IV
WANDERINGS, LATER YEARS, AND DEATH
The chronology of Al-Ghazali’s life was a puzzle even to those who wrote only a century after his death. There seems great uncertainty not only as to the time of his various journeyings but as to their order, and there is dispute even regarding the places he visited. We know that the date of his conversion was A. H. 488 (A. D. 1095), when he was thirty-eight years old, and that shortly after this he went into exile. In A. H. 498 (A. D. 1104) he is said to have returned to active life, and to have spent two years in retirement in Syria. The other dates are quite uncertain. Following the best authorities at our disposal, especially his own “Confessions,” we continue the story where we left off in the last chapter.[38]
“From Damascus,” says Al-Ghazali, “I proceeded to Jerusalem, and every day secluded myself in the Sanctuary of the Rock. After that I felt a desire to accomplish the Pilgrimage, and to receive a full effusion of grace by visiting Mecca, Medina, and the Tomb of the Prophet. After visiting the shrine of the Friend of God (Abraham), I went to the Hejaz. Finally, the longings of my heart and the prayers of my children brought me back to my country, although I was so firmly resolved at first never to revisit it. At any rate, I meant, if I did return, to live there solitary and in religious meditation; but events, family care, and vicissitudes of life changed my resolutions and troubled my meditative calm. However irregular the intervals which I could give to devotional ecstasy, my confidence in it did not diminish; and the more I was diverted by hindrances, the more steadfastly I returned to it. Ten years passed in this manner.”
According to this account his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Hebron, to Medina and Mecca, was part of one itinerary; it also is the natural route of travel from Bagdad to the birthplace of Islam. The statement made by some authorities that he first remained ten years at Damascus is therefore probably inaccurate. If we are to believe al-Isnawi, the course of events was as follows: He set out in the year A. D. 1095 for the Hejaz. On his return from the pilgrimage, he journeyed to Damascus, and made his abode there for some years in the minaret of the Grand Mosque, composing several works of which the Ihya is said to be one. Then after visiting Jerusalem and perhaps Cairo and Alexandria, he returned to his home at Tus.
According to one Arabic authority, when Al-Ghazali left Damascus in his wanderings, he was accompanied by a disciple, a certain Abu Tahir Ibrahim, who had been a pupil also at Nishapur under the great Imam; he returned afterwards to Jurjan, his native place, and died a martyr in A. H. 513. Other pupils of his at Damascus are also mentioned, but the authorities do not agree.
Among many shrines at Jerusalem, Al-Ghazali visited the Mosque of Omar, and the Dome of the Rock. In Sura xvii. 1, Mohammed is represented as having taken his flight from Mecca to Jerusalem.—“Celebrated be the praises of Him who by night took his servant from the Masjidu ’l-Haram (the Sacred Mosque) to the Masjidu ’l-Aqsa (the Remote Mosque), the precinct of which we have blessed.”
As-Suyuti says Jerusalem is specially honoured by Moslems as being the scene of the repentance of David and Solomon. “The place where God sent His angel to Solomon, announced glad tidings to Zacharias and John, showed David a plan of the Temple, and put all the beasts of the earth and fowls of the air in subjection to him. It was at Jerusalem that the prophets sacrificed; that Jesus was born and spoke in His cradle; and it was from Jerusalem that Jesus ascended to heaven; and it will be there that He will again descend. Gog and Magog shall subdue every place on the earth but Jerusalem, and it will be there that God Almighty will destroy them. It is in the holy land of Jerusalem that Adam and Abraham, and Isaac and Mary are buried. And in the last days there will be a general flight to Jerusalem, when the Ark and the Shechinah will be again restored to the Temple. There will all mankind be gathered at the Resurrection for judgment, and God will enter, surrounded by His angels, into the Holy Temple, when He comes to judge the earth.”
Here Al-Ghazali would see the sacred footprint of Mohammed made in the rock on his journey to heaven; the praying places of Abraham and Elijah would be pointed out to him; the round hole where the rock let Mohammed through when he ascended to heaven; the holy place in the roof of the cavern where it arose to allow him to stand erect and to pray; the tongue with which it spoke; and the marks of the Angel Gabriel’s finger where it had to be held down from following him in his ascension! The place is also pointed out by Moslems to-day where Solomon tormented the demons, and also near the eastern wall where the throne stood whereon he sat when dead, the corpse leaning on his staff to cheat the demons until the worms had gnawed it through and the body fell forward. All this is found in Moslem Tradition, and must have stirred the credulity or the scepticism of Al-Ghazali. He himself tells us in one of his books that on the last day Israfil, who, with Gabriel and Michael, has been restored to life, “standing on the rock of the temple of Jerusalem, will at the command of God call together the souls from all parts, those of believers from Paradise and the unbelievers from hell, and throw them into his trumpet. There they will be ranged in little holes, like bees in a hive, and will, on his giving the last sound, be thrust out and fly like bees, filling the whole space between earth and heaven. Then they will repair to their respective bodies. The earth will then be an immense plain without hills or villages, and the dead, after they have risen, will sit down each one on his tomb, anxiously waiting for what is to come.”[39]
A modern traveller describes other Moslem superstitions connected with this Mosque. “The little arcades at the top of the steps of the platform are called ‘Balances,’ because the scales of judgment are to be suspended there on the Great Day. The Dome of the Chain owes its name to the circumstance that there a golden chain hung at David’s place of judgment, which had to be grasped by witnesses and dropped a link when a lie was told. A place in the outer wall is shown from which a wire will be suspended on the Day of Judgment, whose other end will be made fast to the Mount of Olives. Christ will sit on the wall and Mohammed on the mount. Over this wire must all men find their way, but only the good will cross, the wicked falling into the valley beneath. In the Al-Aqsa Mosque a couple of pillars stand very near each other, so worn that they are perceptibly thinned. The space between them bulges, and a piece of spiked iron work is now inserted between them. These are another test for the final award—he who could squeeze himself between them, and he alone, had found the true ‘narrow way to heaven.’”
We have descriptions of Jerusalem by a Moslem who wrote at the end of the tenth, and by another of the middle of the eleventh century. The latter estimated the population at twenty thousand, and fancied that as many more Moslem pilgrims came to the city in the month of their pilgrimage; Christians and Jews then visited the city as they do to-day. Both these writers praise the place for its cleanliness, which they attribute to its geographical position and natural drainage. Yet the history of Jerusalem throughout this century is little more than the record of damage and repair to Christian and Moslem sanctuaries. In A. D. 1010 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by the mad Sultan Hakim. This was followed by other humiliations of the pilgrims and persecutions, until Peter the Hermit arose in protest and the Crusades began.