A Life Outspoken

This chapter begins in part with a linear examination of the events of al-Ghazālī's life that structured his ethical-economic worldview. Pinpointing some crucial moments in his life may explain how the eminent scholar came to understand the concept of divine knowledge and the political-intellectual environs in which he lived. On some level, his biography assists the reader in navigating what might appear to be contradictory views on philosophy, Sufism, and ethics, which are directly correlated to his views on economic subjectivity. In the second section of this chapter, I delve into al-Ghazālī's own intellectual-autobiographical work, focusing on how he constitutes philosophical reasoning and ṣūfī introspection, while in the third section, I introduce his major work Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn. This monumental text is both a work of science of praxis or ʿilm al-muʿāmala and a science of unveiling or ʿilm almukāshafa, rooted in the theory of eternal happiness (sa‘āda) and encompassing also his major ethical-economic teachings.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, or simply Imām al-Ghazālī, was born in AD 1058 in the town of Tābarān in Khorāsān, Persia. His father was a pious man who raised him and his brother, Aḥmad; however, it was al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), his teacher— a prominent poet who mastered rhetoric in Persian and Arabic, a Sunni Shāfi‘ī jurist, and a theologian— who passed his acquired knowledge on to his disciple. Al-Juwaynī was a respected authority in Islamic jurisprudence and theology who had escaped persecution under the Ash‘arīte Muslims, who were officially recognized and expanded under the Saljūq Empire (1037– 1194). Al-Juwaynī received a teaching position at the Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Nīshāpūr, where he studied Greek philosophy and its epistemological significance in relation to Islamic theology. By that time, Aristotelian philosophy was well known to Muslim scholars, especially to al-Farābi (d. 951) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), while al-Juwaynī was the first to seriously engage Ibn Sīnā's works on the great philosopher.

Al-Ghazālī's madrasa studies infused in him a strong desire for knowledge, and he pursued studies in Islamic sciences, including Qur’ān, Ḥadīth, and Islamic jurisprudence.