“I cannot ascertain,” says Macdonald in speaking of this period of Al-Ghazali’s life, “whether while he was still at Nishapur he touched those depths of scepticism of which he speaks in the Munqidh. They must certainly have been reached some time before the year A. H. 484, and must have been the outcome of a long drift of development; but probably so long as he was under the influence of the Imam-al-Haramain, a devout Sufi, he would be held more or less fast to the old faith.”
Of these struggles of his soul in an age of doubt and how he found relief the next chapter will tell us.
III
Teaching, Conversion, and Retirement
“Al-Ghazali is one of the deepest thinkers, greatest theologians and profoundest moralists of Islam. In all Muhamadan lands he is celebrated both as an apologist of orthodoxy and a warm advocate of Sufi mysticism. Intimately acquainted with all the learning of his time, he was not only one of the numerous Oriental philosophers who traverse every sphere of intellectual activity, but one of those rarer minds whose originality is not crushed by their learning. He was imbued with a sacred enthusiasm for the triumph of his faith, and his whole life was dedicated to one purpose, the defense of Islam.”
—“Mystics and Saints of Islam,” Claud Field.
III
TEACHING, CONVERSION, AND RETIREMENT
With the death of the Imam in A. H. 478 a great change came into the life of Al-Ghazali. He left Nishapur to seek his fortune and it brought him to the camp court of the great Vizier Nizam Al-Mulk. Here Al-Ghazali sought advancement and the honours of learning.