Preface
There are a score of lives of Mohammed, the great Arabian Prophet, in the English language, yet there is no popular biography of the greatest of all Moslems since his day, Al-Ghazali. Even the Encyclopædia Britannica gives only scant information. Professor Duncan B. Macdonald prepared a life of Al-Ghazali with special reference to his religious experiences and influence in a paper published in the twentieth volume of “The Journal of the American Oriental Society” (1899), but now out of print. His scholarly investigations and conclusions, however, deal with Al-Ghazali’s inner experiences and his philosophy, rather than with his environment and the events of his life. We acknowledge our great indebtedness to his paper and to the original Arabic sources on which it was based, especially the introduction to the Commentary on the Ihya by Sayyid Murtadha in ten volumes and entitled Ithaf as-saʿada. I have found additional material in Al-Ghazali’s writings and other books mentioned in the bibliography given in the appendix of this book, especially the Tabaqat ash-shafaiʾya by As-Subqi, who wrote long before Murtadha and to whom Macdonald refers, but whose work he did not use.
The study of Al-Ghazali’s life and writings will, more than anything else, awaken a deeper sympathy for that which is highest and strongest in the religion of Islam; for the student of his works learns to appreciate Islam at its best. As Jalal-ud-din says:
“Fools buy false coins because they are like the true.
If in the world no genuine minted coin
Were current, how would forgers pass the false?
Falsehood were nothing unless truth were there,
To make it specious. ’Tis the love of right