Al-Ghazali (al-Ghazālī), Abū Ḥāmid Ibn Muḥammad Ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī (1058–1111), a towering figure in the history of Islamic religious thought, was trained in Islamic law (fiqh) and Islamic theology (kalām). A severe logical critic of the philosophers al-Farabi (d. c.950) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037), condemning them as infidels for some of their philosophical theories, he nonetheless reinterpreted some of Avicenna's ideas and incorporated them within his theology. At the age of thirty-seven, he abandoned a prestigious teaching post in Baghdad to follow an ascetic mystic path. He became a noted Islamic mystic, a Sufi, and endeavoured to reconcile Sufism with traditional Islamic belief.

LIFE AND WORKS

Born in the city of Ṭūsī, or its environs, in northeast Persia, al-Ghazali was educated in madāris (singular, madrasa). He studied first in Ṭūsī, and then in Jurjān on the Caspian Sea. His big educational move took place around 1077, when he went to the madrasa in Nīshāpūr, where he studied with Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, a jurist of the school of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820) and the leading theologian of the Ashʾarite school, named after its founder, al-Ashʿarī (d. 935). There are indications that during his study with al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazali had an exposure to philosophy. His intensive study of it, however, came later in Baghdad.

In the late modern period, western powers began to study eastern cultures, religions, languages, and territories other than their own under the label of orientalism. In his groundbreaking book, Edward Said (1978) came to eventually redefine what orientalism really was. In his understanding it was the rationalization of a Eurocentric worldview within which the ‘others’ (eastern civilizations) were depicted as inferior, intellectually inadequate, and regressive as a means of justifying the political, cultural, and intellectual superiority of the west. While much can be critiqued of Said’s project, it is nonetheless not absolutely untrue.

The writings of al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) mark a critical stage in the history of Arabic philosophy. He is noted for his classic, The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa), an incisive critique largely of the metaphysics and psychology of Avicenna (d. 1037). At the same time, he is also noted for adopting Avicennian philosophical ideas. This at first sight seems paradoxical, if not downright inconsistent. In fact, he adopted them after reinterpreting them in terms of his Ash'arite occasionalist perspective (to which we will shortly turn), rendering them consistent with his theology. This reinterpretation is not without intrinsic philosophical interest.

Al-Ghazālī was a renowned Islamic lawyer (faqīh), speculative theologian (mutakallim), but above all an Islamic mystic (sūfī). In his autobiography, written a few years before his death, he states that it was the quest after certainty that motivated his intellectual and spiritual journey and that he finally found this certainty in direct mystical experience, dhawq, a technical Sūfī term that literally means “taste.” Although trained in the Ash‘arite school of speculative theology, kalām, to which he contributed two works, he was also critical of this discipline. This has raised the question of whether his mysticism was at odds with his theology, which included the reinterpreted, assimilated, Avicennian philosophical ideas.

One of the greatest thinkers of the classical Islamic age and the man who influenced Islamic thought after the sixth/twelfth century more than any other was Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. Led by Muʾtazilites and philosophers such as Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, Islamic thought had maintained certain modes of rationalism for 300 years; al-Ghazālī redirected it towards mysticism.

Today there are signs of al-Ghazālī's influence in the works of his successors including those of the great shaykh, Muḥyī ʾlDl-Dīn b. al-ʿArabī (560–638/1165–1240) who seems, at first glance, to have little in common with al-Ghazālī's conservatism. Al-Ghazālī's book Iḥyāʾ ʾulūm al-dīn (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), exceptional for its exalted tone of moral instruction, is still widely read in religious and learned circles and is occasionally reprinted in Cairo and Beirut. Of particular interest also is a shorter work called al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (“The Deliverer from Error”), which was written towards the end of his life and in which he describes certain periods of his life and summarizes his ideas on philosophy, mysticism and Ismacilism. In both these works, and in others also written in the last years of his life such as Ayjuhā ʾl-walad and al-Qisṭās al-mustacīm (“The Correct Balance”), al-Ghazālī blends mysticism with jurisprudence and theology with philosophy.

PUPIL AND TEACHER

Poor but well-educated, the young al-Ghazālī visited the great cities of his time: Jurjān, Naysābūr, Baghdad and Damascus, in order to gain more knowledge which he could share with others.

[77] Praise be to God, with whose praise every epistle and treatise begins, and blessings upon Muḥammad, the chosen one, prophet, and messenger, and upon his kin and companions who guide one from error.

You have asked me, my brother in religion, to convey to you the aim and secrets of the sciences, as well as the confusing intricacies of creeds, and to relate what I have endured in extricating truth from the mayhem of factions, with their differing approaches and methods, and how I have ventured to raise myself from the depths of conformity to the heights of insight. You have also asked me to relate, first, what I gleaned from theology; second, what I gathered from the methods of the Instructionists, who hold that truth is apprehended solely by conforming to the instruction of the imām; third, what I criticized of the methods of philosophizing; and finally, what I endorsed of [78] the method of mysticism. You have asked me to convey the nuggets of truth that I uncovered in the midst of my investigation into the doctrines of humanity, what diverted me from the spread of knowledge in Baghdād despite the large number of students, and what led me to resume teaching in Nishapur after a long absence. Therefore, I will hasten to comply with your demand, having determined the sincerity of your request, and will relate this to you, asking God for assistance, support, success, and refuge.

In this chapter I shall attempt to place al-Ghazālī's political thought in the context of the Seljuq sultanate and the late Abbasid caliphate, starting from two premises: firstly, that al-Ghazālī's political thought is as significant as his mystical or theological thought; and secondly, that it is understandable only in the light of the political developments of his time.

I should like to begin to formulate an answer to the question raised in the title of the conference whose proceedings are collected in this volume: did the Seljuqs revitalise Islam? Probably they did or at least they brought a measure of order to a Muslim world in turmoil, but in so doing they sacrificed the prestige and the very role of the caliphate. There has been a wide debate about whether the Seljuqs were the defenders or the enemies of the caliphate. In a sense, they defended the caliphate insofar as they allowed it to endure a few centuries longer. But from another point of view, they were enemies of the caliphate in that they imposed a secular image of power against the religious legitimisation of the caliphal power. In other words, while, on the one hand, the Seljuqs protected the institution of the caliphate against its many adversaries, like the Ismaʿilis, on the other hand they made it evident that the management of power in Islam was no longer a question of the Islamic state but rather of an Islamic model of the state. Let us examine these contentions more closely.

The Emergence of Neoclassical and the Rise of Heterodox Economics

This chapter outlines the variations of neoclassical economics in order to set forth an engagement with contemporary debates on economic thought and the locale of Islamic economic postulates that have been forgotten, underresearched, or cast as unscientific. The fundamental idea of reinvigorating classical scholars such as al-Ghazālī connotes that economic doctrine cannot be studied on its own terms and has to be reshaped in relation to other human fields, including ethical principles. Such a standpoint also asserts that ethics as virtuous traits of character have to be brought back to the table in contemporary economic discourse.

Despite the significant variations of and within neoclassical economics, it is widely accepted as part of the so-called mainstream or orthodox economic theories taught at universities across the world. Following rational choice theory and supply and demand, neoclassical economics favors an individual's rationality and one's ability to maximize utility or profit, while also resorting to mathematical equations and evolutionary methods in the study of the economy. Neoclassical economics was developed in the late nineteenth century, based on the theories of William Stanley Jevons (d. 1882), Léon Walras (d. 1910), Carl Menger (d. 1921), and Alfrid Marshall (d. 1924), and became popularized in the early twentieth century. It is widely believed that Thorstein Veblen (d. 1929) first used the term neoclassical economics as it sprang out of demand and supply theory or the so-called Marginal Revolution.6 Despite diverse theories and approaches within neoclassical economics, its philosophy primarily focuses on consumers’ maximization of personal satisfaction, which also employs mathematical deductivism. This theory coincides with the objectives of rational behavior theory that man's economic decisions are rationally induced. While classical economists maintain that a value of a commodity is the result of the cost of material and the cost of labor, neoclassical economists hold there is also a perceived value of a commodity by a consumer that has a direct effect on price and demand. Furthermore, generally neoclassical economists advance competition in the market, oppose governmental involvement, and uphold that savings determine investment and its economic equilibrium.

A Life Outspoken

This chapter begins in part with a linear examination of the events of al-Ghazālī's life that structured his ethical-economic worldview. Pinpointing some crucial moments in his life may explain how the eminent scholar came to understand the concept of divine knowledge and the political-intellectual environs in which he lived. On some level, his biography assists the reader in navigating what might appear to be contradictory views on philosophy, Sufism, and ethics, which are directly correlated to his views on economic subjectivity. In the second section of this chapter, I delve into al-Ghazālī's own intellectual-autobiographical work, focusing on how he constitutes philosophical reasoning and ṣūfī introspection, while in the third section, I introduce his major work Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn. This monumental text is both a work of science of praxis or ʿilm al-muʿāmala and a science of unveiling or ʿilm almukāshafa, rooted in the theory of eternal happiness (sa‘āda) and encompassing also his major ethical-economic teachings.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, or simply Imām al-Ghazālī, was born in AD 1058 in the town of Tābarān in Khorāsān, Persia. His father was a pious man who raised him and his brother, Aḥmad; however, it was al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), his teacher— a prominent poet who mastered rhetoric in Persian and Arabic, a Sunni Shāfi‘ī jurist, and a theologian— who passed his acquired knowledge on to his disciple. Al-Juwaynī was a respected authority in Islamic jurisprudence and theology who had escaped persecution under the Ash‘arīte Muslims, who were officially recognized and expanded under the Saljūq Empire (1037– 1194). Al-Juwaynī received a teaching position at the Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Nīshāpūr, where he studied Greek philosophy and its epistemological significance in relation to Islamic theology. By that time, Aristotelian philosophy was well known to Muslim scholars, especially to al-Farābi (d. 951) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), while al-Juwaynī was the first to seriously engage Ibn Sīnā's works on the great philosopher.

Al-Ghazālī's madrasa studies infused in him a strong desire for knowledge, and he pursued studies in Islamic sciences, including Qur’ān, Ḥadīth, and Islamic jurisprudence.