Ghazali or Algazel

GHAZALI or ALGAZEL [Mohammed ibn Mohammed Abu Hamid al-Ghazali] (1o58-1111), Arabian philosopher and theologian, was born at Tus, and was educated in his native town, in Jorjan and in Nishapur. In 1091 the celebrated vizier Nizam ul-Mulk appointed him professor in his college at Baghdad. Here he was engaged in writing against the Isma`ilites (Assassins), but after four years he suddenly gave up his chair, left his family and devoted himself to an ascetic life. This was due to a growing scepticism, which gradually gave way to mysticism, and to his attack on philosophers. Some of their problems which he declared insoluble were the eternity of the world, the reality of the Divine attributes, God's knowledge of things outside of Himself and the independence and immortality of the soul. Ghazali wandered through Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron, Mecca, Medina and Alexandria until, at the wish of the sultan Malik Shah, he became professor in the college of Nizam ul-Mulk at Nishapur. He re turned soon after to Tas, where he died in Dec. 'III.

Of the

69 works ascribed to Ghazali (cf. C. Brockelmann's Gesch. d. arabischen Litteratur, i., Weimar, 1898), the chief are: a treatise on eschatology called Ad-durra ul-fdkhira ed. L. Gautier (Geneva, 1878) ; the great work, lhyd ul-`Ulicm ("Revival of the sciences") (Bulaq, 1872; Cairo, 1889) ; a commentary by al-Murtada called the Ithdf, published in 13 vols. at Fez, 1885-87, and in io vols. at Cairo, 1893; the Bidayat ul-Hiddya (Bulaq, 187o, and often at Cairo) ; a compendium of ethics, Mizan ul-'Amal, Heb. trans., ed. J. Goldenthal (Paris, 1839) ; a popular treatise on ethics, the Kimiya us-Sa'ada, ed. H. A. Homes as The Alchemy of Happiness (Albany, N.Y., 1873) ; the ethical work 0 Child, ed. by Hammer-Purgstall in Arabic and German (Vienna, 1838) ; the Destruction of Philosophers (Tahafut ul-Faldsifa) (Cairo, 1885, and Bombay, 1887) ; the Maqdsid ul Falasifa, of which the Latin trans. by Gundisalvi was pubd. at Venice, I5o6, later ed. by G. Beer (Leiden, 1888) ; the Kitab ul-Munqid, describing the changes in his philosophy, ed. by F. A. Schmolders in his Essai sur les ecoles philosophiques chez les Arabes (1842) , also at Constantinople, 1876, and translated into French by Meynard (1877) ; answers to questions ed. in Arabic and Hebrew, with German trans. by H. Malter (Frankfort, 1896) ; Eng. trans., Confessions of al Ghazzali, by Claud Field (19°9).

For Ghazali's life see McG. de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikan, ii. if. ; R. Gosche's Ober Ghazali's Leben and Werke (1859) ; D. B. Macdonald's "Life of al-Ghazali," in Journal of American Oriental Society (1899) , Carra de Vaux's Gazali (1902) and bibliography in L)berweg's Gesch. der Philosophie (Bd. 2, 1928) ; see ARABIAN PHIL OSOPHY.