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.”