On Celebrating the 900th Anniversary

of al-Ghazal
muwo_1378

573..580

M. Afifi al-Akiti
University of Oxford

orty-five score years ago the world witnessed the passing of a great man of religion who
not only made his mark as the fifth-century mujaddid of his own faith, but also left his
legacy to the two older Abrahamic religions. He is equally, it seems to me, Islams
ha-Nesher ha-Gadol and Doctor Angelicus: the H
ujjat al-Islam, Abu H
amid Muhammad b.
Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Ghazal the Shafi jurist, Ashar Sunn theologian and Sufi
master who died in that not very-easy-to-forget year of 1111 (505 AH). In celebrating the
900th anniversary of this special Muslim scholar, the Editor of The Muslim World, Yahya M.
Michot, has invited me to edit a special issue, which has come to embrace two actual issues of
the journal, dedicated to al-Ghazal, for which I feel honoured and grateful. Perhaps it is
doubly providential not least owing to the auspicious-looking number 11, which so often
crops up here that commemorating his ninth centenary actually coincides with the first
centenary of The Muslim World itself: star 1111 falls in conjunction with star 1911, in this year,
and with this very issue. It might even be providential, too, that this commemoration
physically appears in December and extends into the first issue of 2012: the Muslim month in
khira) extended into the next Christian year, 1112!
which al-Ghazal died (Jumada al-A
Much has been said of al-Ghazals virtues, and it would be superflous to list them
here. But one good example is well worth recalling. Al-Ghazals career is defined most
of all by the way he attempted to balance the pursuit of the middle way with respect to
everything he encountered. We can see this best in how he articulated his religion by
delicately balancing the various disciplines and traditions secular as well as religious,
foreign as well as indigenous and by intricately weaving together the different
dimensions of Islam the outer as well as the inner, the legalistic as well as the spiritual
in his magnum opus, the Ihya ulum al-dn. One could even regard this work as the
Summa Islamica. The great historian al-Safad (d. 764/1363) wrote of it: Were all the
books of Islam to be lost except the Ihya, that would replace them.1 Indeed,
1

Al-Safad, Kitab al-waf bil-wafayat, ed. Hellmut Ritter, et al., 30 vols. in progress (Wiesbaden:
Steiner, 1931), 6:275.16: law dhahabat kutubu l-islami wa-baqiya l-Ihyau la-aghna amma
dhahaba.

2011 Hartford Seminary.

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148
USA.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2011.01378.x

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al-Ghazals balancing of the forces transcends the bounded concerns of his own religion
and engages the perennial concerns of all and sundry, atheists and theists alike. Let me
again invoke al-Safad, who, in his hall of fame a roll call of preeminent Muslim
scholars who made their marks in their respective fields listed al-Ghazal as a scholar
who has not been surpassed in reconciling the rational and the scriptural sciences.2
The contributions offered here in homage to al-Ghazal have come from what so far
appears to be the lucky number of 11 authors, including myself. They variously include
treatments of aspects of his bibliography, his biography, his corpus, his teachings and
ideas, and, not to be omitted, his heritage and likeness organized under the following
five headings: (1) Biography; (2) Corpus Algazelicum; (3) Theories and Concepts; (4)
Comparisons and Post-Ghazalian Reception; and (5) Reference Tools.
We begin with remarks concerning my own offering, which ends the commemoration. There I aim to provide the reference point for standardizing the pagination of the
Ghazalian corpus: Index to Divisions of al-Ghazals Often-Cited Published Works.
Referencing the writings of any great scholar, and more so a prolific one, can be a
daunting process for individual researchers, especially when the state of the published
corpus is beset with a lack of systematization, which indeed, generates documentational
chaos in the secondary literature. Such is the unformatted state of al-Ghazals printed
works, yet hitherto there has been no collective sense of urgency for moving towards a
unified system of citation. This cumulatively produces inconvenience and impedes to a
degree the progress of Ghazalian scholarship. It is hoped that this listing will be the first
part of a cumulative (and collective) effort to sort out most of the present chaos and
facilitate the work of researchers in the field.
In the first section, Kenneth Garden puts into context al-Ghazals writings about
himself, comparing the well-known Munqidh with the lesser-known Persian letters:
Coming Down from the Mountaintop: al-Ghazals Autobiographical Writings in
Context. What this comparison shows us is we find al-Ghazal actively promoting his
revivalist agenda, not only in the Munqidh but, more interestingly, in his private letters.
Moreover, when circumstances called for it, al-Ghazal presented his life very differently
from how it appears in the Munqidh, in order to fit the context of his project of revival.
These autobiographical writings, moreover, reveal a picture of al-Ghazal as a public
intellectual who enjoyed privileged access to the men of state of his time. In fact, they
reveal that an intimate shaykh-murd relationship existed with one of them: al-Ghazal
was tutor to the son of his famous patron, the Seljuk vizier, Nizam al-Mulk (ass.
485/1092), namely, Fakhr al-Mulk (ass. 500/1106), who himself assumed the viziership
of the Seljuk government.
In the second section, which looks at the corpus of al-Ghazals works, two scholars
have focused on the Ihya, another on the Mzan, another on the Maqsad and the last
on a little-known Hebrew text attributed to al-Ghazal. Timothy Gianottis Beyond Both
2
Al-Safad, al-Ghayth al-musjam f sharh Lamiyyat al-ajam, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Arabiyya,
1975), 1:193.24: fi l-jami bayna l-maquli wa l-manquli.

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Law and Theology: An Introduction to al-Ghazals Science of the Way of the Afterlife
in Reviving Religious Knowledge (Ihya Ulum al-Dn) analyzes what appears to be the
major motive behind the writing of this master work by al-Ghazal, for which he there
coined the term ilm tarq al-akhira, explained by Gianotti as the teleological science
devoted to the systematic preparation of the individual soul for her ultimate encounter
with the Divine (p. 597). The author provides an overview of that Ghazalian method as
it is used in the Ihya; it includes both a theoretical and a practical component, which are
found to be interdependent, indeed symbiotic and complementary. Gianottis analysis
presents the reader with a good exposition of al-Ghazals agenda for religious reform
and/or revival (tajdd ) and shows how and why he challenged the then prevailing
conception of religious knowledge in Islam. In particular, it reveals al-Ghazal going
against the paradigms and objections of the jurists ( fuqaha) and theologians (mutakallimun) of his time.
The next instalment on the Ihya, Al-Ghazal between Philosophy (Falsafa) and
Sufism (Tasawwuf ): His Complex Attitude in the Marvels of the Heart (Ajaib al-Qalb)
of the Ihya Ulum al-Dn, by Jules Janssens, systematically catalogues the mostly
Avicennian philosophical sources and also the various Sufi sources used by al-Ghazal
in kitab XXI of the Ihya. The subject-matter of Aristotles De Anima was to become what
I would unhesitatingly characterize as al-Ghazals jewel in the crown, just as it had
been for Avicenna (d. 428/1037).3 As I have argued, this important book of the Ihya not
only prefaces the subsequent books on Ihyaan Ethics there, but, revealingly, it forms
the theoretical basis for the philosophical ethics embedded in those books. To this end,
Janssens has here helpfully provided us with a map that explicitly charts al-Ghazals
indirect appropriation of the falsafa tradition a source that was then alien to his
own scholastic culture and affiliation. Furthermore, Janssens has presented us with
al-Ghazals Islamic sources for the Sufi tradition in this book. Consequently, this survey
demonstrates to unsuspecting readers al-Ghazals process of naturalization4 for these
foreign sources, and shows how these, in turn, were intricately combined with the

On the attractions of Avicennas synthesis of the De Anima tradition for al-Ghazals overall project,
see M. Afifi al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Falsafa: Al-Ghazals Madnun, Tahafut, and
Maqasid, with Particular Attention to Their Falsaf Treatments of Gods Knowledge of Temporal
Events, in Y. Tzvi Langermann (ed.), Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and
Philosophy, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, no. 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009),
p. 57 n. 15.
4
The terms appropriation and naturalization were originally used by A.I. Sabra in a different context
[A. I. Sabra, The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A
Preliminary Statement, History of Science 25 (1987): 22543], but I have found them entirely suitable
to describe al-Ghazals borrowing strategy for materials from falsafa. See al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly of Falsafa, p. 62 n. 25; first used in this connection by M. Afifi al-Akiti, The Three
Properties of Prophethood in Certain Works of Avicenna and al-Gazal, in Jon McGinnis (ed.),
Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and
Science: Texts and Studies, no. 56 (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
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supervening indigenous sources. A complicated relationship between the two distinct,

but not necessarily conflicting, sources is revealed.
Yasien Mohameds The Ethics of Education: al-Isfahans al-Dhar a as a Source of
Inspiration for al-Ghazals Mzan al-Amal looks at another work and yet another
source for the thought of this versatile scholar. Although Janssens has previously
surveyed the same source of the Mzan,5 here Mohamed presents a detailed analysis of
the content and style of the Mizan compared with the Dhar a of al-Raghb al-Isfahan
(ca. 425/1033), focusing on the sections dealing with the etiquette and adab of the
student seeking knowledge. In line with what we now know of al-Ghazals editorial
practice involving another authors texts, the Mzan unsurprisingly improvised on the
materials he used from the Dhar a, doing so seamlessly in his own terms in order to
advance his own programme. The result is that the finished Ghazalian text reads more
clearly for the student and has become systematized.
The next offering to enrich our knowledge of al-Ghazals corpus is the theoretical
treatment provided by Taneli Kukkonen, himself a talented philosopher, on Al-Ghazal
on Accidental Identity and the Attributes. This is, in fact, a supplement to one of his
previous works that analyzed al-Ghazals Maqsad al-asna.6 Here, Taneli argues with his
customary crisp articulation and philosophical acuity that al-Ghazal offered a solution
to the problem of how contradictory qualities can be predicated of God by making use
of the Aristotelian notion of accidental identity or unity. He explores how al-Ghazal
relates this notion to the whole question of the divine attributes and how they, in turn,
relate to the divine essence.
In fact, the purpose of Tanelis contribution has been to show that there is nothing
accidental about the Maqsad, which is a tightly argued work where conceptual
concerns and practical precepts coincide in a way that is scarcely found in either the
philosophical or the theological literature (p. 678). This stems, Taneli says, from
al-Ghazals most deeply seated philosophical convictions (ibid.), and is in line with
how al-Ghazal situated the Maqsad in his final and most detailed theological curriculum
as it is laid out in the Arban.7 The Maqsad, which far transcends his most advanced
work on the kalam tradition, the Iqtisad, is located between, on the one hand, various
books of the Ihya (itself a work professing practical precepts, albeit admixed with
conceptual concerns), and the Madnun corpus (writings with exclusively conceptual
concerns and pure theory, resulting, of course, from his positive engagements with the

Jules Janssens, al-Ghazals Mzan al-Amal: An Ethical Summa based on Ibn Sna and al-Raghb
al-Isfahan, in Anna Akasoy and Wim Raven (eds.), Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages: Studies in Text,
Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science:
Texts and Studies, no. 75 (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
6
Taneli Kukkonen, Al-Ghazal on the Signification of Names, Vivarium 48 (2010): 5574.
7
Al-Ghazal, Kitab al-arban f usul al-dn, ed. Muhy al-Dn Sabr al-Kurd (Cairo: Matbaat Kurdistan
al-Ilmiyya, 1328/1910), 2728 (qism I, epil.).

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falsafa tradition) on the other. It is effectively the last work before the borderline with the
Madnun.8
The final study devoted to particular texts is by Tzvi Langermann, The Hebrew
Ajwiba Ascribed to al-Ghazal: Corpus, Conspectus, and Context. In his offering,
Langermann revisits a Hebrew text attributed to al-Ghazal that was edited by Heinrich
Malter in 1896, who accepted it uncritically as a translation of a genuine work by
al-Ghazal associated with the Maqasid al-falasifa.9 This detailed survey is a welcome
addition to our knowledge of texts relating to al-Ghazal, making this Hebrew work
accessible in English for the first time. In the absence of other evidence, Langermann
(wisely) did not want to deal with the question of authenticity here, but opted instead
to prove that this text in its own right is a coherent whole, which conveys a clear thesis
all the way through and takes an unambiguous stance on some key issues of concern to
al-Ghazal.
Langermanns results now make it certain that the Hebrew Ajwiba is indeed a
translation of one of the recensions of al-Ghazals original Arabic Ajwiba, which I have
called the Masail Madnun.10 This particular recension is what I designate as version
alpha or the Samawat component, and elsewhere I have presented evidence that this
Problemata literature forms an integral part of the Madnun corpus of al-Ghazal,
something that I have recently investigated.11 The Masail Madnun, as I have pointed
out, acts as a set of supplements to the Madnun manuals, such as the Major Madnun,12
and to give an important example, the Samawat serves, essentially, as a companion to
the Major Madnun.13 This explains why the Samawat is closely related to the Major
Madnun textually.

For some remarks on situating the Madnun corpus within the context of present-day Ghazalian
scholarship, see my Index to Divisions of al-Ghazals Often-Cited Published Works in this
commemoration, vol. 102, p. 72 n. 5.
9
Al-Ghazal, Die Abhandlung des Ab Hmid al-Gazzl: Antworten auf Fragen, die an ihn gerichtet
wurden, ed. Heinrich Malter, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Verlag von J. Kauffmann, 1896).
10
Referred to in al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Falsafa, p. 54.
11
M. Afifi al-Akiti, The Madnun of al-Ghazal: A Critical Edition of the Unpublished Major Madnun
with Discussion of His Restricted, Philosophical Corpus, D.Phil. diss., 3 vols. (University of Oxford,
2008), 1:220263 (chap. 5, sec. 4). This section deals with the Masail Madnun in its entirety, and
includes descriptions of the contents of the Arabic recension corresponding to the Hebrew Ajwiba. It
also includes a conspectus of all of the known components of the Masail Madnun, from which one can
see the whole Problemata work in perspective. The state of the various recensions of the Masail
Madnun is complicated, some have been published and some are still only in manuscripts, but I have
undertaken in my thesis a comprehensive survey of this interesting set of texts as a first step in making
sense of the Masail as an important supplement to the Madnun manuals. This allows moving on to the
second stage, namely producing a consolidated edition of the Masail, which Wilferd Madelung and I
are planning to do.
12
The Madnun manuals include, for example, the text edited in my thesis, the Major Madnun, and the
previously published Maarij al-quds.
13
Al-Akiti, The Madnun of al-Ghazal, 1:224.
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The Major Madnun in turn is textually close to the Danishnamah-version of the

Maqasid al-falasifa (as shown in my contribution to Langermanns recent volume),14
and this fact will help explain why Malter thought the Maqasid to be the main source
for the Hebrew Samawat. Considering that the text of the Major Madnun is almost
indistinguishable from the Maqasid (Danishnamah), it might well be more accurate to
argue, in light of my results, that the actual source of the Hebrew Samawat is the Major
Madnun, rather than the Maqasid the more so as Langermann reports that the
medieval Hebrew scholars knew about al-Ghazals esoteric corpus, and that they
considered the Ajwiba to be the tract in which al-Ghazal revealed his true position to
those worthy of hearing it (p. 283).15
Lacking this new evidence from the complete set of the Madnun corpus, Langermann understandably had to resort to relying on internal evidence alone, and, in the
end, crafting a careful argument that the Hebrew text is indeed coherent. In light of the
Madnun corpus, however, he now needs to consider the Hebrew Ajwiba as an authentic
work of al-Ghazals. Besides these advances, Langermann has suggested an identification and intellectual profile for the imaginary protagonist in this Masail as a Sunn
traditionalist, something which is very appealing. Langermanns work is an important
piece of textual scholarship, not least for the meaningful contribution it makes to
enriching our knowledge about the Madnun corpus but, more importantly, to the wider
field of Ghazalian studies.
In the third section, two authors deal with various philosophical concepts and
common ideas found in the writings of al-Ghazal. Alexander Treigers Al-Ghazals
Mirror Christology and Its Possible East-Syriac Sources is an illuminating piece of
scholarship, for the narrower field of Ghazalian studies but also for our knowledge
of the Muslim understanding (and misunderstanding) of the trinity and, indeed, of
mirror Christology itself. Treiger argues persuasively that al-Ghazals Christological
theory is unique in using the mirror metaphor to describe the cognitive process involved
and, moreover, that its origin lies in Nestorian Christianity, particularly in the walology
of John of Dalyatha in the second/eighth-century. Treiger describes al-Ghazals
Christology along these lines: divinity was reflected in Christs heart as light is reflected
in a polished mirror. Those who saw this reflection erroneously thought that Christ
was united with divinity (ittihad ) or that divinity indwelled in him (hulul ), and
therefore called him God and that this error thus became part of Christian
teaching. Al-Ghazal insists, by contrast, that no union or indwelling took place,
but rather that this was a case of reflection of divinity in the mirror of Christs heart. (p.
14

These results appear in al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Falsafa. On the other version
of the Maqasid, the Shifa-version, see my Index to Divisions of al-Ghazals Often-Cited Published
Works in this commemoration, vol. 102, p. 162 n. 20; cf. idem, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of
Falsafa, p. 53 n. 6.
15
In this particular context, it is pertinent to recall al-Ghazals own formulation of the title for the
Madnun corpus: that which is to be withheld from those not fit for it (al-Madnun bi-h ala ghayr
ahlih); cf. ibid., p. 52 n. 3.

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699). The way al-Ghazal invokes the errors of the Christians makes an instantly
recognizable trope on a key concern of his, namely the drunken Sufis like al-Bistam
(d. 262/875) and al-H
allaj (ex. 309/922).
As Treiger shows, the belief that the union between divinity and humanity in either
Christ or al-Bistam or al-Hallaj is nothing more than a vision of God (ruyat Allah),
granted to them in the mirrors of their hearts. Through a handy appropriation,
al-Ghazal redefines the Incarnation as Jesus beatific vision on earth, thereby denying
his divinity and provides a Christology that is acceptable to a Muslim audience.
Our commemoration of al-Ghazal continues in the next issue of the journal with the
other article of the third section. Here, the subject is one of the topics closest to
al-Ghazals heart, namely the notion of fitra: Al-Ghazals Use of Original Human
Disposition (Fitra) and Its Background in the Teachings of al-Farab and Avicenna, by
Frank Griffel. It is fitting indeed for Griffel in his offering to take up this important
Ghazalian topic, which extends also into the wider field of Islamic studies but has
received surprisingly little attention. The pioneering efforts present us with more than
what one would normally expect for a first proper treatment of a widely used yet
mystifying term, by going beyond basic linguistic analysis to investigate in detail the
philosophical sources for al-Ghazals interpretation of fitra. Griffels analysis reveals
the extent to which fitra came to acquire diverse technical meanings. They range from
the Farabian sense of talent to the Avicennian idea of how fitra relates to commonly
accepted judgements (mashhurat) and, indeed, social norms and conventions, and how
these connexions, in turn, could act as an impediment to the innate judgments by the
fitra. Griffel presents convincing passages showing how al-Ghazal was deeply affected
by the latter theory and how this in fact fits into his wider anti-taqld agenda. Needless
to say, al-Ghazal himself was not a slavish follower of those Peripatetics, but
differentiates himself, just enough, from their views in his several technical uses of fitra.
Perhaps the most interesting of these is al-Ghazals own conception of fitra, which,
arguably, finds an analogue with the current controversial notion of a God gene.16
Teasing aside, this article makes a positive contribution to our understanding of how
fitra plays an important role in al-Ghazals theology and epistemology.
In the fourth section, we are treated to a reception history and a comparative study.
Anna Akasoy looks at the epic career of the Ghazalian legacy as it moves from the
Mashreq to the Maghreb and then goes further, into the world of the Latin Algazel
through the lens of the translator, Ramon Llull (d. 1315). Her contribution, Al-Ghazal,
Ramon Llull and Religionswissenschaft, ends with a modern reflection on the approach
to the study of religions. Akasoys article is rich in material that cuts across various themes
and times. It includes a discussion on the enigmatic burning of the Ihya in the Muslim

16

Dean Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (New York: Doubleday, 2004).

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West,17 an analysis of Ramon Llulls Book of the Gentile as compared with al-Ghazals
Mishkat al-anwar,18 and a consideration of the relevance of al-Ghazals notion of fitra
in modern debates about an Islamic theology of religions. Both al-Ghazal and Llull offer
an appreciative view of other religions. Their positive attitudes can serve as positive
examples today, since both of them address the subject of religious diversity within a
rational and universal framework by putting traditional truths on a more certain
epistemological basis. This, as Akasoy rightly contends, would make them palatable
even to critics of religion. Yet they also offer to committed stakeholders the prospect of
maintaining their traditions with confidence. Indeed, Akasoy manages to show that both
thinkers can play an important role in modern debates about the nature of religion.
In The Quest for the Divine: al-Ghazal and Saint Bruno of Cologne, Minlib Dallh
compares al-Ghazal with his distant contemporary, Bruno of Cologne (d. 1101), the
founder of the Carthusian order. Dallh brings to our attention a little-known accident of
history where these two men of God had remarkably similar journey in life; not least,
their spiritual careers underwent the same sort of crisis. Even more notable is the political
success surrounding their lives and the tribulations that followed. Both men, at the
height of their professional careers and fame, felt a deep disenchantment with worldly
success, relinquished their high positions and, ultimately, found in the mystical
dimensions of their respective faith traditions the answer to their spiritual crisis. The
breakdowns they suffered turned out to be spiritual breakthroughs (p. 61). These
convergences speak for themselves. Both men were: theologians; mystics; reformers of
their respective traditions; professors; men who maintained their loyalty to their
institutional and religious affiliations; men who attracted famous pupils and patrons
alike, who made life-changing vows, who returned to their public establishments, who
retired twice from public life, and who founded their own zawiya or monastery. The
greatest difference, it turns out, as Dallh contends, is that unlike Bruno, al-Ghazal had
the sophistication and philosophical language to express his intellectual and spiritual
crisis (p. 67).
The reach of these men beyond their graves is still a miracle of sorts. Perhaps the
only detail missed by Dallh is the lucky number 11 in their death dates.

17

Discounting any political incorrectness in the Ihya that may have been its actual causa cremandi, the
new perspective afforded by the identification and authentication of the Madnun corpus allows the
following proposition to be made about this debate: the controversial falsafa material appropriated
in the Madnun that ended up being naturalized in the Ihya provides al-Ghazals foes with the legal
pretext for their complaints. See al-Akiti, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Falsafa, p. 901.
18
The Mishkat, incidentally, is one of the works I have found to belong to the Madnun corpus; ibid.,
p. 534 n. 7.

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