Al-Ghazali

Education

Al-Ghazali was born into 450 from the Hégire, that is to say 1058 of the Christian era, in the town of Tus (Khorassan) or in one of the villages bordering, within a Persian family of modest condition, whose certain members were known to know to them and their leaning for mysticism soufi.

Al-Ghazali was still young when his/her father died, after having given the responsability one with his/her friends soufis to deal with education of its two sons. The friend in question discharged this mission until exhaustion of the funds bequeathed by the father and advised with the two brothers to fit in a '' madrasa '' where the pupils followed courses and were dealt with materially. Al-Ghazali would have started, towards the seven years age, by studying Arabic and the Persan one, the Coran and the principles of the religion. To the madrasa , it entered the cycle of the secondary studies and higher comprising the Fiqh (jurisprudence Islamic) and the interpretation ( Tafsir ) of the Koranic text and the Hadith (matter of the Prophète).

Towards the 15 years age, Al-Ghazali settled with Jurjan, flourishing center of the knowledge at the time, located at 160 km approximately of Tus, to study the Fiqh near Imam Al-Ismayli. This type of “voyage to the research of the knowledge” in order to follow the teaching of the famous Masters of the moment, was one of the educational traditions of Islam. It returned the following year to Tus, where it remained three years, devoted to memorize and better include/understand than it had transcribed teaching of its Masters. It went then to Naysabur (Nichapur), where it studied the Fiqh , dogmatic theology ( Kalâm ) and logic, like, seems it, of the elements of philosophy, near Imam Al-Juwayni, the jurisconsult of the most famous rite chaféite of the time. Al-Ghazali was then 23 years old. During the five years which follow, he is the pupil and the assistant of Imam Al-Juwayni, and started to publish some works and to study the Sufism near an other Sheik, Al-Farmadhi.

In the alleys of the capacity

The death of Al-Juwayni (478 H 1085) sees to be completed the period of Al-Ghazali training - which is then 28 years old - and to begin that from the immersion in the policy and the frequentation of the alleys of the capacity. It goes to the “camp” of the minister Seldjoukide Nizam Al-Mulk, where it carry out during six years the life of the lawyers of court, made political combats, erudite tournaments and writings, until it is named professor with the madrasa Nizamiya of Baghdad, one of the centers of knowing and teaching (kind of university) most important and most known in the Islamic East at the time. During the four years when it occupies this station, it publishes a certain number of works on the Fiqh - that it teaches - logic and the Kalâm , most important being the Mustazhiri and Al-Iqtisad wire-I' tiqad ( happy medium in the belief ), two works of jurisprudence to political character.

Al-Ghazali takes part in three political confrontations and intellectual major which shake the Islamic world at that time, namely the fight between philosophy and the religion (between the Islamic culture and the Greek culture) - it gives an opinion for the religion against philosophy; the fight between the Sunnisme and the Shiism - it gives an opinion for the Abbasid Califat against the batinites; the fight enters the inspiration and the reason and between the fiqh and mysticism.

During the period when he teaches in Nizamiyya of Baghdad, Al-Ghazali studies philosophy lengthily (that of the Greeks, Aristote, Plato and Plotin in particular, and Islamic philosophy, in particular Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi) in order to refute best. The essential problem with which he is confronted is that to reconcile philosophy and the religion, and he solves it in these terms: philosophy is in truth insofar as it is in conformity with the principles of the religion (of Islam) and in the error when it is in contradiction with these principles. In prelude to its attacks against philosophy, Al-Ghazali writes a work, Maqasid Al-Falasifa ( intentions of the philosophers ), in which it exposes the essence of the known philosophical thought to its time followed by its famous work, Tahafut Al-Falasifa ( inconsistency of the philosophers ). It summarizes its opposition to philosophy in twenty questions concerning the man, the world and God. For Al-Ghazali, the world is a recent creation, the bodies join the hearts in beyond and God knows the private individuals as he knows the universal one.

The Tahafut Al-Falasifa had a considerable repercussion in the arabo-Islamic world, and Christian Europe; this work and its author were one of the factors of the decline of the Greek philosophical thought in the Islamic world, in spite of the few attempts at defense of philosophy by Ibn Ruchd (Averroès) and others.

With the intensification of the military confrontation and intellectual between the sunnism and the Shiism, between the Abbasid caliphate, on the one hand, and the State fatimide and its partisans and combined in the Machrek, other, Al-Ghazali are mobilized and it publishes a series of works on this subject, most important being the defects of the esotericism and the virtues of the exoterism .

The esotericism of the batinites rests on two basic principles: the infallibility of the Imam, obligatory source of the knowledge, and the esoteric interpretation of the chari' has (the revealed law of Islam) by the Imam and its representatives. Al-Ghazali concentrates its attacks on the first principle, that of the infallibility of the Imam, its goal being to defend the Abbasid caliphate and to justify its existence, was it symbolic system (the caliphate is then in situation of extreme weakness), to soften the conditions of accession to the imamat and to confer a legitimacy to the sultans seldjoukides, who hold the true military and political capacity then, problem juridico-policy with which were also confronted other fuqaha (jurisconsults) Moslem, Al-Mawardi in particular. But the Al-Ghazali countryside against the batinites is not crowned same success as its countryside against the philosophers.

Spiritual crisis

Towards 1095 /488 H, Al-Ghazali, then old thirty-eight years, passes through a spiritual crisis which lasts about six months and which one can summarize with a violent confrontation between the reason and the heart, between the world of ici-bas and that of beyond. It starts by doubting the existing doctrines and clans (i.e. of knowledge), then starts to doubt the instruments of knowledge. This crisis affects it physically so much so that it loses the use of the word and thus becomes unable to teach; it ends only when it gives up its functions, its fortune and its celebrity.

Al-Ghazali summarizes the dominant doctrines at its time with four principal doctrines: the dogmatic , founded theology on logic and the reason; the esotericism , founded on initiation; the philosophy , founded on logic and the demonstration; the Sufism , founded on the revealing and testimony. In the same way, the means of arriving at knowledge are brought back: with the directions, with the reason and the inspiration. It ends up choosing the Sufism and the inspiration and, convinced that the unit of the world and beyond was difficult, even impossible, it pretexts a pilgrimage with Mecque to leave Baghdad and to go to Damas.

Period soufie

The influences soufies are many and strong in the Al-Ghazali life. He saw at the time where the Sufism is propagated: his/her father was close to the Sufism, his tutor is soufi, his brother becomes it at an early age, his Masters lean towards the Sufism, the minister Nizam Al-Mulk is close to the soufis and Al-Ghazali itself studied the Sufism. But the Sufism is not that a theoretical knowledge studied in the books or taught by Masters, it is also an action, a practice and a behavior, whose basic principles are, in particular, the renouncement of the world of ici-bas, loneliness and the wandering. It is what Al-Ghazali does which, during eleven years, carries out a life of Ermite between Damas, Jerusalem and Mecque. It is at that time that it starts to write most important of its books, Ihya' `Aldine Ulum ( Revification of sciences of the religion ) - that it finishes perhaps later on. Divided into four parts, devoted respectively to the practices of the worship, the social habits, the defects causes of perdition and the virtues leading to the hello, this work does not bring anything basically again, but one finds in his four volumes and his some 1.500 pages the essence of the religious Islamic thought of the Moyen-âge, in an at the same time exhaustive form, clear and simple which explains the single place that it occupies in the history of the Islamic thought.

Return to Baghdad

Al-Ghazali regains Baghdad in 1097 /490 H and continuous with living like a soufi in the ribat of Abou Saïd of Naysabur, which is opposite the madrasa Nizamiyya. It takes again during a certain time the teaching, which it primarily devotes to Ihya' `Aldine Ulum , then goes to Tus, its birthplace, where, continuing to live in soufi and to write, it completes seems it its major work above-mentioned and produced other works whose mystical inspiration is manifest.

In 1104 /498 H, Al-Ghazali takes again its functions with the madrasa Nizamiyya of Naysabur, at the request of the minister Seldjoukide Fakhr Al-Mulk, after some ten years of absence. It continues nevertheless to live the life of the soufis and to write. In 503 H, it leaves Naysabur and regains again Tus, its birthplace, where it continues the life of renouncement of the soufis and teaching.

Close to its house, it makes build a khangah (kind of hermitage soufi) where it at that time writes Minhaj Al 'Abidin ( the way of the devotion ), which seems to be a description of its life and that of its pupils: renouncement of the world of ici-bas, loneliness and education of the heart. Thus it runs the remainder of its days, until its death in 1111 /505 H.

The Al-Ghazali philosophy

The Al-Ghazali philosophy, like Islamic philosophy in a general way, turns primarily around the concept of God and his relationship with its creations (the world and the man). Admittedly, Al-Ghazali starts by following the Islamic current of thought of the fiqh and, more precisely, that of dogmatic theology ash' arite, in its description of the identity and the attributes of God, and the current soufi in the definition of the relation between God and the human being, but it is further proposing a new idea of the identity of God, his attributes and its action.

Al-Ghazali is in agreement with the jurisconsults and the theologists as for the unicity and the eternity of God, a god without substance nor form, which does not resemble any thing and which no thing resembles, an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent god, a gifted god of life, will, hearing, sight and word. But the Al-Ghazali god is different in what the universe and its components, and the acts of the men, are subjected to his strong influence and its direct and constant intervention, and which the concepts suitable for justice of the men could not be to him applied. It also differs by the catch in consideration from many creatures.

Following the example many jurisconsults and philosophers, Al-Ghazali distinguishes two worlds, this one, which are transitory, and the other which is eternal. The first, that of the material existence, is a provisional existence, subjected to the will of God; it is not governed by a whole of laws scientific, which are according to him part of this world, but is dominated, governed and directed by the direct and constant intervention of God (refusal of causality). He thinks that God is not only the creator of the universe, his characteristics and his laws (or causes existence), he is also the cause of any event who occurs there, unimportant or important, passed, present or to come.

It is in this universe which the human being saw, made creature of an immortal heart and a transitory body. The human being is neither good nor bad by nature, although its natural provision either nearer to although evil. It is driven, moreover, in a restricted space, where the constraints override the possibilities of choice. It is made less for the world from here bottom, where it suffers, which for the other, to which it must aspire and towards which it must make tighten its efforts.

The company, formed of human beings, is not and could not be virtuous for Al-Ghazali. It is a company where the evil overrides the good, so much so that the human being more interest has to avoid it rather than to live there. The company can be only worsening. The individual has his rights and his duties there, but its existence is unimportant beside the existence and of the power of the group. It is also a laminated company, composed of a thinking and leading elite and a mass, which entirely gave up its fate with the hands of this elite. The questions of the religion and the doctrines are spring of the scientists and the businesses of this world and State are with the hands of the leaders. The people, have to him to only obey. Lastly, the company is entirely subjected to the authority of God and its injunctions, its only goal being the religion and to give to the human beings the possibility of venerating God.

Conscience and knowledge are the major distinctive features of the human being, which draws its knowledge with two sources, one human, which enables him to discover the material world where he saw, by means of these limited tools that are perception and the reason, and the other divine one, which enables him to know the world of beyond, by the revelation and the inspiration. These two types of knowledge could not be put on an equal footing, from the point of view of their source like theirs method or of their degree of truth. Truth knowledge can come only from the revealing, once the heart reformed and purified by the education of the spirit and the body, and consequently lends to record what is engraved in the memory. It is about a knowledge whose vector is neither the word nor the writing, a knowledge which invests the heart insofar as this one is pure and ready to receive it. And more the heart acquires this knowledge, plus it knows God and approaches some, and more happiness of the human being is large.

According to Al-Ghazali, the virtuous individual is that which gives up this world for tending towards beyond, which prefers loneliness with the frequentation of its similar, the destitution with the richness and the hunger to satiety. It is the abandonment with God and not the taste of the combat which dictates its behavior and it is more inclined to show patience than of aggressiveness. Curiously, at the time when the image of the virtuous man started to evolve/move in Europe, the “monk knight” supplanting the wandering monk, the virtuous men's cloth also changed in the Arab East, with the difference which the armor of the rider combatant left the place with haillons soufi. And whereas Pierre the Hermit assembled the European masses and mobilized them for the Croisade S, Al-Ghazali exhorted the Arab to be submitted to the sovereigns and to be diverted company. Thus the thinker and the philosopher contributed to work the company and to modify the course of the history.

The influence of Al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazali died at the age of fifty-five years, after a life which one can consider short if one considers the width, the richness and the influence of his work. It is allowed to say that it was one of the largest Moslem thinkers, one of those which left the major print, thus deserving the nickname of “renovating of Ve century of the Hégire”. The great influence which Al-Ghazali had perhaps allotted to several elements, namely:

depth, the force and extent of its thought, consigned in more than fifty works, whose most important are Ihya' `Aldine Ulum ( Vivification of sciences of the faith ), Tahafut Al-Falasifa ( inconsistency of the philosophers ) and Al-Munquidh min Al-Dalal ( Erreur and delivery ), works which one continues today to study.

Its sights were in agreement with its time and its medium, reflecting this time undoubtedly more than they did not answer its needs and its requirements, and constituting an element of continuity and order more than one factor of revival and change.

After him, the company and the thought Islamic then entered a long era of sclerosis, where the large thinkers were done rare, which explains why the Al-Ghazali thought remained alive and influential.

The influence of Al-Ghazali on the Islamic thought can be brought back to the elements hereafter:

Retour of the “principle of fear” in the religious thought, and insistence on the existence of the Creator sitting on the center of the human existence and governing directly and constantly the course of the things (after the soufis had demolishes the " principle of amour").

Introduction of certain principles of logic and philosophy (notwithstanding the Al-Ghazali attacks against these disciplines) into jurisprudence and dogmatic theology.

Réconciliation enters the charia and the Sufism (between the jurisconsults and of the soufis) and multiplication of the brotherhoods soufies.

Defense of Islam sunnite against philosophy and the Shiism.

Weakening of the philosophy and sciences of nature.

The influence of Al-Ghazali extended beyond the Islamic world to be exerted until on the European thoughts Jewish and Christian.
With end of 11th century and especially with 12th century of Christian era, of many works Arab, of mathematics, of astronomy, of natural science, of chemistry, of medicine, of philosophy and of theology have be translated into Latin, of which certain works of Al-Ghazali, in particular, Ihya' `Ulum Aldine ( Vivification of sciences of the faith ), Maqasid Al-Falasifa ( intentions of philosophers ) that of aucuns took by error for a talk of the Al-Ghazali thought whereas it was about a recapitulation of the philosophical principles in progress at the time, Tahafut Al-Falasifa ( Itinconsistency of the philosophers ) and Mizan Al 'Amal ( Criterion of the action ).

Moreover, a certain number of European scientists knew Arabic and could directly take note of the sights of Al-Ghazali, the influence is very definitely perceptible among many philosophers and scientists of the Middle Ages and beginning of the modern era, particularly at Thomas d' Aquin, Dante and David Hume. Thomas d' Aquin (1225 - 1274), in his Summa Theologiae ( Summa Theologica ) must much with Al-Ghazali (in particular - with the Ihya' `Aldine Ulum ( Vivification of sciences of the faith ), with Kimiya-yi Sa' adat ( the alchemy of happiness ), with Ar-Risala Al-Laduniyya ( wisdom at the creatures of God ) and with the divine Message .

The writings of Dante (1265 - 1321) clearly reveal the Islamic capacity of Al-Ghazali and Risalat Al-Ghufran ( Épître of forgiveness ) of Al-Maari. And Al-Ghazali also exerted an influence on Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662), especially by giving the primacy to the intuition on the reason and the directions, and this influence is felt at David Hume (1711 - 1772), in his refutation of causality.

It seems that Al-Ghazali exerted a major influence on the Jewish thought than on theology and the thought Christian women. Juda Halevi is inspired some to compose its Kuzari . Isaac Albalag, sectator Jewish of Averroès, writes a comment on the Tahafut which resembles extremely the Tahafut Al-Tahafut of its maître.
Nombreux indeed were the Jewish scientists of the Middle Ages which knew the Arab language perfectly, and certain Al-Ghazali works were translated into Hebrew. Its book Mizan Al 'Amal of the action '', in particular, found a public at the Jews of the Middle Ages: it was several times translated into Hebrew, and even adapted, the verses of the Coran being replaced by the words of the Torah. One of the large Juifs thinkers to have been subject to the influence of Al-Ghazali was Maïmonide (in Arabic: Musa Ibn Maimun; in Hebrew: Moshe Ben Maimon [[1135] - 1204]). This influence is manifest in its Dalalat Al Ha' irin ('' Guide of stray the ''), written in Arabic, one of the most important works of medieval Jewish theology.

The Al-Ghazali writings on education represent the apogee of the thought in Islamic civilization. The design of the education which it worked out can be regarded as the construction most completed in this field, defining the goals of education clearly, tracing the route to follow and exposing the means of arriving at the sought-after goal. Al-Ghazali exerted an obvious influence on the Islamic educational thought of the Life in XIIIe century of Hégire (of XIIe at the XIXe century of the Christian era). One can almost say that with rare exceptions, the experts and the theorists of education did not do anything of other but to copy Al-Ghazali and summarize its sights and its writings.

The near total of the Islamic educational thought (and in particular sunnite) followed the way traced by Al-Ghazali, whose uninterrupted influence survived the surge of Western modernity and the appearance of contemporary modern Arab civilization.

References

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