He underwent a spiritual crisis in 1095, and consequently abandoned his career and left Baghdad on the pretext of going on pilgrimage to Mecca. After bestowing upon him the titles of "Brilliance of the Religion" and "Eminence among the Religious Leaders", Nizam al-Mulk advanced al-Ghazali in July 1091 to the "most prestigious and most challenging" professoriate at the time, in the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad. After al-Juwayni’s death in 1085, al-Ghazali departed from Nishapur and joined the court of Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuq sultans, which was likely centered in Isfahan. He later studied under al-Juwayni, the distinguished jurist and theologian and "the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time",in Nishapur, perhaps after a period of study in Gurgan. Al-Ghazali’s contemporary and first biographer, ‘Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher. He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of Tus, which lies within the Khorasan Province of Persia (Iran).Ī posthumous tradition, the authenticity of which has been questioned in recent scholarship, arose that al-Ghazali’s father died in poverty and left the young al-Ghazali and his brother Ahmad to the care of a Sufi. Tus, Iran, named after Harun al-Rashid, the mausoleum of Al-Ghazali is thought to be situated at the entrance of this monument]]The traditional date of al-Ghazali’s birth, as given by Ibn al-Jawzi, is 450 AH (March 1058–February 1059 CE), but modern scholars have raised doubts about the accuracy of Ibn al-Jawzi’s information, and have posited a date of 448 AH (1056–1057 CE), on the basis of certain statements in al-Ghazali’s correspondence and autobiography. The orthodox theologians still went their own way, and so did the mystics, but both developed a sense of mutual appreciation which ensured that no sweeping condemnation could be made by one for the practices of the other. Besides his work that successfully changed the course of Islamic philosophy-the early Islamic Neoplatonism developed on the grounds of Hellenistic philosophy, for example, was so successfully refuted by al-Ghazali that it never recovered-he also brought the orthodox Islam of his time in close contact with Sufism. (1962) al-Ghazali: Etude sur la réforme Ghazalienne dans l’histoire de son développement (Fribourg). Others have cited his movement from science to faith as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress.Sawwaf, A. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1111) (), known as Al-Ghazali or Algazel to the Western medieval world, was a Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic of Persian descent.Īl-Ghazali has sometimes been referred to by historians as the single most influential Muslim after the Islamic prophet Muhammad.