel Harris

Al-Ghazali was a rare combination of scholar and saint, of the orthodox Moslem and the aberrant Sufi. This work is a real contribution to the history of religion, and will have a peculiar value which attaches to Sufism at the present time. On the one hand we have the anthropologists engaged in the task (and for the most part successfully engaged) of tracing all religions to a common root, or roots, in the constitution and the fears of primitive man; on the other hand we have the mystics, of whom the Sufi is a leading representative, who are occupied in demonstrating experimentally that all religions which start at the bottom find their way to the top.

William Penn said something in the same direction when he affirmed that all good men were of the same religion, and that they would know one another when the livery was off. But what did he mean by taking the livery off? The abstinence from rites, ceremonies and the like is a negative process which certainly would not satisfy the genuine Sufi. He would say with St. Paul, “Not that we would be unclothed, but rather clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life.” That is real mystic language, and suggests that we shall know one another, not so much by being denuded of tradition and superstition (however desirable the process may be in some points of view), as by putting on the robe of light and sitting down in the heavenly places with Jesus Christ, and with any one else whom He calls into His companionship.

Al-Ghazali tells us in his Confessions that he found the true way of life in Sufism, that is, in Pantheism, yet he remained an orthodox Moslem, that is, a Transcendentalist. At the present time, when the effects of a war of unheard and unequalled severity are still perplexing men, the Transcendent and the Immanent views of God are alike hard put to it. Sufism is on its back, Transcendentalism can scarcely keep its feet. It is a poor time of day for seeing God in all, almost as ill a time for believing Him to be over all. Where speculation fails, or limps along with lame feet or with broken wing, there must be some other way of taking us to God Himself, beyond reason and safer than imagination. Al-Ghazali found it, when he abandoned his lecture-room and went into the wilderness. While he still continued to recite the formulas, which affirm the Unity of God and the authority of His Apostle, he found his way into the Sufi inner sanctuary, where one understands that

“he who lies,

Folded in favour on the Sultan’s breast,

Needs not a letter nor a messenger.”

The book tells us something about this side of his experience in the Quest of Life, and when the story is finished we are reminded not to seek the Living among the dead, but to believe that the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon Him in truth.

J. R. H.

Friends’ Settlement,
Woodbrooke, England.

Preface

There are a score of lives of Mohammed, the great Arabian Prophet, in the English language, yet there is no popular biography of the greatest of all Moslems since his day, Al-Ghazali. Even the Encyclopædia Britannica gives only scant information. Professor Duncan B. Macdonald prepared a life of Al-Ghazali with special reference to his religious experiences and influence in a paper published in the twentieth volume of “The Journal of the American Oriental Society” (1899), but now out of print. His scholarly investigations and conclusions, however, deal with Al-Ghazali’s inner experiences and his philosophy, rather than with his environment and the events of his life. We acknowledge our great indebtedness to his paper and to the original Arabic sources on which it was based, especially the introduction to the Commentary on the Ihya by Sayyid Murtadha in ten volumes and entitled Ithaf as-saʿada. I have found additional material in Al-Ghazali’s writings and other books mentioned in the bibliography given in the appendix of this book, especially the Tabaqat ash-shafaiʾya by As-Subqi, who wrote long before Murtadha and to whom Macdonald refers, but whose work he did not use.

The study of Al-Ghazali’s life and writings will, more than anything else, awaken a deeper sympathy for that which is highest and strongest in the religion of Islam; for the student of his works learns to appreciate Islam at its best. As Jalal-ud-din says:

“Fools buy false coins because they are like the true.

If in the world no genuine minted coin

Were current, how would forgers pass the false?

Falsehood were nothing unless truth were there,

To make it specious. ’Tis the love of right

Lures men to wrong. Let poison but be mixed

With sugar, they will cram it into their mouths.

Oh, cry not that all creeds are vain! Some scent

Of truth they have, else they would not beguile.”

There is a real sense in which Al-Ghazali may be used as a schoolmaster to lead Moslems to Christ. His books are full of references to the teaching of Christ. He was a true seeker after God.

Islam is the prodigal son, the Ishmael, among the non-Christian religions; this is a fact we may not forget. Now we read in Christ’s matchless parable of the prodigal how “When he was yet a great way off his father saw him and ran out to meet him and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Have missionaries always had this spirit? No one can read the story of Al-Ghazali’s life, so near and yet so far from the Kingdom of God, so eager to enter and yet always groping for the doorway, without fervently wishing that Al-Ghazali could have met a true ambassador of Christ. Then surely this great champion of the Moslem faith would have become an apostle of Christianity in his own day and generation. By striving to understand Al-Ghazali we may at least better fit ourselves to help those who, like him, are earnest seekers after God amid the twilight shadows of Islam. His life also has a lesson for us all in its devout Theism and in its call to the practice of the Presence of God.

S. M. Z.

Cairo, Egypt.

Contents

Illustrations

I
The Eleventh Century

“Between the civilizations of Christendom and Islam there is a gulf which no human genius, no concourse of events, can entirely bridge over. The most celebrated Orientals, whether in war or policy, in literature or learning, are little more than names for Europeans.”

—“The Assemblies of Al-Hariri,” by Thomas Chenery.

“With the time came the man. He was Al-Ghazali, the greatest, certainly the most sympathetic figure in the history of Islam, and the only teacher of the after generations ever put by a Muslim on a level with the four great Imams. The equal of Augustine in philosophical and theological importance. By his side the Aristotelian philosophers of Islam, Ibn Rushd and all the rest, seem beggarly compilers and scholiasts. Only Al-Farabi, and that in virtue of his mysticism, approaches him. In his own person he took up the life of his time on all its sides and with it all its problems. He lived through them all and drew his theology from his experience.”

—“Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional
Theory,” by D. B. Macdonald.

I
THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

The great characters of history may be compared to mountain peaks that rise high above the plains and the lower foot-hills and are visible from great distances because they dominate the landscape. In the historical study of Islam four names stand out prominently. They are those of Mohammed himself; of Al-Bokhari, the most celebrated collector of the Traditions; of Al-Ashʾari, the great dogmatic theologian and the opponent of rationalism; and of Al-Ghazali, the reformer and mystic. The last named has left a larger imprint upon the history of Islam than any man save Mohammed himself. “If there had been a prophet after Mohammed,” said As-Suyuti, “it would have been Al-Ghazali.”

It is in his life, and more especially in his writings, that I believe we can see Islam at its best. In trying to escape the dead weight of Tradition and the formalism of its requirements, Moslems are more and more finding relief in the way of the mystic. Of all those who have found a deeper spiritual meaning in the teachings of the Koran and even in the multitudinous and puerile detail of the Moslem ritual, none can equal Al-Ghazali. “He was,” says Jamal-ud-Din, “the pivot of existence and the common pool of refreshing waters for all, the soul of the purest part of the people of the Faith, and the road for obtaining the satisfaction of the Merciful.... He became the unique one of his own day and for all time among the Moslem learned.” “Al-Ghazali,” said another writer, nearly contemporary, “is an imam by whose name breasts are dilated and souls revived, in whose literary productions the ink horn exults and the paper quivers with joy, and at the hearing of whose message voices are hushed and heads are bowed.”

A celebrated saint, Ahmed As-Sayyed Al-Yamani Az-Zabîdi, also a contemporary of Al-Ghazali, said, “When I was sitting one day, lo, I perceived the gates of heaven opened, and a company of blessed angels descended, having with them a green robe and a precious steed. They stood by a certain grave and brought forth its tenant and clothed him in the green robe and set him on the steed and ascended with him from heaven to heaven, till he passed the seven heavens and rent after them sixty veils, and I know not whither at last he reached. Then I asked about him, and was answered, ‘This is the Imam Al-Ghazali.’ That was after his death; may God Most High have mercy on him!”

Another story is related of him as follows: “In our time there was a man in Egypt who disliked Al-Ghazali and abused him and slandered him. And he saw the Prophet (God bless him and give him peace!) in a dream; Abu Bakr and ʾOmar (may God be well pleased with both of them!) were at his side, and Al-Ghazali was sitting before him, saying, ‘O Apostle of God, this man speaks against me!’ Thereupon the Prophet said, ‘Bring the whips!’ So the man was beaten on account of Al-Ghazali. Then the man arose from sleep, and the marks of the whips remained on his back, and he was wont to weep and tell the story.”

And should this praise seem oriental and extravagant, we add the words of Professor Duncan B. Macdonald, who has made a more thorough study of Al-Ghazali’s life and writings than any other student of Islam:—“What rigidity of grasp the hand of Islam would have exercised but for the influence of Al-Ghazali might be hard to tell; he saved it from scholastic decrepitude, opened before the orthodox Moslem the possibility of a life hid in God, was persecuted in his life as a heretic, and now ranks as the greatest doctor of the Moslem Church.”

To understand the importance of Al-Ghazali and of his teaching we must transport ourselves to the time in which he lived. We cannot understand a man unless we know his environment. Biography is only a thread in the vast web of history, in which time is broad as well as long. Al-Ghazali belongs to the small company of torch bearers in the Dark Ages.

He was born at Tus, in Khorasan, Persia, in the year 1058 A. D., and died in 1111 A. D. When Al-Ghazali was born Togrul Bey had just taken Bagdad, Henry IV was Emperor, Nicholas II was Pope, the Norman conquest had just begun in the west, and Asia Minor was overrun by the Turks in the Near East. Among Al-Ghazali’s other contemporaries in the west were Hildebrand the Pope, Abelard, Bernard, Anselm, and Peter the Hermit. About the time he wrote his greatest work, Godfrey of Bouillon was King of Jerusalem. Al-Ghazali was struggling with the problem of Islam in its relation to the human heart thirsting for God, about two hundred years after Al-Kindi had written his remarkable apology for the Christian faith at the court of Haroun-ar-Rashîd and two hundred years before Raymond Lull laid down his life a martyr in North Africa.

The condition of the Moslem world had utterly changed since the days when Busrah with its rival city Kufa were dominated by the victorious Arabs of Omar’s Caliphate. The Abbasside Caliphs of the eleventh century were almost as much the shadows of former power as the Emperors of the East; they retained little more than their religious supremacy. Togrul Bey, the grandson of Seljuk, had been confirmed by the powerless Caliph Al-Qaʾim bi-amr Allah, in all his conquests, loaded with honours, saluted as King of the East and West, and endowed with the hand of the Caliph’s daughter. In the next reign, that of Al-Muqtadi, the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem.

“About the year 1000,” says Nöldeke,[1] “Islam was in a very bad way. The Abbasside Caliphate had long ceased to be of any importance, the power of the Arabs had long ago been broken. There was a multitude of Islamite States, great and small; but even the most powerful of these, that of the Fatimids, was very far from being able to give solidity to the whole, especially as it was Shiʾite.... These nomads (the Turks) caused dreadful devastation, trampled to the ground the flourishing civilization of vast territories, and contributed almost nothing to the culture of the human race; but they mightily strengthened the religion of Mohammed. The rude Turks took up with zeal the faith which was just within reach of their intellectual powers, and they became its true, often fanatical, champions against the outside world. They founded the powerful empire of the Seljuks, and conquered new regions for Islam in the northwest. After the downfall of the Seljuk empire they still continued to be the ruling people in all its older portions. Had not the warlike character of Islam been revived by the Turks, the Crusaders perhaps might have had some prospect of more enduring success.”

Togrul Bey was invested with the title of Sultan in the royal city of Nishapur, A. D. 1038. According to Gibbon, he was the “father of his soldiers and of his people. By a firm and equal administration Persia was relieved from the evils of anarchy; and the same hands which had been imbrued in blood became the guardians of justice and the public peace. The more rustic, perhaps the wisest, portion of the Turkmans continued to dwell in the tents of their ancestors; and, from the Oxus to the Euphrates, these military colonies were protected and propagated by their native princes. But the Turks of the court and city were refined by business and softened by pleasure: they imitated the dress, language, and manners of Persia; and the royal palaces of Nishapur and Rei displayed the order and magnificence of a great monarchy. The most deserving of the Arabians and Persians were promoted to the honours of the state; and the whole body of the Turkish nation embraced with fervour and sincerity the religion of Mahomet.”[2]

The first of the great Seljuk Sultans was conspicuous by his zeal for the Moslem faith. He spent much time in prayer, and in every city which he conquered built new mosques. By force of arms he delivered the Caliph of Bagdad at the head of an irresistible force and taught the people of Mosul and Bagdad the lesson of obedience. Rescued from his enemies, the alliance between the Caliph and the Sultan was cemented by the marriage of Togrul’s sister with the successor of the Prophet. In 1063 Togrul died and his nephew Alp Arslan succeeded him. His name, therefore, was pronounced after that of the Caliph in public prayer by all the Moslems of the Near East.

The character of his rule Gibbon gives us in a sentence: “The myriads of Turkish horse overspread a frontier of 600 miles from Taurus to Erzeroum, and the blood of 136,000 Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet.” The “valiant lion,” for that is the significance of his name, displayed at once the fierceness and generosity of a typical Oriental ruler. Christians suffered dreadful persecution. Enemies were assassinated; but the learned, the rich, and the favoured were lavishly rewarded. Arslan was a valiant warrior of the faith and as eager for the battlefield as those whom Moore describes:—

“One of that saintly murderous brood

To carnage and the Koran given,

Who think through unbeliever’s blood

Lies their directest path to heaven.

One who will pause and kneel unshod

In the warm blood his hand hath poured

To mutter o’er some text of God

Engraven on his reeking sword.”

Armenia was laid waste in the cruelest manner when the capital was taken on June 6, 1064. We are told that “human blood flowed in torrents, and so great was the carnage, that the streets were literally choked up with dead bodies; and the waters of the river were reddened from the quantity of bloody corpses.” The wealthy inhabitants were tortured, the churches pillaged, and the priests flayed alive. Al-Ghazali was then six years old.

In 1072 Alp Arslan was assassinated. His eldest son, Malek Shah, succeeded him. He extended the conquests of his father beyond the Oxus as far as Bokhara and Samarkand, until his name was inserted on the coins and in the prayers of the Tartar kingdom on the borders of China. “From the Chinese frontiers, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction or feudatory sway to the west and south, as far as the mountains of Georgia, the neighbourhood of Constantinople, the holy city of Jerusalem, and the spicy groves of Arabia Felix. Instead of resigning himself to the luxury of the harem, the shepherd king, both in peace and war, was in action in the field.”

Nizam Al-Mulk was his vizier, and it is largely due to his influence that the study of science and literature revived to such a remarkable degree. The calendar was reformed, schools and colleges erected, and the learned competed with each other for the favour of royalty. For thirty years Nizam Al-Mulk was honoured by the Caliph as the very oracle of religion and science. But at the age of ninety-three, the venerable statesman, to whom, as we shall see later, Al-Ghazali owed so much, was dismissed by his master, accused by his enemies, and murdered by a fanatic. The last words of Nizam attested his innocence, and the remainder of Malek’s life was short and inglorious.

The Arabic language had become dominant everywhere. Its vocabulary had leavened the whole lump of languages in the Near East. Every race with which the Arabs came in contact was more or less Arabized. “The extent of this influence,” says Chenery,[3] “may be perceived by comparing the Persian of Firdausi with that of Saʾdi. The language of the former, who flourished in the early part of our eleventh century, is tolerably pure, while the Gulistan, which was produced some two hundred and fifty years later, is in some places little more than a piecing together of Arabic words with a cement of the original tongue. It is to be noticed, also, that the latter author introduces continually Arabic verses, as the highest ornaments of his work, and assumes that his readers are acquainted with this classic and sacred tongue.”

Trade routes extended everywhere. There was intercourse with India and China on the east, as well as with the Spice Islands, so called, of Malaysia. Caravans carried trade across the whole of Central Asia and Northern Arabia to the emporiums of the West. Spain had intercourse with Persia. Al-Hariri praises Busrah “as the spot where the ship and the camel meet, the sea fish and the lizard, the camel-leader and the sailor, the fisher and the tiller.” In other words it was the port and emporium for all the lands watered by the Euphrates and Tigris. The same was true of Alexandria for the West.

We have evidences that an extensive trade was carried on between Arabia and China in walrus and ivory. An extensive work exists written in Chinese in the twelfth century on trade with the Arabs of which a recent translation has been published at Petrograd. More remarkable still is the fact that in Scandinavia thousands of Kufic coins have been found, nearly all of which date from the eleventh century. This would indicate that even this remote part of Europe was in touch with the Near East.[4]

Judging from literature and history, it was a time of looseness of morals and of divorce between religion and ethics, even more startling than in the world of Islam to-day. There were those who wrote commentaries on the marvels of the Koran, like Al-Harawi, yet did not scruple to indulge in private wine-drinking and carousals and loose conversation. The place of wine, women, and song, not only in popular literature and poetry, but even in the table talk of theologians and philosophers is clear evidence. Huart remarks in regard to the celebrated “Book of the Monasteries,” which is an anthology of the convents of the Near East: “We must not forget that, when Moslems went to Christian cloisters, it was not to seek devotional impulses, but simply for the sake of an opportunity of drinking wine, the use of which was forbidden in the Mohammedan towns. The poets, out of gratitude, sang the praises of the blessed spots where they had enjoyed the delights of intoxication.” Those who dared to preach and write against this public immorality had to suffer the consequences; and because hypocrites were in power reformers were not heeded.

We read of Ibn Hamdun (1101-1167), that when he openly attacked the evils which he saw around him in Bagdad, he was dismissed from his public office as secretary of state, cast into prison, and left to die. Punishments were cruel. Amputations for theft, in accordance with the Koran legislation, were matters of such every-day occurrence that the maimed man was always a suspect. We read of Al-Zamakhshari, that one of his feet had been frost-bitten during a winter storm, necessitating an amputation, and so he went about with a wooden leg, but he also carried about with him a written testimony of witnesses to prove that he had been maimed by accident, and not in punishment for a crime.

Al-Baihaki, the chronicler of the court at Bagdad, shows us that the zeal for the faith was often accompanied by a reckless disregard for the law of Islam as regards the use of fermented liquor. Not only the soldiers and their officers had drunken brawls, but the Sultan Masʾud used to enjoy regular bouts in which he frequently saw his fellow topers “under the table.” Here is a scene represented as having taken place at Ghazni, the capital of Khorasan province. “Fifty goblets and flagons of wine were brought from the pavilion into the garden, and the cups began to go round. ‘Fair measure,’ said the amir, ‘and equal cups—let us drink fair.’ They grew merry and the minstrels sang. One of the courtiers had finished five tankards—each held nearly a pint of wine—but the sixth confused him, the seventh bereft him of his senses, and at the eighth he was consigned to his servants. The doctor was carried off at his fifth cup; Khalil Dawud managed ten, Siyabiruz nine, and then they were taken home; everybody rolled or was rolled away, till only the Sultan and the Khwaja Abd-ar-Razzak remained. The Khwaja finished eighteen goblets and then rose, saying, ‘If your slave has any more he will lose both his wits and his respect for your Majesty.’ Masʾud went on alone, and after he had drunk twenty-seven full cups, he too arose, called for water and prayer-carpet, washed, and recited the belated noon and sunset prayers together as soberly as if he had not tasted a drop; then mounted his elephant and rode to the palace.”[5]

Masʾud was put to death in 1040. His sons and descendants for more than a century ruled this part of the Moslem world. But Ghazni fell from the proud position of the capital of a kingdom to a mere dependency of the Empire of Malek Shah.

The eleventh century was a period when the nations of Western Europe were beginning to crystallize both as regards their governments and civilization. Their influence was felt at home and abroad, although the masses were still in the depths of barbarism. Among the clergy and nobility something of order and civilization, and social development had appeared, but we are told by one writer that it was a striking characteristic of the time to find side by side with barbarian violence and disorder, and the constant display of the most brutal passions, a strong religious feeling. This feeling often took the form of superstition and fanaticism, the performance of meritorious works, especially a pilgrimage to the holy sepulcher. Thousands risked their life and health, and spent all their fortune to reach the holy city, with the same devotion and sacrifice which we still witness among the ardent Russian pilgrims of to-day.

When Asia Minor and Syria were conquered by the Turks this access to Jerusalem was cut off. In 1076 (Al-Ghazali was then eighteen years old) they massacred three thousand of these Christian people and their subsequent rule was relentless in its tyranny. We read that “the venerable Patriarch was dragged by the hair along the streets, and cast into a dungeon; the clergy of every sect were insulted; and the unhappy pilgrims were made to suffer every indignity and abuse.”

This treatment of Christian pilgrims produced a storm of indignation and anger throughout the West. Peter the Hermit himself visited Jerusalem and returned to Europe to arouse the nations. The result was the first Crusade, in which Pope Urban II coöperated. Three hundred thousand half-armed, half-naked peasants forced their way across Europe along the Rhine and the Danube. Only one-third of their number reached the shores of Asia. There they were utterly destroyed and only a pyramid of bones remained to tell of their fate.

The Crusade under Godfrey of Bouillon was a well-appointed military expedition embracing the flower of Europe. There are said to have been mustered in the plains of Bithynia one hundred thousand horsemen in full armour and six hundred thousand footmen. These numbers may be exaggerated, and pestilence and famine thinned their ranks, but in less than three years they had attained the great object of their expedition. In 1097 they laid siege to Nicea and captured it. They advanced against Antioch and after seven weary months laid siege to the city. In 1099 they advanced on Jerusalem and after a siege of forty days the holy city surrendered. “The merciless Franks did not fail to inflict a terrible vengeance for their own sufferings and the indignities which had been heaped upon their religion and their race. The Jews were burned in their synagogues; and seventy thousand Moslems were put to the sword. For three days the city was given up to indiscriminate pillage and massacre, until a pestilence was bred by the putrefaction of the slain.”

Soon Godfrey and his successors extended their dominions until only four cities, Aleppo, Damascus, Hamath, and Hums remained in the possession of the Moslems in Syria. Everywhere the followers of the Prophet were filled with grief and shame and with a great longing to wipe away the disgrace which had fallen on their religion.

“In the year 492 A. H.,” says Muir,[6] “consternation was spread throughout the land by the capture of Jerusalem, and cruel treatment of its inhabitants. Preachers went about proclaiming the sad story, kindling revenge, and rousing men to recover from infidel hands the Mosque of Omar, and scene of the Prophet’s heavenly flight. But whatever the success elsewhere, the mission failed in the East, which was occupied with its own troubles, and moreover cared little for the Holy Land, dominated as it then was by the Fatimide faith. Crowds of exiles, driven for refuge to Bagdad, and joined there by the populace, cried out for war against the Franks. But neither Sultan nor Caliph had ears to hear. For two Fridays the insurgents, with this cry, stormed the Great Mosque, broke the pulpit and throne of the Caliph in pieces, and shouted down the service; but that was all. No army went.”

Among Moslems themselves religious rancour abounded. At present the four orthodox sects worship together and live in peace as neighbours, but in those days there were frequent and hot disputes between the rival schools and much controversial literature arose, so that the hatred between the sects was deep and bitter. The Persian historian, Mirkhond, has recorded a fact which shows how implacable the feeling had become towards the close of the Caliphate. When the Mongols of Genghiz Khan appeared before the city of Rei, they found it divided into two factions—the one composed of Shafiʾites, the other of Hanifites. The former at once entered into secret negotiations undertaking to deliver up the city at night, on condition that the Mongols massacred the members of the other sect. The Mongols, never reluctant to shed blood, gladly accepted these proposals, and being admitted into the city, slaughtered the Hanifites without mercy.

It was in this atmosphere of mutual hatred, of war and bloodshed, that Al-Ghazali spent the last years of his life. We may excuse in him much of what would otherwise seem intolerant and hateful, when we remember how the passion of war blinds human judgment and makes it impossible to see any virtue in the invader.

We must not forget that Al-Ghazali came into close touch with Oriental Christians from his boyhood.[7] Christianity was established in Persia at the time of the Moslem conquest, and the Nestorian Church withstood its terrific impact when Zoroastrianism was almost destroyed. The coming of the Arabs meant to the Christians only a change of masters. The Nestorians became the rayah, “people of protection,” of the Caliphs. They did not immediately sink into their present deplorable condition. They still conducted foreign missions and during the entire Abbasside period remained a very important factor of civilization in the East. They were permitted to restore their Churches, but not to build new ones; they were forbidden to bear arms or ride a horse, save in case of necessity, and they even then had to dismount on meeting a Moslem; they were subject to the usual poll-tax. Yet the Nestorians were the most powerful non-Moslem community while the Caliphs reigned at Bagdad (750-1258), and had a higher tradition of civilization than their masters. They were used at court as physicians, scribes, and secretaries, and thus gained great influence, having much freedom in canonical matters, elected Patriarchs, etc. The Arab scholarship which came to Spain, and was a great factor in mediæval learning, begins in great part with the Nestorians of Bagdad. They handed on to their Arab masters the Greek culture which was inherited in Syriac translations. So we find the Caliphs treating them as chief of the Christian communities, and at times civil authority over all Christians had been given to the Nestorian Patriarch.

Early in the eleventh century Al-Biruni, a Moslem writer from Khiva, mentions the Nestorians as the most civilized of the Christian communities under the Caliph. He says that there are three sects of Christians—Melchites, Nestorians and Jacobites. “The most numerous of them are the Melchites and Nestorians; because Greece and the adjacent countries are all inhabited by Melchites, whilst the majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Irak and Mesopotamia and Khorasan are Nestorians.”[8]

Al-Ghazali spent his first twenty years in Khorasan. Did he ever become acquainted with Christianity through perusal of the Gospel? We know that Arabic, if not Persian, translations existed at this period; and not only are there many references to Christ and His teaching in Al-Ghazali’s works, but there are some very few passages accurate enough to be called quotations. He himself states as we shall see later: “I have read in the Gospel.”

That there were translations of the Bible into Arabic to which Al-Ghazali may have had access is probable. Dr. Kilgour tells of Arabic Gospel manuscripts of the ninth century and of translations of the Old Testament and portions of the New made in the Fayyoum before 942 A. D. “To the tenth century belong versions of some books of the Old Testament from Syriac, others from the LXX., and from the Coptic; and some fresh translations of the Pentateuch, using the Samaritan text as well as the Massoretic.”[9]

Diglot manuscripts in Syriac and Arabic are quite numerous. The manuscript of the four Gospels, of which a few leaves are now in the British Museum, is a good specimen of such a diglot. It was brought by Tischendorf from the Syrian Convent of St. Mary Deipara in the Nitrian Desert. In the early part of the eleventh century an Arabic scholar made a version of Tatian’s Diatessaron, that early Syriac Harmony of the Gospels which helped the Christian Church to realize the main facts concerning our Saviour. A version of the Psalms was prepared in the middle of the same century for use in the Church services of the papal or Melchite Greeks. This was translated from the Greek Psalter, and, from the place where it was first printed, became known afterwards as the Aleppo Psalter.[10] It remains an interesting question whether Al-Ghazali in his travels, or while still in Khorasan, ever examined the New Testament.

We are told that the Jews translated their law into Persian by 827 A. D. It is, therefore, hard to acquit the Christians of Persia of negligence. Their bishops found time to write learned treatises in Persian and Arabic, and even to translate Aristotle, but not to give Moslems the Scriptures. Yet Al-Kindi and others like him, many of whose names and writings are lost, were not afraid to give their testimony even at the court of the Caliphs. “The Church,” says W. T. Whiteley,[11] “had not failed to exercise an influence on Islam around it, while Christians might not, on peril of death, seek to win converts direct, a command occasionally violated with honour and success, yet all the development of Islam at Damascus and Bagdad was in a Christian atmosphere.”

The Christianity of that period was, however, not the religion of Christ in its purity nor after the example of His love and toleration. Mutual hatred and suspicion prevented real intercourse of those who, as devout Christians and devout Moslems, were both seeking God. The Moslem was feared and the Christian despised. The followers of Jesus were the enemies of Allah in the eyes of Moslems.

How Christians were regarded at this time we may learn from the books of canon law of this period, and that immediately following upon it. They were considered infidels in the Moslem sense of the word, and were protected only by the payment of a poll tax, which gave them certain rights as subjects. The most distinguished jurist of the Shafiʾite sect, An-Nawawi, who taught at Damascus in 1267, lays down the law[12] as follows: “An infidel who has to pay his poll tax should be treated by the tax collector with disdain; the collector remaining seated and the infidel standing before him, the head bent and the body bowed. The infidel should personally place the money in the balance, while the collector holds him by the beard and strikes him upon both cheeks. Infidels should be forbidden to have houses higher than those of their Moslem neighbours, or even to have them as high; a rule, however, that does not apply to the infidels who inhabit a separate quarter. An infidel subject of our Sovereign may not ride a horse; but a donkey or a mule is permitted him, whatever may be its value. He must use an ikaf, and wooden spurs, those of iron being forbidden him, as well as a saddle. He must go to the side of the road to let a Moslem pass. He must not be treated as a person of importance, nor given the first place at a gathering. He should be distinguished by a suit of coloured cloth and a girdle outside his clothes. If he enters a bathing house where there are Moslems, or if he undresses anywhere else in their presence, the infidel should wear round his neck an iron or leaden necklace, or some other mark of servitude.[13] He is forbidden to offend Moslems, either by making them hear his false doctrines, or by speaking aloud of Esdras or of the Messiah, or by ostentatiously drinking wine or eating pork. And infidels are forbidden to sound the bells of their churches or of their synagogues, or celebrate ostentatiously their sacrilegious rites.”[14]

“The history of Christian communities,” says Margoliouth,[15] “under Moslem rule cannot be adequately written; the members of those communities had no opportunity of describing their condition safely, and the Moslems naturally devote little space to their concerns. Generally speaking, they seem to have been regarded as certain old Greek and Roman sages regarded women: as a necessary annoyance. Owing to their being unarmed their prosperity was always hazardous; and though it is true that this was the case with all the subjects of a despotic state under an irresponsible ruler, the non-Moslem population was at the mercy of the mob as well as of the sovereign; they were likely scapegoats whenever there was distress, and even in the best governed countries periods of distress frequently arose.”

There are darker shades in the treatment of Christians and in the moral condition of this period over which one might well draw the veil, but some of the chapters of Ghazali’s Ihya reflect such terrible conditions as Margoliouth describes: “A form of passion which is nameless would appear at one time to have been as familiar among Moslems as of old among Hellenes. Christian lads seem often to have been the unhappy objects of this passion. A story is told us by the biographer Yakut of a young monk of Edessa or Urfah who had the misfortune to attract the fancy of one Saʾad the copyist. The visits and attentions of this Moslem became so offensive that the monks had to put a stop to them. Thereupon this personage pined away, and was finally found dead outside the monastery wall. The Moslem population declared that the monks had killed him, and the governor proposed to execute and burn the young monk who had occasioned the disaster, and scourge his colleagues. They finally got off by paying a sum of 100,000 dirhems.”

Not only among Moslems, however, but among Christians as well, morals were at a low ebb in the eleventh century. One of the annalists of the Roman Church says it was an iron age barren of all goodness, a leaden age abounding in all wickedness. “Christ was then, as it appears, in a very deep sleep, when the ship was covered with waves; and what seemed worse, when the Lord was thus asleep, there were no disciples, who by their cries might awaken him, being themselves all fast asleep.”

Enemies of the Papacy have perhaps exaggerated the vices and crimes of the popes in this and the preceding century; but the Church, on the testimony of its own writers, was immersed in profaneness, sensuality, and lewdness. When Otho I, Emperor of Germany, came to Rome, he introduced moral reforms by the power of the sword, but according to Milner,[16] “The effect of Otho’s regulations was that the popes exchanged the vices of the rake and the debauchee for those of the ambitious politician and the hypocrite; and gradually recovered, by a prudent conduct, the domineering ascendency, which had been lost by vicious excesses. But this did not begin to take place till the latter end of the eleventh century.”

Missionary effort in this century was confined to work in Hungary, the unevangelized portions of Denmark, Poland, and Prussia. Adam of Bremen, who wrote in 1080, says: “Look at the very ferocious nation of the Danes. For a long time they have been accustomed, in the praises of God, to resound Alleluia. Look at that piratical people. They are now content with the fruits of their own country. Look at that horrid region, formerly altogether inaccessible on account of idolatry; they now eagerly admit the preachers of the word.”

The Prussians continued pagans in a great measure throughout this century. We read that eighteen missionaries sent out to labour among them were massacred. They seemed to have been among the last of the European nations to submit to the yoke of Christ.

The noblest figure of the century in the West, in the annals of Christendom, was undoubtedly that of Anselm. He was born about the time of Al-Ghazali, and died in 1109. His life in many respects is a parallel to that of his contemporary. Both were theologians and both were mystics, seeking rest for their souls in withdrawing from the world and its allurements. Both were apologists for the Faith and opponents of infidelity and philosophy. Both exerted an immense influence by their writings as well as through teaching; and if Al-Ghazali sought the revival of religious life in Islam through his Ihya, Anselm gave employment to his active mind in writing his celebrated treatise “Cur Deus Homo?” Both of them refuted philosophers in their effort to establish the Faith.

It is interesting to note in this connection that Anselm’s famous book is now used in Arabic translation by missionaries to Moslems, and that Al-Ghazali’s “Confessions” have been put into the hands of the English reader as a testimony of his sincerity and devotion.

Both Anselm and Al-Ghazali lived and wrote under a deep consciousness of the world to come, the terrors of the judgment day, and the doom of the wicked. This also was characteristic of the times.

To understand the time in which Al-Ghazali lived we must also remember that it was one of great literary activity under the Abbasside Caliphs of Bagdad and the Seljuk sultans. We have seen how rulers rewarded literary genius, established schools, and furthered education on religious lines. Arabic literature affords a galaxy of names during the latter half of the eleventh century in almost every department of Moslem learning.

Among Ghazali’s celebrated contemporaries, men of literary fame, we may mention Abiwardi (d. 1113), the poet; Ibn Al-Khayyat, who was born at Damascus in 1058 and died in Persia in 1125; Al-Ghazi (b. 1049), who composed elegies and panegyrics at Nizamiyya College, was a college mate of Ghazali’s, and died in Khorasan; Al-Tarabalusi (b. 1080), a younger contemporary. But the most famous poet of all was Al-Hariri (1054-1122), whose “Assemblies” throw so much light on the manners and morals of this period. Among the men at the Nizamiyya University were Al-Khatîb (b. 1030), the great philologist; and Ibn Al-Arabi, born at Seville in 1076, who visited Bagdad to attend the teaching of Al-Ghazali. The greatest of all the Shafiʾite doctors, Al-Ruyani, was also a contemporary of Al-Ghazali. He taught at Nishapur and wrote the most voluminous book on jurisprudence in existence, called “The Sea of Doctrine.” In 1108, just as he had finished one of his lectures he was murdered by a fanatic of the Assassin sect, who were then holding the castle of Alamut in the mountains. We must also mention a schoolmate of Al-Ghazali, Al-Harrasi (1058-1110), who studied at Nishapur under the Imam Al-Haramain, was made his assistant, and then went to Bagdad, where he taught theology in the Nizamiyya University for the rest of his life. Nor must we forget Al-Baghawi, who wrote a famous commentary on the Koran, and other works of theology (1122); Al-Raghib Al-Ispahani, who died in 1108, and wrote a dictionary of the Koran, arranged in alphabetical order, called Mufradat alfaz Al-Koran, with quotations from the traditions and from the poets; he also wrote a treatise on morals, which Al-Ghazali always carried about with him (Kitab ad-dharia), and a commentary on the Koran. Among the early contemporaries of Al-Ghazali we must not forget to mention Ali bin ʾUthman Al-Jullabi Al-Hujwiri, the author of the oldest Persian treatise on Sufism extant. He was born in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and died in A. D. 1062, when Al-Ghazali was fourteen years old. Al-Hujwiri travelled far and wide through the Mohammedan Empire and his famous work Kashf al-Mahjub anticipates much of the teaching of Al-Ghazali, who must have been familiar with this author. And to complete this already long list of celebrities, we may mention Al-Maidani of Nishapur, who died in 1124, having written a great work on Arabic proverbs; Al-Zamakhshari, born in 1074, who wrote a famous commentary on the Koran; Ibn Tumart, the noted philosopher of the West who attended Al-Ghazali’s lectures at Nizamiyya; and ash-Shahristani who wrote on the various religions and sects—the standard work among all Moslems to-day on comparative religion. The period was in many respects the golden age of Islamic literature, and it is high praise indeed that, in the judgment of Moslem and Christian, Al-Ghazali surpassed all his literary contemporaries, if not in style and eloquence, at least in the scope and character of his writings—still more by the enduring and outreaching influence of his life. The story of that life and the character of his message we will now attempt to sketch for the reader.

II
Birth 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.

II
BIRTH AND EDUCATION

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 the Dar ul Islam in 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 roves

Among Merou’s bright palaces and groves.”

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 from wars, 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. The ruins 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 941 A. 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 (951 A. 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 a farsakh distant 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 935 A. D. and died 1025 A. 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 that the 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 very atmosphere of Tus. Christians were numerous and the Moslem Shiahs were 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-wheel

Which raises water from the well—

None but oxen can 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 town were 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 to the 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 of Kashf al-Mahjub are 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 Macdonald thinks the name should be spelt Ghazzali and 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 great imam, who was his own countryman. The sheikhs of the Azhar University in Cairo all follow this authority and write Al-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 a madrasa, 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, but He was 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 called Minhaj 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, called Bawariq 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. The Imam 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 the sense 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 a Hanif and 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 we arise 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 foundation of 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 them in 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 he did himself, the importance of correct reading of the sacred volume. In one of the most beautiful passages in his Ihya, 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 that of the Traditions, of which the standard collections were already in circulation. After this, a youth in Al-Ghazali’s day would begin the study of Fiqh, 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 when ghasl or 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 on Fiqh generally 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 in A. H. 204. He chose the via media between 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 of the 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 the most 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 in A. 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-hundred Maqamat and 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 with the 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 professorial duties, 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 the waqfs, 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, and two 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 the Munqidh. They must certainly have been reached some time before the year A. 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.

III
Teaching, Conversion, and Retirement

“Al-Ghazali is one of the deepest thinkers, greatest theologians and profoundest moralists of Islam. In all Muhamadan lands he is celebrated both as an apologist of orthodoxy and a warm advocate of Sufi mysticism. Intimately acquainted with all the learning of his time, he was not only one of the numerous Oriental philosophers who traverse every sphere of intellectual activity, but one of those rarer minds whose originality is not crushed by their learning. He was imbued with a sacred enthusiasm for the triumph of his faith, and his whole life was dedicated to one purpose, the defense of Islam.”

—“Mystics and Saints of Islam,” Claud Field.

III
TEACHING, CONVERSION, AND RETIREMENT

With the death of the Imam in A. H. 478 a great change came into the life of Al-Ghazali. He left Nishapur to seek his fortune and it brought him to the camp court of the great Vizier Nizam Al-Mulk. Here Al-Ghazali sought advancement and the honours of learning.

The camp court was the travelling capital of the Seljuk Sultans. This imperial camp was laid out into squares and streets. We read how in a few hours a city, as if built by enchantment, would rise on the uninhabited plain. The camp exhibited a motley collection of tents and dwellings and palm-leaf huts. The only regular part of the encampment were the streets of shops, each of which was constructed in the manner of a booth at an English fair. Moore gives us the picture in these words:

“Whose are the gilded tents that crowd the way,

Where all was waste and silent yesterday?

This City of War, which, in a few short hours,

Hath sprung up here, as if the magic powers

Of him who, in the twinkling of a star,

Built the high pillar’d halls of Chilminar,

Had conjured up, far as the eye can see,

This world of tents and domes and sun-bright armoury.—

Princely pavilions, screen’d by many a fold

Of crimson cloth, and topp’d with balls of gold;—

Steeds, with their housings of rich silver spun,

And camels, tufted o’er with Yemen’s shells,

Shaking in every breeze their light-toned bells.”[31]

As for Nizam Al-Mulk we have an interesting autobiography which he wrote and left as a memorial for future statesmen. (It is quoted in Mirkhond’s “History of the Assassins.”) “One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorasan,” says he, “was the Imam Mowaffak of Nishapur, a man highly honoured and reverenced,—may God rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied the traditions in his presence would assuredly attain to honour and happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Nishapur with Abd-us-Samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favour and kindness, and as his pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived—Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ibn Sabbah, founder of the sect of the Assassins. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Nishapur, while Hasan Ibn Sabbah’s father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam: ‘It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?’ We answered: ‘Be it what you please.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no preëminence for himself.’ ‘Be it so,’ we both replied, and on these terms we mutually pledged our words. Years rolled on, and I went from Khorasan to Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Kabul; and when I returned I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan.”

After his education at Nishapur Nizam Al-Mulk served Alp Arslan, the successor of Togrul Bey, and for more than twenty years the burden of the empire of the Seljuks rested on his shoulders. When Alp Arslan died in 465 Malek Shah succeeded him and from that time until his assassination, on the tenth of Ramadan, 485, Nizam Al-Mulk was the greatest man in the empire and its real ruler. He was a friend of learning and letters and established colleges in many centres.

In A. H. 484, Al-Ghazali gained high fame at court and was appointed by Nizam Al-Mulk to teach in the Madrasa at Bagdad, the capital of the whole of Eastern Islam.

We have an interesting picture of the city of Bagdad about this time from the pen of Rabbi Benjamin, of Tudela, who visited the city some years after Al-Ghazali’s death (1160). He says: “The circumference of the city of Bagdad measures three miles; the country in which it is situated is rich in palm-trees, gardens and orchards, so that nothing equals it in Mesopotamia; merchants of all countries resort thither for purposes of trade, and it contains many wise philosophers well skilled in sciences, and magicians proficient in all sorts of witchcraft. The palace of the Caliph at Bagdad is three miles in extent. It contains a large park of all sorts of trees, both useful and ornamental, and all sorts of beasts, as well as a pond of water led thither from the river Tigris; and whenever the Caliph desires to enjoy himself and to sport and to carouse, birds, beasts and fishes are prepared for him and for his councillors, whom he invites to his palace.” He gives us a glimpse of what went on behind the walls of these royal palaces when he says: “All the brothers and other members of the Caliph’s family are accustomed to kiss his garments, and every one of them possesses a palace within that of the Caliph; but they are all fettered by chains of iron, and a special officer is appointed over every household to prevent their rising in rebellion against the great king. These measures are enacted in consequence of an occurrence which took place some time ago, and upon which occasion the brothers rebelled and elected a king among themselves. To prevent this in future, it was decreed that all the members of the Caliph’s family should be chained, in order to prevent their rebellious intentions. Every one of them, however, resides in his palace, is there much honoured, and they possess villages and towns, the rents of which are collected for them by their stewards; they eat and drink, and lead a merry life.

“The palace of the great king contains large buildings, pillars of gold and silver, and treasures of precious stones. The Caliph leaves his palace but once every year, viz., at the time of the feast called Ramadan. Upon this occasion many visitors assemble from distant parts, in order to have an opportunity of beholding his countenance. He then bestrides the royal mule, dressed in kingly robes, which are composed of gold and silver cloth. On his head he wears a turban, ornamented with precious stones of inestimable value; but over this turban is thrown a black veil, as a sign of humility, and as much as to say: ‘See, all this worldly honour will be converted into darkness on the day of death.’ He is accompanied by a numerous retinue of Mohammedan nobles, arrayed in rich dresses, and riding upon horses; princes of Arabia, of Media, of Persia, and even of Thibet, a country distant three months’ journey from Arabia. This procession goes from the Palace to the Mosque at the Basra gate, which is the Metropolitan Mosque. All those who walk in procession are dressed in silk and purple, both men and women. The streets and squares are enlivened by singing, rejoicings, and by parties who dance before the great king, called Caliph. He is loudly saluted by the assembled crowd, who cry, ‘Blessed art thou, our lord and king.’ He thereupon kisses his garment, and by holding it in his hand, acknowledges and returns the compliment. The procession moves on into the court of the Mosque, where the Caliph mounts a wooden pulpit, and expounds their law unto them. The learned Mohammedans rise, pray for him, and praise his great kindness and piety; upon which the whole assembly answer, ‘Amen.’ He then pronounces his blessing and kills a camel, which is led thither for that purpose, and this is their offering, which is distributed to the nobles. These send portions of it to their friends, who are eager to taste of the meat killed by the hands of their holy king, and are much rejoiced therewith. He then leaves the Mosque, and returns alone to his Palace along the banks of the Tigris, the noble Mohammedans accompanying him in boats until he enters his buildings. He never returns by the way he came, and the path on the bank of the river is carefully guarded all the year around, so as to prevent any one treading in his footsteps. The Caliph never leaves his palace again for a whole year.

“He is a pious and benevolent man, and has erected buildings on the other side of the river, on the banks of an arm of the Euphrates which runs on one side of the city. These buildings include many large houses, streets, and hostelries for the sick poor, who resort thither in order to be cured. There are about sixty medical warehouses here, all well provided from the king’s stores with spices and other necessaries; and every patient who claims assistance is fed at the king’s expense until his cure is completed. There is further the large building called Dar-ul-Marastan (the abode of the insane), in which are locked up all those insane persons who are met with, particularly during the hot season, every one of whom is secured by iron chains until his reason returns, when he is allowed to return to his home.”

We may add what the poet, Al-Hamadhani, a contemporary, tells us of the luxuries of the table at Bagdad: “We found ourselves among a company who were passing their time amid bunches of myrtle twigs, and bouquets of roses, broached wine vats and the sound of the flute and the lute. We approached them and they advanced to receive us. Then we clave to a table whose vessels were filled, whose gardens were in flower, and whose dishes were arranged in rows with viands of various hues; opposite a dish of something intensely black was something exceedingly white, and against something very red was arranged something very yellow.” And in another place: “I was in Bagdad in a famine year, and so I approached a company, united like the Pleiades, in order to ask something of them. Now there was among them a youth with a lisp in his tongue and a space between his front teeth. He asked: ‘What is thy affair?’ I replied: ‘Two conditions in which a man prospers not: that of a beggar harassed by hunger, and that of an exile to whom return is impossible.’ The boy then said: ‘Which of the two breaches dost thou wish stopped first?’ I answered: ‘Hunger, for it has become extreme with me.’ He said: ‘What sayest thou to a white cake on a clean table, picked herbs with very sour vinegar, fine date wine with pungent mustard, roast meat ranged on a skewer with a little salt, placed now before thee by one who will not put thee off with a promise nor torture thee with delay, and who will afterwards follow it up with golden goblets of the juice of grape? Is that preferable to thee, or a large company, full cups, variety of dessert, spread carpets, brilliant lights, and a skilful minstrel with the eye and neck of a gazelle?’”

From all this we can imagine what Al-Ghazali enjoyed when he went to dine with the Nizam Al-Mulk or other men of wealth and there was no famine in Bagdad!

The Nizamiyya College which Al-Ghazali attended and in which he was one of the leading lecturers at two periods of his life, was built on the eastern river bank of the Tigris, near the Bridge of Boats and close to the wharf and the large market-place. The college was founded in A. D. 1065, being especially established for the teaching of Shafiʾite law. Close to the college was another college called the Bahaiyah and the hospital Maristan Tutushi.

The traveller, Ibn Jubayr, attended prayers in the Nizamiyya on the first Friday after his arrival in Bagdad, in the year 581 (A. D. 1185), and he describes it as the most splendid of the thirty and odd colleges which then adorned the City of East Bagdad.... Ibn Jubayr further reports that in his day the endowments derived from domains and rents belonging to the college amply sufficed both to pay the stipends of professors and to keep the building in good order, besides supplying an extra fund for the sustenance of poor scholars. The Suk, or market of the Nizamiyya, was one of the great thoroughfares of this quarter, and it is described as lying adjacent to the “Mashraʾah” or wharf, which proves that the college must have stood near the Tigris bank.[32] ... Writing a dozen years later than Ibn Batuta, Hamd-Allah, the Persian historian, briefly alludes to the Nizamiyya, which he calls “the mother of the Madrasahs” in Bagdad. This proves that down to the middle of the fourteenth century A. D. the college was still standing, though at the present time all vestiges of it have disappeared, as indeed appears already to have been the case in the middle of the last century, for Niebuhr found no traces of the Nizamiyya to describe in his painstaking account of the ruins in the city of Caliphs, as these still existed in the time of his visit.

It was here, at the Nizamiyya School, that Al-Ghazali first embarked on his career as an independent teacher. His lectures drew crowds. He gave fatwas, or legal opinions, on matters of the law,[33] he wrote books, he preached in the mosque, and was a leader of the people. Then suddenly in the midst of all this prosperity a great change came over him. He seemed to be attacked by a mysterious disease. His speech became hampered, his appetite failed, and his physicians said the malady was due to mental unrest. He suddenly left Bagdad in the month of Dhu-l-Qada, 488, appointed his brother Ahmed to teach in his place, and abandoned all his property, except so much as was necessary for his own support and that of his children.

This sudden retirement from active life and academic honour was unintelligible to the theologians of his days. They looked upon it as a calamity for Islam. Some interpreted it as fear of the Government, a flight from responsibility, but the real reason of his renunciation he himself tells us in his “Confessions.” This book reveals the story of his spiritual experiences from his youth up to his fiftieth year.

He says: “Know then, my brother (may God direct you in the right way), that the diversity in beliefs and religions, and the variety of doctrines and sects which divide men, are like a deep ocean strewn with shipwrecks, from which very few escape safe and sound. Each sect, it is true, believes itself in possession of the truth and of salvation; ‘each party,’ as the Koran saith, ‘rejoices in its own creed’; but as the chief of apostles, whose word is always truthful, has told us, ‘My people will be divided into more than seventy sects of whom only one will be saved.’ This prediction, like all others of the Prophet, must be fulfilled.

“From the period of adolescence, that is to say, previous to reaching my twentieth year to the present time when I have passed my fiftieth, I have ventured into this vast ocean; I have interrogated the beliefs of each sect and scrutinized the mysteries of each doctrine, in order to disentangle truth from error and orthodoxy from heresy. I have never met one who maintained the hidden meaning of the Koran without investigating the nature of his belief, nor a partisan of its exterior sense without inquiring into the results of his doctrine. There is no philosopher whose system I have not fathomed, nor theologian the intricacies of whose doctrine I have not followed out.

“Sufism has no secrets into which I have not penetrated; the devout adorer of Deity has revealed to me the aim of his austerities; the atheist has not been able to conceal from me the real reason of his unbelief. The thirst for knowledge was innate in me from my early age; it was like a second nature implanted by God, without any will on my part. No sooner had I emerged from boyhood than I had already broken the fetters of tradition and freed myself from hereditary beliefs.

“Having noticed how easily the children of Christians become Christians, and the children of Moslems embrace Islam, and remembering also the traditional saying ascribed to the Prophet: ‘Every child has in him the germ of Islam, then his parents make him Jew, Christian, or Zoroastrian,’ I was moved by a keen desire to learn what was this innate disposition in the child, the nature of the accidental beliefs imposed on him by the authority of his parents and his masters, and finally the unreasoned convictions which he derives from their instructions.”

Again he is full of doubts when he says: “Perhaps also Death is that state [he is speaking of a possible state of being which will bear the same relation to our present state as this does to the condition when asleep], according to a saying of the Prince of Prophets: ‘Men are asleep; when they die, they wake.’ Our present life in relation to the future is perhaps only a dream, and man, once dead, will see things in direct opposition to those now before his eyes.

“Such thoughts as these threatened to shake my reason, and I sought to find an escape from them. But how? In order to disentangle the knot of this difficulty, a proof was necessary. Now a proof must be based on primary assumptions, and it was precisely these of which I was in doubt. This unhappy state lasted about two months, during which I was not, it is true, explicitly or by profession, but morally and essentially a thoroughgoing sceptic.”

That Al-Ghazali was driven to scepticism must not surprise us. Schools of free thinkers had been established fifty years earlier at Bagdad and Busrah. Every Friday they gathered together. Some were rationalists, some downright materialists. Not only philosophers but poets were the leaders of these circles. Among them we must mention Abu’l ʾAla Al-Maʾarri, born in 973 A. D. This blind poet is said to have written a Koran in imitation of Mohammed, and when some one complained to him that although the book was well written it did not make the same impression as the true Koran, he replied: “Let it be read from the pulpit of the mosques for four hundred years and then you will all be delighted with it.” His quatrains rival those of Omar Al-Khayyam in their utter pessimism and rank infidelity from the orthodox Moslem standpoint. For example, he writes:

“Lo: there are many ways and many traps

And many guides and which of them is Lord?

For verily Mohammed has the sword

And he may have the truth—perhaps? perhaps?

Now this religion happens to prevail

Until by that one it is overthrown,—

Because men dare not live with men alone,

But always with another fairy-tale.

Religion is a charming girl, I say;

But over this poor threshold will not pass,

Because I can’t unveil her, and alas;

The bridal gift I can’t afford to pay.”

Nor could this poet have had much reverence for the religion of Islam when he wrote:

“Where is the valiance of the folk who sing

These valiant stories of the world to come?

Which they describe, forsooth, as if it swung

In air and anchored with a yard of string.”

...

“Two merchantmen decided they would battle,

To prove at last who sold the finest wares;

And while Mohammed shrieked his call to prayers,

The true Messiah waved his wooden rattle.”

As in the nineteenth century for Christianity, so in the eleventh century for Islam, the struggle between science and orthodoxy waged fiercely. The rationalistic school of the Muʾtazilites still exercised great influence while the literalists and the blind followers of traditional Islam were often more distinguished for Pharisaism than piety.

We need only turn to the “Maqamat” of Al-Hamadhani to know what the sceptic of that day thought of the public religious services.

“So I slipped away from my companions,” says his hero, “taking advantage of the opportunity of joining in public prayers, and dreading, at the same time, the loss of the caravan I was leaving. But I sought aid against the difficulty of the desert through the blessing of prayer, and, therefore, I went to the front row and stood up. The Imam went up to the niche and recited the opening chapter of the Quran according to the intonation of Hamza, in regard to using ‘Madda’ and ‘Hamza,’ while I experienced disquieting grief at the thought of missing the caravan, and of separation from the mount. Then he followed up the Surat Al-Fatiha with Surat Al-Waqʾia while I suffered the fire of impatience and tasked myself severely. I was roasting and grilling on the live coal of rage. But, from what I knew of the savage fanaticism of the people of that place, if prayers were cut short of the final salutation, there was no alternative but silence and endurance, or speech and the grave! So I remained standing thus on the foot of necessity till the end of the chapter. I had now despaired of the caravan and given up all hope of the supplies and the mount. He next bent his back for the two prostrations with such humility and emotion, the like of which I had never seen before. Then he raised his hands and his head and said: ‘May God accept the praise of him who praises Him,’ and remained standing till I doubted not but that he had fallen asleep. Then he placed his right hand on the ground, put his forehead on the earth and pressed his face thereto. I raised my head to look for an opportunity to slip away, but I perceived no opening in the rows, so I re-addressed myself to prayer until he repeated the Takbir for the sitting posture. Then he stood up for the second prostration, recited the Suras of Al-Fatiha and Al-Qaria with an intonation which occupied the duration of the Last Day and well-nigh exhausted the spirits of the congregation. Now, when he had finished his two prostrations and proceeded to wag his jaws to pronounce the testimony to God’s unity, and to turn his face to the right and to the left for the final salutation, I said: ‘Now God has made escape easy, and deliverance is nigh’; but a man stood up and said: ‘Whosoever of you loves the companions of the Moslem community let him lend me his ears for a moment.’”—Such was the impression made by the formalities of orthodoxy!

Al-Ghazali found no help for his doubts among these scholastic theologians nor has any Moslem since his day. Professor Macdonald tells us why. “Grant the theologians their premises, and they could argue; deny them, and there was no common ground on which to meet. Their science had been founded by Al-Ashʾari to meet the Muʾtazilites; it had done that victoriously, but could do no more. They could hold the faith against heretics, expose their inconsistencies and weaknesses; but against the sceptic they could do nothing. It is true that they had attempted to go further back and meet the students of philosophy on their own ground, to deal with substances and attributes and first principles generally; but their efforts had been fruitless. They lacked the necessary knowledge of the subject, had no scientific basis, and were constrained eventually to fall back on authority.”[34]

“Nor did he find light in philosophy, although he thoroughly studied the various systems of his day and refuted them. Religion is not merely of the mind but of the heart; philosophy had its place but could satisfy only the intellect and left the deepest longings of the soul unsatisfied. Next he examined the teachings of the Taʾlimites, the contemporary sect of the Ishmaelites founded by Hassan Ibn as Sabbah. Theirs was the doctrine of an Imam or infallible spiritual guide and the sect found large following. But Al-Ghazali, so far from being attracted by them, wrote several books against them.”[35] No other path remained open for the perplexed and sceptical seeker after God than the way of the mystics. It was a return to the early teaching he received at Tus and Nishapur and to the atmosphere of his native land which was for centuries steeped in mysticism. Of this period of his life he was wont to say:

“When I wished to plunge into following the people and to drink of their drink, I looked at my soul and I saw how much it was curtained in, so I retired into solitude and busied myself with religious exercises for forty days, and there was doled to me of knowledge I had not had purer and finer than what I had known. Then I looked upon it, and lo, in it was a legal element. So I returned to solitude and busied myself with religious exercises for forty days, and there was doled to me other knowledge, purer and finer than what had befallen me at first, and I rejoiced in it. Then I looked upon it, and lo, in it was a speculative element. So I returned to solitude a third time for forty days, and there was doled to me other knowledge that is known (i. e., not simply perceived, felt), and I did not attain to the people of the inward sciences. So I know that writing on a surface from which something has been erased is not like writing on a surface in its first purity and cleanness, and I never separated myself from speculation except in a few things.”

Who can read this and doubt his utter sincerity in the search for God and for Truth?

He tells the rest of the story in his “Confessions”: “I saw that Sufism consists in experiences rather than in definitions, and that what I was lacking belonged to the domain, not of instruction but of ecstasy and initiation.

“The researches to which I had devoted myself, the path which I had traversed in studying religious and speculative branches of knowledge, had given me a firm faith in three things—God, inspiration, and the Last Judgment. These three fundamental articles of belief were confirmed in me, not merely by definite arguments, but by a chain of causes, circumstances, and proofs which it is impossible to recount. I saw that one can only hope for salvation by devotion and the conquest of one’s passions, a procedure which presupposes renouncement and detachment from this world of falsehood in order to turn towards eternity and meditation on God. Finally, I saw that the only condition of success was to sacrifice honours and riches and to sever the ties and attachments of worldly life.

“Coming seriously to consider my state, I found myself bound down on all sides by these trammels. Examining my actions, the most fair-seeming of which were my lecturing and professorial occupations, I found to my surprise that I was engrossed in several studies of little value, and profitless as regards my salvation. I probed the motives of my teaching and found that, in place of being sincerely consecrated to God, it was only actuated by a vain desire of honour and reputation. I perceived that I was on the edge of an abyss, and that without an immediate conversion I should be doomed to eternal fire. In these reflections I spent a long time. Still a prey to uncertainty, one day I decided to leave Bagdad and to give up everything; the next day I gave up my resolution. I advanced one step and immediately relapsed. In the morning I was sincerely resolved only to occupy myself with the future life; in the evening a crowd of carnal thoughts assailed and dispersed my resolutions. On the one side the world kept me bound to my post in the chains of covetousness, on the other side the voice of religion cried to me: ‘Up, Up, thy life is nearing its end, and thou hast a long journey to make. All thy pretended knowledge is nought but falsehood and fantasy. If thou dost not think now of thy salvation, when wilt thou think of it? If thou dost not break thy chains to-day, when wilt thou break them?’ Then my resolve was strengthened, I wished to give up all and flee; but the Tempter returning to the attack said: ‘You are suffering from a transitory feeling; don’t give way to it, for it will soon pass. If you obey it, if you give up this fine position, this honourable post exempt from trouble and rivalry, this seat of authority safe from attack you will regret it later on without being able to recover it.’

“Thus I remained, torn asunder by the opposite forces of earthly passions and religious aspirations, for about six months from the month Rajab of the year A. D. 1096. At the close of them my will yielded and I gave myself up to destiny. God caused an impediment to chain my tongue and prevented me from lecturing. Vainly I desired, in the interest of my pupils, to go on with my teaching, but my mouth became dumb.

“The enfeeblement of my physical powers was such that the doctors despairing of saving me, said: ‘The mischief is in the heart, and has communicated itself to the whole organism; there is no hope unless the cause of his grievous sadness be arrested.’

“Finally, conscious of my weakness and the prostration of my soul, I took refuge in God as a man at the end of himself and without resources. ‘He who hears the wretched when they cry’ (Koran, xxviii. 63) deigned to hear me; He made easy to me the sacrifice of honours, wealth, and family” (“The Confessions,” pp. 42-45).

That his conversion did not mean ethically all that the word means in the Christian sense is evident from what immediately follows. He dissembled: “I gave out publicly that I intended to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, while I secretly resolved to go to Syria, not wishing that the Caliph (may God magnify him) or my friends should know my intention of settling in that country. I made all kinds of clever excuses for leaving Bagdad with the fixed intention of not returning thither. The Imams of Irak criticized me with one accord. Not one of them would admit that this sacrifice had a religious motive, because they considered my position as the highest attainable in the religious community. ‘Behold how far their knowledge goes’ (Koran, liii. 31). All kinds of explanations of my conduct were forthcoming. Those who were outside the limits of Irak attributed it to the fear with which the Government inspired me. Those who were on the spot and saw how the authorities wished to detain me, their displeasure at my resolution and my refusal of their request, said to themselves, ‘It is a calamity which one can only impute to a fate which has befallen the Faithful and Learning.’

“At last I left Bagdad, giving up all my fortune. Only, as lands and property in Irak can afford an endowment for pious purposes, I obtained a legal authorization to preserve as much as was necessary for my support and that of my children; for there is surely nothing more lawful in the world than that a learned man should provide sufficient to support his family. I then betook myself to Syria, where I remained for two years, which I devoted to retirement, meditation, and devout exercises. I only thought of self-improvement and discipline and of purification of the heart by prayer in going through the forms of devotion which the Sufis had taught me. I used to live a solitary life in the Mosque of Damascus, and was in the habit of spending my days on the minaret after closing the door behind me” (pp. 45-46).

When Al-Ghazali determined to abandon the world and set out as a pilgrim he was only following the custom of his time. Not only religious men but adventurers found in travel relief and recreation. The pious did it, as they asserted, in imitation of Jesus, the Messiah, whose name is often interpreted as meaning “one who travels constantly.” And the worldly-minded often donned the garb of religious fakirs to satisfy their desire for adventure and their ambition to see distant lands.

Because of facilities for travel by post and caravan routes, this period seemed one of wanderlust second to none. A scholar was not satisfied unless he had seen the world of Islam. Of At-Tabrizi (A. D. 1030-1100), one of the contemporaries of Al-Ghazali, who was also professor at the Nizamiyya School, we read that when he desired to go on a journey for literary purposes “he had no money wherewith to hire a horse, so he put his book into a sack and started to walk the long journey from Persia to Syria. The sweat on his back oozed through the material of his sack and stained the precious manuscript, which was long preserved and shown to visitors in one of the libraries of Bagdad.” The Persian poet Saʾadi was left an orphan at an early age, went to Bagdad to attend the Nizamiyya University course, made the Mecca pilgrimage several times over, acted, out of charity, as a water-carrier in the markets of Jerusalem and the Syrian towns, was taken prisoner by the Franks, and forced to work with Jews at cleaning out the moats of Tripoli in Syria; he was ransomed by an Aleppan, who gave him his daughter in marriage. He himself mentions his visits to Kashgar in Turkestan, to Abyssinia, and Asia Minor. He even travelled about India, passing through Afghanistan on his way.

Interior of the Great Mosque at Damascus. In the center the Mihrab showing the direction of prayer and to the right the Great Pulpit.

We have a picture of such a dervish (a dishonest one, however) in Hamadhani’s forty-second Maqamat: “So I started wandering, as though I was the Messiah, and I journeyed over Khorasan, its deserted and populous parts, to Kirman, Sijistan, Jilan, Tabaristan, Oman, to Sind and Hind, to Nubia and Egypt, Yemen, Hijaz, Mecca and al Taʾif. I roamed over deserts and wastes, seeking warmth and the fire and taking shelter with the ass, till both my cheeks were blackened. And thus I collected of anecdotes and fables, witticisms and traditions, poems of the humorists, the diversions of the frivolous, the fabrications of the lovesick, the saws of the pseudo-philosophers, the tricks of the conjurors, the artifices of the artful, the rare sayings of convivial companions, the fraud of the astrologers, the finesse of quacks, the deception of the effeminate, the guile of the cheats, the devilry of the fiends, such that the legal decisions of al-Shaʿabi, the memory of al-Dabbi and the learning of al-Kalbi would have fallen short of. And I solicited gifts and asked for presents. I had recourse to influence and I begged. I eulogized and satirized, till I acquired much property, got possession of Indian swords and Yemen blades, fine coats of mail of Sabur and leathern shields of Thibet, spears of al-Khatt and javelins of Barbary, excellent fleet horses with short coats, Armenian mules, and Mirris asses, silk brocades of Rum and woolen stuffs of Sus.”[36]

To the honest traveller, like Al-Ghazali, however, it was not so easy a life. Not only were there the hardships of travel and its loneliness, but the asceticism of the beggar and the wayfarer. “And to such a pass did we come,” says Hariri, “through assailing fortune and prostrating need,—that we were shod with soreness, and fed on choking, and filled our bellies with ache, and wrapped our entrails upon hunger, and anointed our eyes with watching, and made pits our home, and deemed thorns a smooth bed, and came to forget our saddles, and thought destroying death to be sweet and the ordained day to be tardy.”

We may believe that so keen an observer as Al-Ghazali carried his “Baedeker” with him on his travels. He was doubtless acquainted with the chief geographical works of that period, some of which contained maps and even illustrations. The most important work was that by Abu ʾAbdallah al-Maqdisi, who spent a great part of his life travelling all over the Moslem empire, with the possible exception of India and Spain. His book was entitled: “The Best Classification for the Knowledge of Climates.” It was written in A. D. 985. Another work of a contemporary of Al-Ghazali, Abu ʾUbaid al-Bakri of Cordova, was a general geography of all the roads and provinces of the Moslem world.

Although we have no details of Al-Ghazali’s wanderings we can at least follow him on his journeys and learn something of the places he visited and their condition in his day. The course of his travels seems to have been from Bagdad to Damascus, a journey of nearly five hundred miles, from Damascus to Jerusalem and Hebron, thence on to the birthplace of the Prophet at Mecca and his tomb at Medina and back over a thousand miles more of caravan travel.