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Coming Down from the Mountaintop:Al-Ghazals Autobiographical Writings in Context muwo_

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Kenneth Garden

Tufts University

The starting point for understanding the life of Abu H

amid al-Ghazal (d. 505/1111)

is justifiably the account that he himself wrote of it in his famous al-Munqidh minal-d alal. The Munqidhis an intricately crafted work that draws on autobiographi-

cal tropes of writers from Galen (d. 199 or 217) to al-Muh asib (d. 857/244) to UmarKhayyam (d. 526/1131) to Nasir-i Khusraw (d. 1088/481), and yet makes these tropes itsown.1 There are many ways of depicting a life, and in the Munqidhal-Ghazal presentshis own as an almost exclusively interior drama, consisting of doubt, investigation, andinsight, hesitation and conversion, reclusion and emergence. Other characters in thisdrama are few. The main one is God, who intervenes at critical junctions. Caliph andSultan summon him to tasks but only in accordance with his prior inclination and the willof God. Children put in an appearance in summoning him back to T us, and lords ofhearts and visions and righteous men (salih un) urge him to return to teaching. Theal-Ghazal of the Munqidhbegins as a solitary seeker and becomes the proverbial WiseMan on the Mountaintop, divested of worldly relations. The disembodied context of thislife is spiritual, while relationships to the major figures and events of the age are, throughtheir omission, implied to be insignificant.

But although the Munqidhis al-Ghazal s most extensive autobiographical account,he also wrote other descriptions of his life that differ from this interiorized narrative. Ithas been argued that there are autobiographical elements to the biography which Abdal-Ghafir al-Faris wrote of al-Ghazal in that he based it in part on conversations with the

1 On al-Ghazals debt to Galen in the Munqidh, see Stephen Menn, The Discourse on the Method andthe Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography, in Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Jon Millerand Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Menn mentions that this connectionhad already been identified by Misch in his Geschichte der Autobiographie. For the debt to al-Muh asib ,Umar Khayyam, and Nasir-i Khusraw, see Josef van Ess, Quelques remarques sur le Munqidh minad -d all, in Ghazl: La raison et le miracle, Table ronde UNESCO, 910 dcembre 1985, ed. A. -M.Turki (Paris: ditions Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 6465, 6567, and 6768 respectively. Van Ess alsopoints to others who have seen these parallels, 67 n. 47.

2011 Hartford Seminary.Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148USA.DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2011.01366.x

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great scholar.2 This treatment situates al-Ghazal much more among the men and eventsof his time, though when it comes to the period of retreat, Abd al-Ghafir offers an evenmore decontextualized account, mistakenly claiming that al-Ghazal wandered among

the holy sites in the vicinity of Damascus for ten years rather than two. 3

There is also a much less well-known account of al-Ghazal s life, penned by hisown hand and found in his letters, which will be the focus of our comparison here.Unlike the Munqidh, it is not a self-standing work, but a passage found in one ofal-Ghazal s letters, which, unlike his scholarly writings, were written in his mothertongue, Persian. It is a much briefer account an autobiographical fragment, really but it differs in striking ways in its presentation of the details of al-Ghazal s life and inits overall tone. In it, the worldly details of al-Ghazal s life begin to emerge: his age, histies to his home city of T

us, his career, his relations with political figures, and very

different facets of this famous crisis and repentance of 488/1095.The exact context of this autobiographical fragment can be deduced from the letter

in which it appears. It is the same broad context that both of the other auto/biographieswere written in, namely a campaign against al-Ghazal and his writings that erupted afterhis return to teaching in Nishapur in 499/1106. Some scholars have raised questionsabout the sincerity and accuracy of the Munqidhin the past, and the connection with theNishapuri controversy in particular has been made.4What this comparison will show isthat not only modern scholars but al-Ghazal himself, when circumstances called for it,presented his life very differently than he does in the Munqidh. Situating both texts in

their context will help us determine how to weigh some of the features found in each.This can only be done by looking at his other writings and seeing which biographicalframework they support.

The Context of al-Ghazals Autobiographical WritingsJosef van Ess has argued on the basis of his letters that al-Ghazal wrote his famous

autobiography not in a flight of introspection in his autumn years, but in response to acampaign against him that erupted after his return to teaching in Nishapur in 499/1106.5

These collected letters reveal a chronology of the controversy and some details of its

2 Taj al-Dn al-Subk, T abaqat al-shafiiyya al-kubra, ed. Abd al-Fattah Mah ammad al-H ilu andMah mud Muh ammad al-T anah , 1st ed., 10 vols. (Cairo: Matbaa Isa al-Bab al-H alab , 1968), vol. 6,20414. Abd al-Ghafir writes of visiting him and speaking with him on pp. 208209.3 Ibid., 206. Al-Ghazal himself informs us in the Munqidhthat he returned to T us some two years afterhis crisis, Abu H amid al-Ghazal, al-Munqidh min al-d alal, in Majmuat rasail al-imam al-Ghazal,ed. Ah mad Shams al-Dn (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1997), 6162. His letters confirm that he wasagaininT us in 490/1096. Dorothea Krawulsky was able to date a letter to Muj r al-Dawla, clearly writtenfrom T us, to this year. See Dorothea Krawulsky, Briefe und Reden des Abu H amid Muh ammad

al-Gazzal bersetzt und erlutert, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen (Freiburg im Breisgau: KlausSchwarz Verlag, 1971), vol. 7, 5455.4 See van Ess, Quelques remarques sur le Munqidh min ad -d all.5 Ibid.

The Muslim World Volume 2011

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substance. But for a fuller account of what was at stake, we have to turn to al-Ghazal sal-Imla f ishkalat al-ihya, a rebuttal al-Ghazal wrote after the controversy had run itscourse. From the Imla we learn that the campaign in Nishapur focused on the great

work that emerged from al-Ghazal s repentance of 488/1095, Ihya ulum al-dn. In theImla he describes the campaign he faced as follows:

You have asked me . . . about some points in the composition entitled The Revivalthat were difficult for men of limited understanding and limited knowledge. Theirdarts and arrows enjoyed no royal favor (lam yafuz bi-shay min al-h uz uzal-malakiyya qidh u-hu wa-sahmu-hu). And I showed my sorrow at the contemptshown for [The Revival] by the populace, the commoners, the ranks of theplebians, and the foolishly deluded, and those who frighten the people of Islam tothe extent that they slandered it and prohibited its being read and studied. They

issued capricious fatwas without insight, repudiating and opposing it. They linkedits author to perdition and leading others into perdition, and they repudiated itsreaders and those who adopted it as departing from the shara and lackingbalance.6

Al-Ghazal s enemies critiqued and attacked his Revival of the Religious Sciencesas wellas its author, the partisans of its revivalist agenda, and its readership more broadly. As weshall see below, al-Ghazal s opponents also denounced him before Sanjar, the SeljukKing of the East, but without success, as this passage states.

The text of the Imla consists mainly of al-Ghazals rebuttal of 13 points of criticism

leveled against an allegory found in book 35 of Ihya ulum al-dn, Kitab al-tawh dwa-l-tawakkul (The Book of Divine Unity and Reliance on God). But the wide-rangingcampaign the Imla describes is unlikely to have been motivated by this single passage.Religious scholars would have found plenty to dislike in the Ihya. Al-Ghazal meant histitle literally: with this book, he set out to revive a religious scholarly tradition he portraysas dead. What killed the religious sciences were fiqh and kalam, which had grownbeyond their rightful roles.7 These two religious sciences emerged because of theunfortunate necessity of enforcing the law and combating heresy. Because these twosciences, properly construed, deal with worldly issues, al-Ghazal calls them Sciences of

this world (ulum al-dunya).8 He contrasts them to the science that should be the centralconcern of all scholars, as it was, he insists, for the companions of the Prophet, the PiousAncestors (salaf), and even the founders of the legal schools: the Science of theHereafter (ilm al-akhira).9 The dunya/akhira contrast is Quranic, of course, and thusinvokes scripture in support of this distinction. The Revivalaims to revive the religious

6Abu H amid al-Ghazal, al-Imla f ishkalat al-ihya, in Ihya ulum al-dn, ed. S idq Muh ammadJam l al-Attar (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1997), vol. 5, 13.7 For an explanation of the mortification of the religious sciences that centers on fiqh, see Abu H amid

al-Ghazal, Ihya ulum al-dn, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1997), vol. 1, Kitab al-ilm, 44. For anexplanation that faults kalam, see ibid., 7576.

8 For example, ibid., vol. 1, Kitab al-ilm, 2223.9 For example, ibid., vol. 1, Khutba, 7.

Coming Down from the Mountaintop



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sciences by demoting law and theology to their proper role and elevating the Science ofthe Hereafter to its proper role by making the case for this hierarchy and spelling out inexhaustive detail what the Science of the Hereafter entails.

Beyond the polemical intent of the Ihya, there is the ambiguous substance of theScience of the Hereafter that it advocates. It has long been assumed that the Ihya isa compendious work of Sufism. But while al-Ghazal draws heavily from Sufism incrafting his Science of the Hereafter, it is clear that he also drew heavily fromphilosophy. This is not surprising given that his restricted teachings that he sharedonly with advanced initiates, the Mad nun corpus, recently analyzed by M. Afifial-Akiti, consist, in many cases of lightly but significantly edited synopses of works ofIbn Sna.10 Al-Ghazal writes that the Science of the Hereafter is divided into theScience of Practice (ilm al-muamala) or ethics, which is the primary focus of theIhya, and the Science of Divine Disclosure (ilm al-mukashafa). The Science ofDivine Disclosure, he writes, cannot be divulged by those who know it, though hedescribes its terrain generally in the first book of the Ihya (the Book of Knowledge),and goes into its details in scattered passages throughout the book.11 It has long beenestablished that the ethics of the Ihya have a partially philosophical framework,

12 andit has been shown that the Science of Divine Disclosure owes a deep debt to IbnSna.13 In fact, this very distinction between metaphysical theory and ethical practiceis philosophical to begin with.14

10 M. Afifi al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ofFalsafa: Al-Ghazalis Mad nun, Tahafut, andMaqasid, with Particular Attention to their FalsafTreatments of Gods Knowledge of Temporal Events,in Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), 51100.11 For a comprehensive account of al-Ghazal s treatment ofilm al-mukashafa, see Alexander Treiger,The Science of Divine Disclosure: Al-Gazals Higher Theology and its Philosophical Underpinnings,PhD diss. (Yale University, 2008).12 See Mohamed Sherif, Ghazalis Theory of Virtue (Albany: SUNY Press, 1975), 2476.13 See Treiger, The Science of Divine Disclosure: Al-Gazals Higher Theology and its Philosophical

Underpinnings, 4498. Treigers work is one of several important studies of the past two decades thatcontradict the long established image of al-Ghazal as the decisive refuter of falsafa in the Islamictradition and establish him rather as one of the most decisive figures in appropriating and naturalizing(in al-Akitis terms) the Avicennan legacy. Some of the most important of these studies include RichardFrank, Creation and the Cosmic System: al-Ghazal and Avicenna (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Univer-sittsverlag, 1992), and Al-Ghazal and the Asharite School (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994);Frank Griffel, Toleranz und Apostasie im Islam: Die Entwicklung zu al-Gazazals Urteil gegen diePhilosophie und die Reaktionen der Philosophen (Leiden: Brill, 2000), and al-Ghazals PhilosophicalTheology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Jules Janssens, Al-Ghazzal and His Use ofAvicennan Texts, in Problems in Arabic Philosophy, ed. Mikls Marth (Piliscaba, Hungary: AvicennaInstitute of Middle East Studies, 2003) 3749, and Al-Ghazzal s Tahafut: Is it Really a Rejection of Ibn

Snas Philosophy? Journal of Islamic Studies 12 (2001): 117; and al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, andthe Ugly ofFalsafa, op. cit.14Avner Giladi, On the Origins of Two Key Terms in al-Gazzals Ihya ulum al-dn, Arabica 36(1989): 8192.




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In the letters we find specific charges brought against al-Ghazal in the course ofthe controversy. Unsurprisingly, we find that philosophy holds a prominent place inthe list of the deviant sects and schools he was accused of adhering to. The collected

letters do not consist solely of al-Ghazal s voice; rather, most letters are prefacedby an introduction written by the anonymous compiler of the collection, providingcontextual background. It is the compiler who tells us that al-Ghazal s enemiescharged that he:

Did not have any belief whatsoever in Islam, but rather that he held the creedof the philosophers and the heretics (falasifa va mulh idan) and he mixed allof his books with their words. He mixed unbelief (kufr) and nonsense(abatl) with the secrets of the revelation. He called God the true light and thisis the belief of the Zoroastrians (madhhab-i majus), who speak of light and

darkness.15

These do not seem to have been the only dubious creeds al-Ghazal was accused offollowing. Contemporary criticisms of the Ihya from Alexandria and Ifr qya, by criticslikely aware of the controversy in Nishapur, contain further charges of Batinism andborrowings from the Ikhwan al-S afa.

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The Case for the Munqidh as an Apology in the Faceof the Controversy

Knowing that al-Ghazal wrote the Munqidhshortly after his return to teaching andtherefore in the midst of this controversy over the Ihya that focused on philosophicalborrowings, we find new significance in passages where the Munqidhrefers to the Ihya,

15Abu H amid al-Ghazal, Makatib-i fars-yi Ghazzal bi-nam-i fazail al-anam min rasail H ujjatal-Islam, ed. Abbas Iqbal (Tehran: Kitabforush Ibn Sna, 1333/1954), 3.16Abu Bakr al-T urtush (d. 520/1126) makes the charge of Batinism and borrowings from the Ikhwanal-Safa along with charges of philosophical borrowings in response to a query from al-Andalus onwhether or not the Ihya should be burned. The charge of Batinism is based on al-Ghazal s claim in theIhya that the Science of Divine Disclosure cannot be revealed to those not initiated into it. T urtushs

letter is reproduced in Sa

d Ghurab, H awla ih raq al-Murabit n li-Ihya

al-Ghazal, Actas del IV coloquioHispano-Tunecino (Palma de Mallorca, 1979) Madrid, 1983 (1983): 15863. Al-Mazar al-Imam (d.536/1141), writing from Ifrqiyya and referring to questions he has received about al-Ghazal from boththe Maghrib and Mashriq, also charges that al-Ghazal was influenced by the Ikhwan. The passage iscited in al-Subk, T abaqat al-shafiiyya al-kubra., vol. 6, 241. For a Spanish translation of al-Mazar scritique of al-Ghazali, see Miguel Asn-Palacios, Un faq h Siciliano, contradictor de al-Ghazal (AbuAbd Allah de Mazara), in Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari (Palermo: 1910) vol. 2, 216244.There is good evidence that al-Ghazal was influenced by the Ikhwan al-S afa. See Treiger, The Scienceof Divine Disclosure: Al-Gazals Higher Theology and its Philosophical Underpinnings, 8385; MartinWhittingham, Al-Ghazal and the Quran: One Book, Many Meanings (London and New York:Routledge, 2007), 6869; and Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazals Philosophical Theology, 199200. Anna Akasoy

has suggested that charges of having been influenced by the Brethren of Purity were a repeatedtrope of Maghribi anti-Sufi polemic. See her The al-Ghazal Conspiracy: Reflections on theInter-Mediterranean Dimension of Islamic Intellectual History, in Avicenna and His Legacy: A GoldenAge of Science and Philosophy, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis), 117142 at 126.




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and denies or justifies a debt to philosophy. Starting from these more direct referencesto the controversy, we can move on to less direct ways in which al-Ghazal formulatedhis autobiography to respond to the campaign against him.

In the following passage of the Munqidh, al-Ghazal responds to charges ofphilosophical influence in his Ihya:

A faction of those whose minds are not rooted in the sciences, and whose visionis not open to the furthest degrees of the schools of thought (madhahib), objectedto some words scattered in our compositions on the secrets of the religious sciencesand claimed that those words were from the discussions of the ancient philoso-phers. This despite the fact that some of them were my own original ideas and itis not impossible that one hoof should fall where another has trod. And some ofthem are present in the books of religion, and the sense of most of them is foundin the books of Sufism. And even assuming that they are not present except in [thephilosophers] books, as long as those discussions are rational in themselves,guided by rational proof, and not at odds with the Book and the Sunna, then whyis it necessary to renounce and abandon them?17

Here we see not only a reference to the charges of borrowing from philosophy but alsoa roundabout admission that this is so and a justification for having done so. Al-Ghazalsreference to criticisms of his compositions on the secrets of the religious sciencesseems a clear reference to The Revival of the Religious Sciences.

A few passages later, he comes back to a defense of his borrowings from philosophy.A boy who sees a snake charmer may try handling snakes and be poisoned. A snakecharmer, however, has the expertise to do so without fear of being bitten. What is more,a snake charmer has an obligationto handle snakes in order to extract an antidote fromsnake venom for the benefit of those in need. Just so, al-Ghazal hasadutytoextractfromphilosophy what is needed by the community.18 The charge of philosophical borrowingwas one of the chief accusations al-Ghazal faced. The most likely explanation for thesetwo justifications of philosophical borrowing in the Munqidhis that they are a responseto the controversy, especially given the reference to the Ihya in the first one.

In another passage in the Munqidh, al-Ghazal claims divine sanction for his projectof revival. Near the end of the book al-Ghazal justifies his return to officially sponsoredteaching in the Niz amiyya Madrasa in Nishapur, writing that some noble and insightfulmen of T us had interpreted his return to teaching in 499 (of the Hijr calendar) asevidence that he was the mujaddidor renewer of the fifth Islamic century, in keeping

17Al-Ghazal , Al-Munqidh min al-d alal, 4546. Emphasis added. This passage has also been cited andanalyzed by Eric Ormsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute over al-Ghazals Best of all Possible

Worlds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 209, and al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, and theUgly of Falsafa, 8485. I have followed al-Akiti in translating al-kutub al-shariyya as books foreligion.18 Ibid., 47.




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with the hadith of the Renewer.19 As Hans Bauer has pointed out, Ghazal alters thestandard wording of the hadith of the Renewer in a telling way, writing not, At the headof every century, God sends to this religious community whosoever (man) will renewfor

it the affairs of its religion, but rather, whosoever will revive for it the affairs of itsreligion.20 Ghazal presents himself as the Renewer of the 5 th century insofar as hisappointment to teach at the Niz amiyya madrasa in Nishapur at the head of that centurywould allow him to promote the agenda of his Revival of the Religious Sciences.

Finally, there is evidence that al-Ghazal s enemies saw the Munqidh as a workrelated to the controversy. Al-Ghazal writes that one of them, a Sicilian Malik namedAbu Abdallah al-Mazar al-Dhak (d. 510/1116), approached him with a copy to ask forhis certification (ijaza). Al-Ghazal writes that he examined the copy and found a trap:incriminating interpolations in the text; he refused to sign. Al-Mazar al-Dhak was then

banished from Nishapur and went to the court of Sanjar, where he denouncedal-Ghazal.21

These references provide the plainest evidence that the Munqidh was a work ofapology written in the context of the Nishapuri controversy. Approaching the Munqidhfrom this point of view reading it as an apology written in the midst of an intellectual

furore over Ihya ulum al-dn, and keeping in mind the controversys key debatingpointsputsthe Munqidhin a new light. Even passages that do not explicitly refer to theIhya or to al-Ghazal s critics take on new significance. In particular, it becomes clear thatal-Ghazal s limited rejection of philosophy, utter rejection of Isma l Shiism, and several

passing dismissals of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa)aretobeunderstoodinpartas rebuttals to charges that he adhered to these very schools of thought.

There are several threads of apology that run through the Munqidh. Here I will focuson al-Ghazal s effort to abstract his life of most of its worldly particulars to cast himselfas an almost accidental religious authority, guided by God and driven by interior,spiritual motives, with no thought of worldly gain. Knowing the context in whichal-Ghazal wrote this autobiography helps us understand what considerations movedhim to craft the narrative of his life as he did. Comparison to his briefer second biographywill further highlight his rhetorical artistry.

The Man on the MountaintopIn the Munqidh al-Ghazal presents a largely decontextualized and disembodied

life. The drama of the Munqidh is almost exclusively mental and spiritual. Ghazal weighs different intellectual positions, comes to doubt them, lapses into radical

19 Ibid., 7576. On the tradition of the mujaddid, see Ella Landau-Tasseron, The Cyclical Reform: AStudy of the MujaddidTradition, Studia Islamica70 (1989): 79117.20

H. Bauer, Zum Titel und zur Abfassung von Ghazalis Ihja, Der IslamIV (1913): 159160.21Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 3, 1112. On al-Mazar al-Dhak and his role in the controversy, seeKenneth Garden, Al-Mazar al-Dhak: Al-Ghazal s Maghribi Adversary in Nishapur, Journal of Islamic Studies21, no. 1 (2010): 89107.




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skepticism, recovers, investigates various schools of thought, separates their wheat fromtheir chaff, settles on one of them (namely Sufism), practices it for some ten years inseclusion, and concludes that the unique fruits of this trajectory have made him

indispensable to his troubled age.His initial inquisitive disposition is determined by God, and so are most of the

turning points in his life. It is God who cures him of his original aporia, who forces himto leave his position in Baghdad, and who creates the conditions for him to return toteaching in Nishapur. The specifics of place play little role in the Munqidh, and relationsto other human beings even less.

But we know from other sources that al-Ghazal had close connections to thepolitical powers of his age. Seljuk officials played an important role in his movements,the positions he held, and, in some cases, what he wrote. Abd al-Ghafir al-Faris writes

of al-Ghazal beginning his career after his studies by finding a patron in his fellow T us,Niz am al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), and joining him in the military camp of the Seljuk SultanMalik Shah (d. 485/1092), which was in Isfahan. It was Niz am al-Mulk, Malik Shahsvizier, who appointed him head of the Niz amiyya madrasa in Baghdad.

22

In the Munqidh, al-Ghazal does mention the caliph al-Mustazhir bi-Llah (d.512/1118) (though not by name!) and his role in requesting the composition of arefutation of Isma l Shiism, Fad aih al-batiniyya wa fad ail al-mustaz hriyya. But hemakes a point of noting that he did not write the book solely at the Caliphs request.Rather, this was an incentive from outside, in addition to the original motive from within

(li-l-baith al-aslmin al-batin).23And when he mentions the role of the Seljuk King of the

East in summoning him to return to teaching in Nishapur in 499/1106, he is careful to notethat it was God who moved Sanjar to summon him, and that this was likewise inaccordance with his own prior intention.24 He omits to mention the role of Fakhr al-Mulk,son of his former patron, who Abd al-Ghafir al-Faris tells us was the one who issued theactual invitation to teach in Nishapur.25Al-Ghazal s relations with these and other men ofstate were far more extensive than the Munqidh implies, a fact certainly known to hiscontemporaries. By omitting the context of his life and career, al-Ghazal presents himselfas the proverbial Man on the Mountaintop, having severed all ties to the world and

possessed of unique wisdom shared with those who seek him out to solicit it.

A Life in ContextThe campaign al-Ghazal describes in al-Imla f ishkalat al-ihya came to a head in

500/1106 or 501/110726 when his enemies complained to Sanjar that he had slandered

22Al-Subk , T abaqat al-shafiiyya al-kubra, vol. 6, 205.23Al-Ghazal , al-Munqidh min al-d alal, 48.24

Ibid., 75.25Al-Subk , T abaqat al-shafiiyya al-kubra, vol. 6, 207.26 Frank Griffel has argued that the controversy began in 501/1108. In a letter to Sanjar that we willanalyze below, al-Ghazal gives his age as 53. Griffel has argued based on evidence from the letters that




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Abu H an fa, founder of the H anaf legal school, in a youthful work of legal theoryentitled al-Mankhul min talq al-usul

27 which he had.28 This charge would havetroubled Sanjar for two reasons. First, he, like all members of the Seljuk house, was a

H anaf . More importantly, Nishapur was plagued by communal violence betweenfollowers of the H anaf and Shafi madhhabs. This rivalry had led to the banishment ofal-Ghazal s teacher, al-Juwayn (d. 478/1085), from Nishapur and his exile in the Hijaz,from which he took his title Imam al-H aramayn.

29 A few decades after al-Ghazal sdeath, sectarian rioting contributed to the destruction of Nishapur.30 Fierce madhhabpartisanship was referred to as taassub, fanaticism, and this was the charge leveled atal-Ghazal a charge Sanjar could not ignore. On the basis of this accusation, hesummoned al-Ghazal for a hearing.

Al-Ghazal appeared before Sanjar and won him over with his testimony. In theImla, al-Ghazal reports that his enemies attacks won no royal favor, a reference to hisacquittal. Al-Ghazal returned to T us after his trial, and there Sanjar sent him some wildgame he had hunted as a display of his favor toward him. Al-Ghazali responded bywriting a short Mirror for Princes for Sajar entitled Nashat-i muluk.

31

But al-Ghazal communicated with Sanjar before the hearing. He set out from T us forSanjars camp at Turugh, 7 km south of Mashhad on the road to Nishapur.32 He stoppedin Mashhad, the site of the still-venerated tomb of a descendent of the Prophet, Imam

al-Ghazal s birth date is not 450/1059, as is often assumed, but rather, in descending order oflikelihood, 448/1057, 447/1056, or 446/1055. The most likely of these dates would give us 501/1108 asthe date of the controversy. On the date of al-Ghazal s birth, see Griffel, Al-Ghazals PhilosophicalTheology, 2325. On the dating of the controversy, see ibid., 54. On the basis of a biography of aMaghribi participant in the controversy named al-Mazar al-Dhak found in Qad Iyad s Tartbal-madarik, I have argued that the controversy occurred in 500/1106. See Garden, Al-Mazar al-Dhak:Al-Ghazal s Maghribi Adversary in Nishapur, 102.27Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 3. For al-Ghazal s denial of the charge, see ibid., 10.28Van Ess consulted the Mankhul and confirmed that al-Ghazal denies that Abu H an fa is worthy ofbeing called a mujtahid. See van Ess, Quelques remarques sur le Munqidh min ad -d all, 60., and AbuH amid al-Ghazal, al-Mankhul min talq al-usul, ed. Muh ammad H asan Htu (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr,

1970), 471. In the Mankhul, al-Ghazal further charges that Abu H an fa turned the sharainside out,jumbled its method, and altered its rules. Ibid, 500. Al-Ghazal goes on to list errors committed by Abu

H an fa and concludes the list by writing, Perhaps the reader of this chapter will think that we arefanatical partisans of al-Shafi , furious at Abu H an fa, due to the our long-windedness in thearrangement of this chapter. Nonsense! We are nothing if not even-handed judges, limiting ourselvesto a small portion of abundant [examples]. Ibid, 504.29 On the controversy that led to al-Juwayn s exile, see Heinz Halm, Der Wesir al-Kundur und dieFitna von Niapur, Die Welt des Orients 6 (197071): 205233.30 On H anaf-Shafi rivalry in Nishapur, see Richard Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study inMedieval Islamic Social History(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 3132. On the remarkablestory of the gradual destruction of Nishapur between 548/1153 and 557/1162 through a combination of

attacks by Ghuzz tribesmen and H anaf-Shafi

violence, see ibid., 7681.31Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 11.32 Modern day T uruq. Krawulsky provides its location. Krawulsky, Briefe und Reden des Abu H amidMuh ammad al-G

azall bersetzt und erlutert, 219, n. 5/1.




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Riza, and wrote a letter to Sanjar, asking to be excused from appearing before him. Hespends the first half of the letter urging Sanjar to use his office justly in order to storeprovisions in this world for the world to come. In particular, al-Ghazal asks him to be

merciful towards the people of T us, who are enduring famine due to drought andextreme cold that have destroyed their grain crops and their orchards.

After this, we come to an autobiographical segment that, despite its brevity, differsmarkedly from the Munqidhin its overall specificity and the details it includes. It readsas follows:

Know that 53 years of the life of this supplicant have passed. For forty of these, heplunged into the sea of the religious sciences, until he reached the point that hiswords remained closed to the understanding of the majority of his contemporaries.He lived for twenty years in the days of the martyred sultan (Malik Shah), whose

favor was bestowed upon him in Baghdad and Isfahan. He was often a messengerin important matters between the Sultan and the Commander of the Believers andwrote some seventy books about religious sciences. Then he saw the world as itwas and rejected it utterly. He spent some time in Jerusalem and Mecca, and sworeat the grave of Abraham, the Friend of God may Gods prayers be upon him no longer to go to any sultan, not to take the money of a sultan, and not to practicetheological disputing or fanaticism (munaz ara va taassub na kunad).Hewastrueto this oath for twelve years and the Commander of the Believers and all sultansknew him to be excused.33

For such a brief autobiographical fragment, it is striking how much information itconveys that is absent from the much longer Munqidh, which shows how differentlyal-Ghazal was capable of presenting his life. He does not appear here as a disembodiedspiritual seeker shorn of worldly attachment. He prefaces the passage by appealing tothe Sultan on the behalf of his fellow T uss. He gives us his age and tells us roughly whenhe began his studies. He reminds Sanjar of his service to Sanjars father, Malik Shah,specifically of his mediation between the Sultan and the Caliph. He makes it clear thathis position in Baghdad was the result of his service to the Sultan, mentioning MalikShahs favor to him in Isfahan and Baghdad.34

The other important differences between this passage and the Munqidh lie intheir respective representations of al-Ghazal s famous crisis and repentance of 488/1095. There is no mention of Sufism or a period of vacillation before finding theresolve to follow the Sufi path. There is no mention of God robbing him of hispowers of speech or digestion. He simply saw the world as it was and rejected it.While the Munqidh emphasizes his spiritual exercise in Damascus, here he neglectseven to mention the city, writing only of Jerusalem and Mecca. We cannot concludethat this is simply for the sake of concision. Al-Ghazal does make space for animportant and dramatic event he does not mention in the Munqidh: a series of vows

33Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 45.34 Malik Shah reigned 465485/10721092.




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he took at the tomb of Abraham: nevermore to appear before a ruler, to accept nomore money from a ruler, not to engage in any further theological disputation, and toforswear all fanaticism (taas

s

ub).35

These vows are illuminating in several ways. Apart from his travel through the Levantand Hijaz, they are the only actions al-Ghazal mentions in relation to his repentance. Assuch they point to a very different set of motives behind the transformation of 488/1095,namely a repentance of involvement with men of state.

His reference to Malik Shah as the martyred sultan (sultan-i shahd) reminds usof the period of political turmoil in which his repentance occurred. In 485/1092,Niz am al-Mulk, al-Ghazal s patron, was assassinated and his rival, Taj al-Mulk,became Malik Shahs vizir. With this change of the guard, Malik Shah ordered theAbbasid Caliph al-Muqtad to leave the capital within ten days. Before the ten days

had elapsed, Malik Shah himself died of a fever. The Caliph stayed in Baghdad andMalik Shahs sons began struggling to succeed him. Niz am al-Mulks entourage ofthousands, known as the Niz amiyya, murdered Taj al-Mulk, and his sons struggledover his inheritance.36

Al-Ghazal himself played a role in these events. One of Malik Shahs widows,Terken Khatun, prevailed upon the Caliph to name her five year old son as MalikShahs successor, but only on the condition that he also be allowed to name thecommander of the army and the vizier. These had been the prerogatives of the Sultanand not the Caliph and Terken Khatun initially refused. It was al-Ghazal who

mediated between the parties, upholding the Caliphs position and telling TerkenKhatun that the religious law forbade the installation of a minor as fully sovereignruler. In the event, it all came to naught as mother and son died of disease in486/1097. Within sixteen months of the death of Niz am al-Mulk, the entire politicalelite of the realm was dead, including the Caliph al-Muqtad, who died in 487/1094.The result was chaos.37 That al-Ghazal vowed to renounce ties with rulers withinthese circumstances suggests that a very worldly set of factors also played a role in hiscrisis and repentance of 488/1095. Numerous studies have emphasized the politicalelement of al-Ghazal s career and writings.38

35Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 45.36 For recent and thorough discussion of these events, see Griffel, Al-Ghazals Philosophical Theology,3639. The estimate of the size of the Niz amiyya and the reference to Niz am al-Mulks sons strugglingover his inheritance is from Aziz Basan, The Great Seljuks: A History(London and New York: Routledge,2010), 3437.37 Griffel, Al-Ghazals Philosophical Theology, 3637.38 Henri Laoust, La Politique de Gazal (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste de Paul Guethner, 1970); ErikaGlassen, Der Mittlere Weg: Studien zur Religionspolitik und Religiositt der Spteren Abbasiden-Zeit,ed. Hans Robert Roemer, Freiburger Islamstudien (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1981); Mustapha

Hogga, Orthodoxie, Subversion et Rfor me en Islam: Ghazal et les Seljuqides, suivi de textes politiquesde Ghazal, tudes Musulmanes (Paris: Libririe Philosophique J. Vrin, 1993); Omid Safi, The Politics ofKnowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill: TheUniversity of North Carolina Press, 2006), 10524.




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Al-Ghazal tells us that these vows were well known: the Caliph and all sultansknew not to summon him because he had removed himself from their orbit. It isstriking that this facet of his repentance merits no mention in the Munqidh. Josef van

Ess has suggested that assuming an official position at the Niz amiyya at the urging ofFakhr al-Mulk and the backing of Sanjar would have constituted enough of acompromise of the first two clauses of this publically known vow that al-Ghazal would not want to call attention to it in the Munqidh, in which he justifies his returnto teaching.39

The renunciation of theological debate (munaz ara) is also political. In the Ihya,al-Ghazal condemns the practice, and in his description of it, he makes it clear thatwhat he has in mind is public theological debate before rulers, whose winners wereoften richly rewarded by the patrons of this sport.40 Such debates may have been

occasions for H anafs and Shafi s to face off, which may be why al-Ghazal writes ofrenouncing debating and taassub in the same breath, though the inclusion of arenunciation of fanaticism in his report of his vows may be opportunistic. Al-Ghazal refers to his vow at the tomb of Abraham in another letter in the collection, but thistime omits reference to renouncing taassub.

41 Given that he was on his way toSanjars camp to answer charges of sectarian fanaticism, al-Ghazal s motive foradding a clause to his vow is clear. It is another illustration of the elasticity of hisself-presentations.

Al-Ghazal continues, writing that he has been summoned by Sanjar for an

audience, and to this end he has come to Mashhad-i Riza. But because of his oath toAbraham, he has not come to the camp. He then prays to Imam Riza to convince Sanjarto excuse him:

Oh son of the Prophet, be an intercessor with God Most High to elevate the Kingof Islam above his father in this world and in the world to come, to the positionof Solomon, who was a king and a prophet. Support him in upholding theinviolability of the oath before Abraham, the Friend of God peace be uponhim and in not torturing the heart of him who has turned himself from men toYou, God Most High great is He.42

Allowing him to respect his oath, he tells Sanjar, would be better than having him appearbefore him as a soulless body. Sanjars order is binding, of course, but if he commandsal-Ghazal to appear before him, the responsibility for breaking the oath would not beal-Ghazal s.

Of course, this brief account of al-Ghazal s life is every bit as apologetic as theMunqidh; its author has carefully included the details calculated to shape Sanjarsopinion of him prior to his hearing. It is unlikely that he actually thought that Sanjar

39

Van Ess, Quelques remarques sur le Munqidh min ad -d all, 61.40Al-Ghazal , Ihya ulum al-dn, vol. I, Kitab al-ilm, 4446.41Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 45.42 Ibid., 5.




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would excuse him from the summons. Aside from disavowing responsibility forbreaking his oath by appearing before Sanjar, the supplication serves to set the stage foral-Ghazal s hearing. He presents himself a loyal, long-time servant of the Seljuks

which accounts for many of the worldly details he includes in this passage and omitsfrom the Munqidh. He establishes himself as an unrivaled religious authority whosewritings are beyond the grasp of most religious scholars, much as he does in theMunqidh. Thus the charges against him are rooted in the misunderstanding of hisscholarly inferiors. And he is able to stress his otherworldly piety in addition to hisservice to Seljuk sultans. Otherworldliness is at the core of al-Ghazal s self presentationin the Munqidh, but here, writing for Sanjar, he writes of a vow to break relations withworldly rulers, rather than eliding any mention of having had such relations in the firstplace.

Neither the Munqidh nor this autobiographical element of al-Ghazal s petition toSanjar can be taken as the authoritative account of his life. The two of them togethershow that there was a range of details and narrative frameworks al-Ghazal drew on inpresenting accounts of his life depending on his aims in writing autobiography. The truetest of the merits of the elements of each account it to compare them to al-Ghazal s otherwritings, especially Ihya ulum al-dn and his letters. Such a comparison shows thatboth accounts of al-Ghazal s life contain vital information, and the Munqidhnaturallycontains more, being a longer work. But the tropological elements of the Munqidhmust be discounted for a richer and more accurate picture of al-Ghazal to emerge.

The sequential survey of the four categories of the seekers, borrowed from UmarKhayyam, and especially the depiction of al-Ghazal s relationship with philosophy, isundermined, as we have seen, by passages found in the Munqidh itself, and by recentscholarship on his debt to philosophy. More importantly, the interiorized account ofal-Ghazal s quest, shorn of worldly context, must be rejected in the face of evidencefrom the Ihya and the letters. These show that al-Ghazal was, from the moment of hisrepentance in 488/1095 to his death in 505/1111, actively campaigning to transform thereligious landscape of his age and actively lobbying the men of state he knew from hisformer life in support of this agenda.

Al-Ghazal: Engaged Scholar of the HereafterWhile in the Munqidhal-Ghazali describes the years after his repentance as a period

of seclusion and solitude (uzla wa khalwa43) and writes of his days shut inside theminaret of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, al-Ghazals other writings tell a differentstory. In fact, we find that he had made the decision to engage the world very soon afterleaving his position in Baghdad. He did so by writing his Revival of the Religious Sciences,a book whose transformative agenda, as we have seen, is every bit as ambitious as its title

suggests. Far from allowing the Ihya

to speak for itself, al-Ghazal actively spread its

43Al-Ghazal , Al-Munqidh min al-d alal, 71.




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message and recruited scholars to his Science of the Hereafter. Second-hand reports tellof his reading from the work publically already in Damascus.44 First-hand reports tell ofhis teaching it in Baghdad.45 Over the final seventeen years of his life, al-Ghazal sought

to expand his audience by writing synopses of the work and a Persian version for anaudience with a tenuous grasp of Arabic.46

In the letters, as well, we find al-Ghazal actively promoting his revivalist agenda. Wesee him trying to recruit talented young students to the study of the Science of theHereafter.47We see him promoting the career of a like-minded scholar, Ibrahm-i Sabbak(d. 513/1119), who we learn was al-Ghazals companion for twenty years, not only fromT us to Nishapur to Baghdad, but also during his years of retreat in the Levant and Hijaz.

48

Al-Ghazal writes to Fakhr al-Mulk (d. 500/1106), Sanjars vizier, asking him to promotethis man to the position of qad

.

One of the most striking things about the letters is the very active engagement withmen of state they reveal, especially Persian administrators of the Seljuk empire. Of thethirty-three letters in the collection, no fewer than eighteen are correspondence withSeljuk men of state: one to Sanjar and seventeen to various ministers and administrators.His vow at the tomb of Abraham was to abstain from appearing before rulers, a categoryhis letters tell us included Sultans and Caliphs. But he did not abstain from politicalinvolvement altogether.

Al-Ghazal s correspondence with Fakhr al-Mulk, the vizir of Sanjar at the time ofhis return to teaching in Nishapur, is particularly interesting, as it shows that a

master-disciple relationship existed between the two men. There is one letter that isespecially revealing in this respect. In it, al-Ghazal writes that honorific addresses suchas amr, Sword (h usam), and Order (niz am) are mere titles, and quotes a hadith thatstates, I and the believers of my community are free of dissimulation. He further writesthat the true princes are those who possess both the exterior and interior traits of aprince, though they may not be recognized as such, while one who is recognized as aprince but lacks the inner essence of princedom is in fact a prisoner. Thus, Fakhr

44 Griffel, Al-Ghazals Philosophical Theology, 44. Griffel cites Ibn Ath r.45Abu Bakr Ibn al-Arab , al-Awasim min al-qawasim, ed. Ammar T alib (Cairo: Maktabat Daral-turath, 1997), 24.46Arabic synopses of the Ihya include al-Arba n min usul al-dn, and al-Lubab min al-Ihya. Thislatter work has been attributed to al-Ghazal s brother, Ah mad, but Frank Griffel has recently arguedthat it should be attributed to Abu H amid. See Griffel, Al-Ghazals Philosophical Theology, 62 andn. 7.47Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 7374.48 Ibid., 10507 and 3435. The man referred to in the first letter is not named. Ibrah m-i Sabbak isnamed in the second letter. Krawulsky argues that the two letters refer to the same man. See Krawulsky,

Briefe und Reden des Abu H amid Muh ammad al-Gazall bersetzt und erlautert, 2627. Ibrahm-iSabbak may be one of the group of youths from T us that Abd al-Ghafir al-Faris says attended thelectures of al-Juwayn with al-Ghazal in Nishapur. See al-Subk, T abaqat al-shafiiyya al-kubra, vol. 6,204.




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al-Mulks earthly rank is discounted; he is addressed as a member of a fellowship ofwould-be otherworldly amirs standing below al-Ghazal in a relationship of disciple tomentor.49

That al-Ghazal was Fakhr al-Mulks spiritual mentor is particularly significant, asAbd al-Ghafir al-Faris tells us that it was Fakhr al-Mulk and not Sanjar who issuedthe invitation to return to official teaching (clearly he was already actively engaged inteaching) in Nishapur. As al-Ghazals disciple, Fakhr al-Mulk did so with full awarenessof what his mentor stood for and thus actively promoted al-Ghazal s revivalism.Al-Ghazal s letters tell us that Fakhr al-Mulk summoned al-Ghazal with Sanjarsbacking.50 After the hearing that resulted in al-Ghazal s acquittal, Sanjar seems tohave promised al-Ghazal more resources in support of his controversial agenda.51

Al-Ghazal s effort to revive the religion of his age had become thoroughly enmeshed in

politics, much as he tells us in the Munqidh when he writes of God moving Sanjar tosummon him again to teach. What the letters reveal that the Munqidhomits is that it wasnever so far from politics in the first place.

ConclusionAl-Ghazal s resumption of a position at a Niz amiyya madrasa in Nishapur in

499/1106 sparked a major controversy that threatened al-Ghazal and the revivalistagenda he hoped to promote through his new position. Abd al-Ghafir al-Faris writes ofhis response to the campaign against him: He was unaffected by it and did not busyhimself with answering the slanderers, nor did he manifest any distress at the calumnyof the confused.52 In fact, though, he did respond to his detractors by presentingaccounts of his life that aimed to deflect their criticism. Writing for a more generalaudience in al-Munqidh min al-d alal, he presented himself as a selfless and other-worldly figure who had interrupted a life of seclusion only to guide his fellow men to thesalvation that he, uniquely, had discovered. Writing for Sanjar en route to a hearing,al-Ghazal reminded the King of the East of his service to the Seljuk house, especially ofserving them as an envoy to the Caliph. He mentions the turning point in his life thatfigures so prominently in the Munqidh, but ties it to a series of vows conspicuouslyabsent from that work, to shun political rulers and religious disputation and factionalism.Each account draws on the events from al-Ghazal s life that best served him in theimmediate circumstances of its composition and weaves them into a suitable narrativeframework.

49Al-Ghazal , Fazail al-anam, 2428.50 Ibid., 10.51

Ibid., 1011.52Al-Subk , T abaqat al-shafiiyya al-kubra, vol. 6, 208. Translation from McCarthys introduction: R. J.McCarthy, Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts Including his Spiritual Autobiography, al-Munqidhmin al-D alal (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 1980), 16.




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Neither of these accounts reveals the real al-Ghazal . Both have their virtues assources for his biography. The much more extensive account in the Munqidhprovidesunique information and is the much richer and more subtle of the two works. His active

campaign to revive the religious sciences can also be discerned in that work. But inreturning al-Ghazal and his thought to the worldly circumstances that shaped them, theautobiographical fragment in the letter to Sanjar performs a valuable service. Once weset aside the image of al-Ghazal as a solitary seeker on an inner quest for the truth, hiswritings come alive as the works of an engaged scholar, striving by all the means at hisdisposal to Revive the religious landscape of his age.



Documents

Garden Ghazali[1]