Biography of Imam al-Ghazali (Abou Hamid Muhammad)

[...] virtuous, abounding in deeds.

He died: in Dhou al-Qi'da, of the year five hundred eleven.

It is said: he died in Safar of the year five hundred twelve, and the first version is the sounder.

And in it died: the preacher of Cordoba Abou al-Qasim Khalaf ibn Ibrahim ibn an-Naqqach; Abou Tahir al-Youssoufi, transmitter of the "Sunan of ad-Daruqutni"; the traditionist Abd ar-Rahman ibn Ahmad ibn Sabir the Damascene; Abou Ja'far Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Bakir the secretary; the venerated Abou Ali ibn Nabhan the secretary; the sultan Muhammad son of Malikchah; and the hafiz Abou Zakariyya Yahya ibn Abi Amr ibn Manda.

No. 204: al-Ghazzali, Abou Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad.

The sheikh, the imam, the sea, the proof of Islam, the marvel of the age, Zayn ad-Din, Abou Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad at-Tousi, the Shafiite, al-Ghazzali, author of the works, and of excessive intelligence.

He studied fiqh first in his land, then moved to Nishapur in the company of a group of students, attached himself to the imam of the two sanctuaries, excelled in fiqh in a short time, and perfected himself in dialectic and dispute, until he became the apple of the disputers' eye. He repeated to the students, and began composing, and that amazed his sheikh Abou al-Ma'ali; but he showed pride in it. Then Abou Hamid went to the sultanian camp. Nizam al-Moulk the vizir turned to him, rejoiced at his presence, had the grandees dispute before him: he dazzled them, and his fame spread. Nizam al-Moulk appointed him teaching of the Nizamiyya of Baghdad: he arrived there after the year four hundred eighty, his age being about thirty, and he set about composing on the principles, fiqh, dialectic, and wisdom. The flood of his mind carried him into the narrows of dialectic and the meanders of the ancients, and Allah has a secret in His creation.

The man's renown grew great, his honour increased, such that he was in the hand of an emir, at the rank of a great chief. His look upon the sciences and his practising of the ascetic refinements led him to refuse leadership, to return to the abode of eternity, to sanctification, sincerity, and the reform of the soul. He then performed pilgrimage out of season, visited Jerusalem, accompanied the jurist Nasr ibn Ibrahim in Damascus, stayed a while, and composed the book "The Revival" ("Al-Ihya"), the book "The Forty", the book "The Just Scale" ("Al-Qistas"), and the book "The touchstone of reflection" ("Mahakk an-Nazar").

He broke his soul and strove it, drove away the demon of vanity, donned the garb of the Allah-fearing. Then, after years, he travelled to his homeland, holding to his way, guarding his time, bent upon knowledge.

When Fakhr al-Moulk became vizir, he came to Abou Hamid, seeking that he not leave his breaths barren, and pressed the sheikh until he softened toward coming to Nishapur: he taught at its Nizamiyya.

Abd al-Ghafir mentioned this and its multiples in the "Siyaq", until he said: "I visited him many times, and I did not detect in myself, despite what I had observed of his harshness and his looking upon people with the eye of contempt, arrogance and vanity, and his pride in what he was granted of ease, of speech, of mind, and of seeking height: that he had come to the contrary, purifying himself of those stains. I thought him wrapped in the robe of affectation, delighting in what he had attained; but after patience and scrutiny I verified that the matter was against the supposition, and that the man awoke after madness. He related to us over nights the manner of his states from the beginning of what was unveiled to him of the way of sanctification, and the dominance of the state over him after his mastery of the sciences, his prevailing over all by his dialectic, and the disposition Allah specially endowed him with for acquiring the kinds of sciences, and his capability of research and reflection, until he wearied of engaging in the apparent sciences over the practice, and thought of the outcome and what remains in the hereafter. He then began with the company of the sheikh Abou Ali al-Farmadhi, took from him the opening of the way, complied with what he commanded him of acts of worship, supererogations, litanies, and striving in quest of salvation, until that prison was crossed, and he undertook those hardships; and he did not attain what he aimed at."

Then he related that he returned to the sciences, waded into the precise disciplines, and met their masters until their doors opened to him; and he remained a while in the events and the equality of proofs. There was opened to him a door of fear which occupied him from everything, and carried him to turning away from all besides it, until that became easy for him, until he became settled, the realities appeared to him, and what we thought of him to be convention and contrivance became nature and realization: and that is the effect of the destined felicity prepared for him.

Then we asked him about the manner of his desire to go out of his house and return to what he was called to. He said, apologizing: "I did not permit in my religion that I cease from the call and the benefit of the seekers; and it weighed upon me to confess the truth, utter it, and call to it. And he was truthful in that. When the affair of the vizir lightened, and he knew that his standing upon what he was in meant enmity and a fantasy of seeking rank, he left that before being left, returned to his home, established in his neighbourhood a school for students and a convent for the Sufis, and distributed his times over the tasks of the present: completing the Quran, keeping company with the people of hearts, and sitting for teaching; until he died after bearing kinds of intent, the confronting of opponents, and the striving in it to kings. Allah preserved him from the strikes of the hands of calamities."

Until he said: "The conclusion of his affair was his turning to seeking hadith, keeping company with its people, and studying the 'Two Sahihs': had he lived, he would have outstripped everyone in that discipline in a few days."

He said: "It did not befall him to transmit, and he left behind only daughters. And he had of means, by inheritance and earning, what sufficed his needs. Wealth was offered to him, and he did not accept it."

He said: "Among what was objected against him was the occurrence of lapses on the side of grammar in the midst of his speech, and he was returned to it: he conceded half, and acknowledged he had not practised it, contenting himself with what he needed in his speech, even though he composed sermons and explained books with an expression that men of letters and the eloquent are incapable of writing its like."

And among what was censured upon him: his mention of terms swollen with Persian in the book "The chemistry of happiness and the sciences", and his explaining some of the figures and questions such that they do not accord with the ordinances of the Law and the appearances of what the rules of the community rest upon. It would have been more proper for him, and the truth is the most truthful of sayings, to leave that composition and turn away from explaining it: for the common people sometimes do not master the foundations of the rules by demonstrations and proofs. When therefore they hear something of that, they imagine from it what harms their creeds, and ascribe that to the exposition of the doctrine of the ancients. When the equitable, intelligent one returns to himself,

he knows that most of what he mentioned of what he alluded to are indications of the Law, even if he did not reveal it. And their likes are found in the speech of the masters of the way, coded, and explicit in them scattered; and no expression of his but its other faces intimate what accords with the creeds of the people of the community: it is not fitting then to take it except as what accords, and one should not seize upon it to refute it when possible. It would have been more proper for him to leave the declaring of that. And I heard that he heard the "Sunan of Abou Dawoud" from the judge Abou al-Fath al-Hakimi at-Tousi, and that he heard from Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khouwari, father of Abd al-Jabbar, the "Book of the Birth" of Ibn Abi Asim, by his audition from Abou Bakr ibn al-Harith, from Abou ach-Chaykh, from him.

I say: what Abd al-Ghafir reproached him for concerning the chemistry has its likes in the course of his works, until Abou Bakr Ibn al-Arabi said: "Our sheikh Abou Hamid swallowed philosophy and wished to vomit it: he could not."

And from the "Collection of Abou Ali as-Sadafi", the composition of the judge Iyad for him, who said:

"The sheikh Abou Hamid: of terrible reports, and immense works. He went to excess in the way of Sufism, stripped himself to defend their doctrine, and became a preacher in that, and composed his famous works in it. Places were taken against him in them, and the suppositions of a community were displeased by him. And Allah knows best his secret. And the decree of the sultan reached us in the Maghreb, with the fatwas of the jurists, of burning them and staying far from them: that was complied with."

His birth: the year fifty and four hundred.

I say: the scholars have never ceased differing, and the scholar speaks of the scholar according to his ijtihad: each of them is excused, rewarded; and whoever is obstinate or breaks the consensus is blameworthy, and to Allah are the affairs returned.

Abou al-Mouzaffar Youssouf, grandson of Ibn al-Jawzi, has in the book "The gardens of understandings" on the merits of the people of the house said:

"Abou Hamid mentioned in his book 'The secret of the two worlds and the unveiling of what is in the two abodes', and said concerning the hadith: 'Whosoever I am his master, Ali is his master', that Umar said to Ali: bravo, bravo! You have become the master of every believer and believing woman."

Abou Hamid said: "This is submission and pleasure. Then after this, passion overcame him: love of leadership, the knotting of lances, the affair of the caliphate and forbidding it: which carried them to divergence. They cast him behind their backs and bought with it a little price: evil is what they buy!" And he enumerated much of this divisive speech that the Imamite school claims. I do not know what his excuse in this is; the apparent is that he turned from it and followed the truth: for the man is among the oceans of knowledge, and Allah knows best.

This, unless this one fabricated this and that one is far. In this composition are calamities not to be trifled with. And he said at its beginning that Ibn Toumart the Moroccan read it upon him secretly at the Nizamiyya, and said: I discerned in it the kingdom.

I say: the man composed in the blame of the philosophers the book "The Collapse" ("Tahafout"), unveiling their flaws, and concorded with them in places, supposing that to be true, or conforming to the community, without his having knowledge of the traditions, nor experience of the prophetic Sunans that judge over reason. And the persisting of reflection in the book "The epistles of the Brethren of Purity" was made beloved to him: it is a gnawing disease, a deadly experiment, a murderous poison. Were Abou Hamid not among the great of the intelligent and the choicest of the sincere, he would have decayed.

So beware, beware of these books! Flee with your religion from the similitudes of the ancients, else you fall into perplexity. Whoever aims at salvation and success, let him hold to servanthood, let him addict himself to imploring Allah, let him supplicate his Master for firmness upon Islam, and that he die upon the faith of the Companions and the lords of the Followers. And Allah gives success: by the good intent of the scholar he is forgiven and escapes, if Allah wills.

Abou Amr Ibn as-Salah said: "A chapter clarifying important things that were disapproved against Abou Hamid:

In his works are things the people of his madhhab did not accept of strangeness, among them his saying in logic: it is the premise of all the sciences, and whoever does not encompass it has no trust in knowledge at all."

He said: "This is to be rejected: every sound mind is logical by nature. How many an imam raised not his head by logic!"

As for the book "The one who is obstinate with it against those not of its people" ("Al-Moudnoun bihi ala ghayr ahlihi"), Allah forbid it be his: I witnessed upon a copy of it in the handwriting of the judge Kamal ad-Din Muhammad ibn Abdallah ach-Chahrazouri that it is forged upon the Ghazali, and that it is invented from the book "The aims of the philosophers": the man indeed demolished it by the book of "The Collapse"."

Ahmad ibn Salih al-Jili said in his "Chronicle": "Abou Hamid was surnamed al-Ghazzali. He excelled in fiqh, and he had intelligence, acumen, capacity, and power to compose speech and arrange meanings, and he entered the sciences of the ancients."

Until he said: "The use of their expressions in his books overcame him. He was solicited to teach the Nizamiyya of Baghdad in the year four and eighty, and he remained until seclusion overcame him: he left teaching, wore coarse garments, and limited his food."

Until he said: "He neighboured in Jerusalem, and began the 'Revival' there, meaning in Damascus. He performed pilgrimage and visited, returned to Baghdad. His book the 'Revival' was heard of him, and other: he thus narrated there. Then he enumerated his works."

"I saw the book 'The unveiling and the informing concerning the book of the Revival' of al-Mazari, its beginning: Praise to Allah who illuminated the truth and made it accessible, and made ugly the false and removed it. Then al-Mazari brought things he criticized against Abou Hamid. He says:"

"I wonder at a people of Malikites who see Malik the imam fleeing delimitation, avoiding drawing a rule, though there be in it some effect, or some analogy, out of scruple and caution regarding the fatwa in what carries the people upon it: then they approve of a man fatwas whose basis is upon what has no reality, and in it is much of the traditions from the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, in which the established was blended with the non-established. Likewise what he brought from the early generations whose whole establishment is not possible. And he brought of the starts of the allies and the breaths of the elect what its place is clear; but he blended in it the beneficial with the harmful, like utterances he relates from some of them whose uttering is not licit for their ugliness, even if their meanings were taken by their appearances: they would be like symbols toward the cup of the deviants, and their meanings do not revert to the truth except by coercion upon the letter, of what the scholars do not undertake the like except in the speech of the owner of the Law, whom the miracles proving his truth, preventing ignorance of him and lying against him, compelled to seek interpretation: like his saying: 'The heart is between two fingers of the fingers of the Merciful.'"

"And: 'The heavens are upon a finger.'"

"And like his saying: 'The face of so-and-so would burn.'"

"And like his saying: 'Allah laughs', and other than that of the incoming hadiths whose apparent is by what the intellect refers."

Until he said: "So when immunity is not decided in the case of the ally, there is no sense in attributing to him what its uttering is not licit, except that it be established, and a necessity calls its transmission: then he interprets it."

Until he said: "Do you not see: were a compiler to begin relating from some of the Hashwiyya their doctrine on the antiquity of the voice and the letter, and the antiquity of the paper, when it pleased him to say: some of the verifiers said: the reader, when he reads the Book of Allah, becomes again ancient after being originated; or said some of the skilled: Allah is a locus of events, when he took to relating the doctrine of the Karramiyya?"

The judge of the assembly Abou Abdallah Muhammad ibn Hamdine al-Qourtoubi said: "Some of those who preach among those who wore the figure of fiqh, then disavowed him, eager for the Ghazzalian way and the Sufi school, composed a booklet containing the meaning of fanaticism for the book of Abou Hamid, the imam of their innovation. Where is he then from the despisings of his rejected hadiths, and the errors of his legends contrary to religion?! And he claimed that this is of the science of the practice leading to the science of unveiling that befalls them, upon the secret of lordship whose veil is not lifted, and none wins its contemplation but who stretches to it, with his error whose banners he raised for them, and legislated its rules."

Abou Hamid said: "The lowest share of this knowledge is believing in it, and the least of its punishment is that the denier of it be granted nothing. Compare his word to his word. And he does not engage in reading a Quran, nor writing a hadith: for that cuts him off from reaching to introducing his head into the collar of his hood, and covering with his garment: then he hears the call of truth, and he says: leave what the ancients were upon, and hasten to what I command you. Then this judge spat, cursed, declared unbelieving, exceeded: we seek refuge in Allah from passion."

Abou Hamid said: "The breasts of the free are the tombs of secrets, and whoever broadcasts the secret of lordship disbelieves. And he saw the killing of the like of al-Hallaj better than reviving ten of his like, for his uttering of words." And he transmitted from some of them who said: "Lordship has a secret: were it revealed, prophethood would be void; and prophethood has a secret: were it unveiled, knowledge would be void; and knowledge has a secret: were it unveiled, the rulings would be void."

I say: the secret of knowledge was unveiled to wretched Sufis: so they removed the curtain, and for them became void the lawful and the unlawful.

Ibn Hamdine said: "Then the Ghazali said: and the sayer of this, if he does not intend the invalidation of prophethood in the case of the weak, then what he said is not true: for the sound does not contradict, and the complete one is he whom the light of his knowledge does not extinguish the light of his piety."

And the Ghazzali said of the knower: "There shine to him the lights of truth, and are unveiled to him the coded sciences veiled from creation: so he knows the meaning of prophethood, and all that came by it the expressions of the Law, of which we are upon the apparent, not upon the reality."

And he said of some of them: "If you see him at the beginning, you will say: truthful; and if you see him at the end, you will say: heretic." Then the Ghazali explained it and said: "For the name of the heretic attaches only to the invalidator of obligations, not to the invalidator of supererogations."

And he said: "The Sufis went to the inspired sciences rather than the taught ones. So he sits, empty of heart, gathered of attention, saying: Allah, Allah, Allah, continuously. Let him then empty his heart, and not engage in recitation nor books of hadith."

He said: "When he reaches this limit, he holds to seclusion in a dark house and wraps himself in his garments: then he hears the call of truth: 'O you who wrap yourself!' and 'O you who cover yourself!'"

I say: the master of creation heard "O you who wrap yourself!" only from Jibril, from Allah; and this fool never heard the call of truth: rather he heard a satan, or heard something without reality from the madness of his skull. And success is in holding fast to the Sunna and the consensus.

Abou Bakr at-Tourtouchi said: "Abou Hamid filled the 'Revival' with lying against the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: I know no book on the flat earth lying more than it. Then he interlaced it with the doctrines of the philosophers, and the meanings of the epistles of the Brethren of Purity: a people who see prophethood acquired, and claim the miracles are tricks and fabrications."

Ibn Asakir said: "Abou Hamid performed pilgrimage and stayed in Syria about ten years, composed, took his soul to striving, and his stay was in Damascus in the western tower of the mosque. He heard the 'Sahih of al-Boukhari' from Abou Sahl al-Hafsi. He came to Damascus in the year nine and eighty."

Ibn Khallikane said: "Nizam sent him to his school in Baghdad in the year four and eighty, and he left it in the year eight and eighty, turned ascetic, performed pilgrimage, stayed in Damascus a while in the western retreat, then moved to Jerusalem and worshipped, then went to Egypt and stayed in Alexandria a while. It is said: he resolved to go to Youssouf ibn Tachfine, sultan of Marrakech, and the news of his dying reached him. Then he returned to Tous and composed: the 'Bassit', the 'Wasit', the 'Wadjiz', the 'Khoulasa', the 'Revival'; and he composed the 'Moustaafa' in the principles of fiqh, the 'Mankhoul', the 'Labbe', the 'Montakhal in disputation', 'The Collapse of the philosophers', 'The touchstone of reflection', 'The criterion of knowledge', 'The commentary of the Beautiful Names', 'The niche of lights', 'The deliverer from error', 'The truth of the two sayings', and things."

Ibn an-Naqqar said: "Abou Hamid is the imam of the jurists without restriction, the spiritual master of the community by consensus, the ijtihad of his time, the apple of his epochs. He excelled in the madhhab, the principles, divergence, disputation, and logic; he read wisdom and philosophy, understood their speech, and undertook to refute them, and was of strong intelligence, powerful comprehension, penetrating acumen, diving upon meanings, until it was said: he composed the 'Mankhoul'. Abou al-Ma'ali saw it and said: you buried me alive: why did you not have patience now? Your book covered my book."

Then Ibn an-Naqqar related by his chain that the father of Abou Hamid used to spin wool and sell it in his shop in Tous. He bequeathed his two sons Muhammad and Ahmad to a friend of his, a righteous Sufi, who taught them writing. What their father left them perished, and subsistence became hard upon them. He said: "I see for you both that you resort to the school as being two seekers of fiqh: perhaps subsistence may come to you." They did that.

Abou al-Abbas Ahmad al-Khatibi said: "I was in the circle of the Ghazali. He said: my father died and left me and my brother a small amount which perished, so that subsistence became hard upon us. We came to a school seeking fiqh: the aim was nothing but obtaining sustenance. Our learning was for that, not for Allah: but He would not have it other than for Him."

As'ad al-Mihni said: "I heard Abou Hamid say: I migrated to Abou Nasr al-Isma'ili in Jourjan, and stayed until I took from him the 'Ta'liqa'."

Abdallah ibn Ali al-Achiri said: "I heard Abd al-Mou'min ibn Ali al-Qaysi: I heard Abou Abdallah ibn Toumert say: Abou Hamid al-Ghazali knocked at the door and it was opened to us."

Ibn an-Naqqar said: "It has reached me that the imam of the two sanctuaries said: the Ghazzali is a drowning sea, and Ilkya a provoking lion, and al-Khawafi a burning fire."

Abou Muhammad al-Outhmani and others said: "We heard Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Abdari the tutor say: I saw in Alexandria in the year five hundred as if the sun rose from its setting place. A passer-by explained it to me by a novelty befalling them. Days after, the news arrived of the burning of the books of the Ghazali in the district of al-Marriyya."

Critiques and replies

And in "Trust" of the "Revival", what he textually said: "And all that Allah apportioned among His slaves of provision, of term, of faith and disbelief: all of it is pure justice: there is in the possible at all nothing more beautiful nor more perfect than it; and were He to have reserved it with the power and not done it, that would be of Him niggardliness and injustice."

Abou Bakr ibn al-Arabi said in the "Commentary of the Beautiful Names": "Our sheikh Abou Hamid said an immense saying the scholars criticized upon him, and said: there is in the power of Allah nothing more marvellous than this world in mastery and wisdom. And were there in power something more marvellous or wiser and He did not do it, that would be of Him the decree of generosity being void: and that is impossible."

Then he said: "The answer is that he is far in believing the generality of power and the negation of limit from the estimations of the possible things attached to it, but in the details of this created world, not in other than it. And this is a philosophical opinion by which the philosophers intended the overturning of realities, ascribing mastery to life, for instance, and existence to hearing and sight, until there remains in the hearts no way to the right. And the community has consensus against this creed, and said from the morrow of its night: the possible things have no end for every estimated existence, not for every obtained existence, for power is apt." Then he said: "This is an intoxication with no joy in it, and a slipping with no cohesion in it. And we, though we are a dot of his sea, do not refute him but by his word."

I say: so let the refutation be with adab and serenity.

And among what was taken against him, he said: "For destiny there is a secret we were forbidden to broadcast. And what secret of destiny?"

For if it is attained by reflection, it is necessarily reached; and if it is attained by the report, nothing was established in it; and if it is attained by the state and gnosis, this is pure claim. Perhaps he meant by its broadcasting that we go deep into destiny and discuss it.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim informed us: Abou al-Hasan as-Sakhawi informed us: Hatlaba ibn Qumayya the Sufi informed us: Sa'd ibn Ahmad al-Isfarayini informed us, by my reading: Abou Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad at-Tousi informed us, saying:

"Know that religion is two halves: one is leaving the prohibitions, and the other is doing the acts of obedience. Leaving the prohibitions is the harder; and the acts of obedience everyone is capable of; leaving the passions none are capable but the truthful. Therefore he said, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: 'The emigrant is he who abandons evil, and the striver is he who strives his desire.'"

Abou Amir al-Abdari said: "I heard Abou Nasr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Qadir at-Tousi swear by Allah that he beheld in his sleep as if he looked at the books of the Ghazali, may Allah have mercy on him: and behold they were all pictures."

I say: the Ghazzali is a great imam, and the condition of the scholar is not that he errs not.

Muhammad ibn al-Walid at-Tourtouchi said in a letter of his to Ibn Mouzaffar: "As for what you mentioned of Abou Hamid: I saw him and spoke with him. I found him venerable of the people of knowledge: intellect and understanding gathered in him; he practised the sciences the length of his life, and was in that the most imposing of his time. Then there appeared to him other than the way of the scholars, and he entered into the tumult of the labourers, then became Sufi, abandoned the sciences and their people, entered the sciences of thoughts, the masters of hearts, and the whispers of Satan. Then he assimilated them to the opinions of the philosophers, and the symbols of al-Hallaj, and began stabbing at the jurists and the theologians. He nearly stripped himself of religion. When he made the 'Revival', he undertook to speak of the sciences of states, and the allusions of the Sufis, while he was not familiar with them nor expert in their knowledge: he fell upon the crown of his head, and filled his book with the forged hadiths."

I say: as for the "Revival", in it is a set of false hadiths; and in it is much good, but for what is in it of manners, customs, and asceticism from the ways of the sages and the deviants of Sufism. We ask Allah for beneficial knowledge. Know you what beneficial knowledge is? It is that upon which the Quran descended, and the Messenger explained, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, in word and deed, and against which came no prohibition. He said, upon him the prayer and the peace: "Whoever turns from my Sunna is not of me." Upon you then, O brother, be meditating the Book of Allah, and addicting yourself to reading the "Two Sahihs", the "Sunan of an-Nasa'i", the "Riyad of an-Nawawi", and his litanies: you shall prosper and succeed. And beware the opinions of the worshippers of the philosophers, and the functions of the people of disciplines, and the hunger of the monks, and the task of the madness of the heads of the people of retreats: all good is in following the sound, expansive religion. So take it by Allah. O Allah, guide us to Your straight path.

Yes, and the imam Muhammad ibn Ali al-Mazari as-Siqilli has a speech upon the "Revival" attesting his imamate. He says:

"I have repeated your correspondences in the questioning of our doctrine in the book titled 'The revival of the sciences of religion', and you mentioned that the opinions of the people have differed in it: a party championed it and was fanatic for its publication; a party warned against it and repelled; a party burned his books. And the people of the East also write to me asking me, and there advanced to me the reading of this book but fragments of it. If Allah breathes into the life, I shall extend into it the breaths, and remove from the hearts the ambiguity: know that I saw his students, each of whom related to me a kind of his state that stood in place of witnessing. So I shall limit myself to mentioning his state, and the state of his book, and mentioning phrases of the doctrines of the unitarians, the contemplative Sufis, the people of the allusions, and the philosophers: for his book is tossed between these ways."

Then al-Mazari praised Abou Hamid in fiqh, and said: "He is in fiqh more knowing than in its principles; as for the science of dialectic, which is the principles of religion, he composed in it, but he was not expert in it. I discerned his lack of expertise in it, and that is that he read the sciences of philosophy before his expertise in the discipline of principles: philosophy gained him boldness upon meanings, and ease of assailing realities, for philosophy passes with its fancies which no Law repels. And a companion of his informed me that he had a long dwelling upon the 'Epistles of the Brethren of Purity', which are fifty-one epistles, composed by one who had waded into the science of the Law and transmission, and in wisdom: he blended between the two sciences. There was a man known as Ibn Sina who filled the world with compositions: his strength in philosophy led him to attempt returning the principles of the creeds to the science of philosophy, and he refined his effort until he completed what he did not complete for others. I saw parts of his notebooks, and I found Abou Hamid leaning upon him in most of what he indicates of the sciences of philosophy."

"As for the doctrines of the Sufis, I know not upon whom he leaned in them; but I saw in what some of his companions annotated that he mentioned the books of Ibn Sina and what is in them, and mentioned after that the books of Abou Hayyan at-Tawhidi. And my opinion is that he leaned upon him in the doctrine of Sufism. And I was informed that Abou Hayyan composed a great Diwan in this art. And in the 'Revival', of the vain things are many."

He said: "The habit of the scrupulous is not to say: Malik said, ash-Chafi'i said, in what is not established with them."

Then he said: "And he approves things whose basis is upon what has no reality, like trimming the nails beginning with the forefinger, because it has the excellence over the rest of the fingers: for it is the glorifier; then trimming what follows it of the middle, because it is the side of right; and concluding with the lobe of the right thumb; and he related in that a tradition."

I say: it is a forged tradition.

Then he said: "And he said: whoever dies after reaching puberty not knowing the Creator is ancient, dies Muslim by consensus."

He said: "Whoever is careless in relating consensus in the like of this, of which the nearest is that the consensus be in its contrary, it is deserving that what he relates not be trusted. And I saw of him in the first fascicule that he says: in his sciences is what is not permitted to be deposited in a book. Would that I knew: is it true or false?! If it is false, he spoke truly; and if it is true, and it is doubtless his intent, why should it not be deposited in the books: its obscurity and its precision?! If he comprehended it, what prevents another from comprehending it?!"

Abou al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzi said: "Abou Hamid composed the 'Revival' and filled it with the false hadiths without knowing their falseness, and spoke of unveiling, and went out of the canon of fiqh, and said: the intended by the star, the moon, and the sun that Ibrahim saw are lights: they are the veils of Allah, the Mighty and the Noble, and these known things are not intended. And this is of the kind of the speech of the Batinites." And Ibn al-Jawzi refuted Abou Hamid in the book of the 'Revival', and made clear his error in volumes he named the book of the 'Livings'."

And Abou al-Hasan ibn Soukkar has a refutation of the Ghazali in a volume he named: "The revival of the dead of the living in the refutation of the book of the Revival."

I say: the imams have never ceased, some of them differing from some, and this one refuting that one; and we are not of him who blames the scholar with passion and ignorance.

The works of Imam al-Ghazali

Yes, and the imam has the book "The chemistry of happiness", the book "The creed", the book "Constraining the common people", the book "The refutation of the Batinites", the book "The creed of the ancients", the book "The jewels of the Quran", the book "The utmost end", the book "The disgraces of licentiousness", "The question of the annular circle of houses", and other than that.

The death of Imam al-Ghazali

Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi said: "He died on Monday, the fourteenth of Joumada al-Akhira, of the year five and five hundred, and he was fifty-five years old, and he was buried in the cemetery of at-Tabarane, the main town of the land of Tous. And their saying: the Ghazzali, the attari (spice-seller), the khabbazi (baker), is an attribution to the crafts in the tongue of the Persians, with the addition of the ya of attribution and the form."

The Ghazzali has a famous preaching brother: Abou al-Foutouh Ahmad, who had a great acceptance in preaching, and the weight of religious piety and licentiousness. He remained until about the twenties and five hundred, and substituted for his brother in teaching the Nizamiyya of Baghdad when he performed pilgrimage long.

I read in the handwriting of an-Nawawi, may Allah have mercy on him: the sheikh Taqi ad-Din Ibn as-Salah said: "He was asked: why was the Ghazali named so, and he said:

One from whom I have trust related to me, from Abou al-Haram al-Maksi the man of letters: Abou ath-Thana Mahmoud al-Faradi related to us:

Taj al-Islam ibn Khamis related to us: the Ghazali said to me: the people say to me: the Ghazzali, and I am not the flax-seller; rather I am the Ghazali, attributed to a village called Ghazala, or as he said."

And in the last of the "Mankhoul" of the Ghazali is abrupt speech concerning an imam that I see not to transmit here.

And of the creed of Abou Hamid, may Allah, the Most High, have mercy on him, its beginning is: "Praise to Allah who made Himself known to His slaves by His Book sent down upon the tongue of His sent prophet: that He in His substance is One having no associate: singular having no like; self-sufficient having no opposite. He never ceased and never ceases being qualified with the attributes of majesty; the directions do not encompass Him, and the heavens do not shelter Him. And that He established Himself upon the Throne in the manner He said, and with the meaning He intended, purified of touch, residence, settling, incarnation, and moving. And He is above everything to the boundaries, and He is nearer to us than the jugular vein: His nearness does not resemble the nearness of bodies. He was before the creation of place and time, and He is now upon what He was upon. And that He is distinct, by His attributes, from His creation: in His substance naught other than Him, and in other than Him His substance not; sanctified from change and moving; the events do not befall Him. And that He is visible of substance by the sights in the abode of settlement, perfecting the favours by the beholding of His noble face."

Until he said: "And He perceives the movement of the mote in the air: there escapes His will not a glance of a beholder, nor a flash of a thought. And that the Quran is read by the tongues, memorized in the hearts, written in the codices; and that with that it subsists by the substance of Allah, not accepting separation by moving to the hearts and the sheets; and that Moussa heard the word of Allah without voice nor letter, as His substance is seen without figure nor colour; and that He separates by death the spirits from the bodies, then returns them to them at the gathering, and resurrects whoever is in the graves."

"The balance of the deeds is a measure expressed of it by the balance, though it not equal the balance of the deeds the balance of the heavy body, like the balance of the sun, and like the ruler which is the balance of the lines, and like the prosody the balance of the poem."

I say: rather the balance of the deeds has two pans, as came in the "Sahih". And this creed, most of it is sound, and in it is what I did not understand, and some of it in which there is contest among the people [...]