GhazĀli, AbŪ ḤĀMid Al-
GHAZĀLI, ABŪ ḤĀMID AL- (AH 450–505/1058–1111 CE), named Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad, was the distinguished Islamic jurist, theologian, and mystic who was given the honorific title Ḥujjat al-Islām (Arab., "the proof of Islam").
Life
Al-Ghazālī was born in the town of Ṭūs, near modern Mashhad (eastern Iran), and received his early education there. When he was about fifteen he went to the region of Gorgān (at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea) to continue his studies. On the return journey, so the story goes, his notebooks were taken from him by robbers, and when he pleaded for their return they taunted him that he claimed to know what was in fact only in his notebooks; as a result of this incident he spent three years memorizing the material.
At the age of nineteen he went to Nishapur (about fifty miles to the west) to study at the important Niẓāmīyah college under ʿAbd al-Malik al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), known as Imam al-Ḥaramayn, one of the leading religious scholars of the period. Jurisprudence would be central in his studies, as in all Islamic higher education, but he was also initiated into Ashʿarī theology and perhaps encouraged to read the philosophy of al-Fārābi and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna).
This page contains 201 words.
Ghazāli, Abū ḤāMid Al- article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 3,393 words
(approx. 11 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Al-Ghazali Article
