Chapter II: Part 2

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_.”