Ghazal

“ Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and Darfur afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great tract of country occupied by dense woods and plentifully watered. Further south and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant with tropical growths, and the whole face of the land is moist and green. ”

“ Mâterídí is a quarter of this town whence he had his surname. This doctor was a Motkalin, that is, a great metaphysician and scholastic theologian; he composed, among many other works, a book entitled: Bian vahem al Mâtazalah, against the Mâtazale.— (Herbelot sub voce Matridi) .
[532] Muhammed Ghazáli, his full name is Abú Hamed Muhammed Ebn Muhammed, surnamed Hajjet ul islam Zain eddin al Tusí, born at Tus, n Khorasan, in the year of the Hejira 450 (A. D. 1058-9) , the son of a merchant of cotton thread, ghazal, whence his surname ghazáli; he died in 504 or 505 (A. D. 1110-11) . ”

“ Reem of Arabs in Algeria (Loder) ; Ghazal abiad (White Gazelle) of Arabs in Tunis and Egypt (Whitaker & Bramley) .
Height of male at withers about 25 inches. General colour very pale sandy fawn, the Gazelline markings little defined. Central facial band and darker cheek-bands sandy, not rufous, and but little contrasting with the light facial streaks. Light lateral bands scarcely perceptible, and the darker ones below them only pale sandy with a tinge of brownish, as are the pygal bands, neither being much darker than the general dorsal colour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Al-Ghazali was a Persian by birth, an Aryan in his modes of thought, a Semite in his religion and he became a cosmopolitan by travel and education. His long residence in all the great centres of Islam of his day brought him into close touch with men of every school of thought and followers of all manners of religions and philosophies. ”

“ GHAZĀLĪ [Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī] (1058–1111) , Arabian philosopher and theologian, was born at Tūs, and belonged to a family of Ghazāla (near Tūs) distinguished for its knowledge of canon law. Educated at first in Tūs, then in Jorjān, and again in Tūs, he went to college at Nīshāpūr, where he studied under Juwainī (known as the Imām ul-Ḥaramain) until 1085, when he visited the celebrated vizier Nizām ul-Mulk, who appointed him to a professorship in his college at Bagdad in 1091. ”

“ This man, (Al-Ghazali) if ever any have deserved the name, was truly a ‘divine,’ and he may be justly placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skilful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble, and sublime that his great soul had compassed he bestowed upon Mohammedanism, and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning that, in the form given them by him, they seem, in my opinion, worthy the assent of Christians. ”

“ 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.
The camp court was the travelling capital of the Seljuk Sultans. This imperial camp was laid out into squares and streets. We read how in a few hours a city, as if built by enchantment, would rise on the uninhabited plain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No Moslem is now dependent on Al-Ghazali’s few quotations from the Gospel. A new day has dawned for [294] Persia and the Near East. Everywhere the New Testament is better known than any of the ninety-nine works of Al-Ghazali, and we may also say, without exaggeration, that the New Testament finds a larger circle of readers. The mystics in Islam are near the Kingdom of God and for them Al-Ghazali may be used as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. ”

“ Their theology was limited to minute knowledge of Canon Law. They had no place for the religion which Ghazali preached, which was personal and passionate, a religion of the heart. When he attacked contemporary theologians busy with questions of legality and the externals of religion, he touched these pharisees of the law at the quick and they not only squirmed but screamed loudly. According to Dozy, “the Kady of Cordova, Ibn Hamdin, declared that any man who read Al-Ghazali’s book was an infidel ripe for damnation, and he drew up a fatwa condemning all copies of the book to the flames. ”

“ They include systems of theology, eschatology, works on philosophy, lectures on mysticism, on ethics, and on canon law.
Many have assigned to Al-Ghazali the highest position among all Moslem writers. Ismael Ibn Mohammed Al Hadrami says: “Mohammed the son of Abdullah was the Prince of all the Prophets; Mohammed the son of Idris Al-Shafiʾ was the Prince of Imams; but Mohammed the son of Mohammed, the son of Mohammed Al-Ghazali, was the Prince of Writers.” ”

“ To understand the time in which Al-Ghazali lived we must also remember that it was one of great literary activity under the Abbasside Caliphs of Bagdad and the Seljuk sultans. We have seen how rulers rewarded literary genius, established schools, and furthered education on religious lines. Arabic literature affords a galaxy of names during the latter half of the eleventh century in almost every department of Moslem learning. ”

“ In one particular, however, this ethical teaching is utterly disappointing. Al-Ghazali’s mysticism is not for the multitude. It is esoteric, for a particular class who are filled with religious pride that they, in this respect, are not as other men. Even the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to an aristocratic minority, and, like the Pharisees of old, consider the ignorance of the multitude an evil that cannot be remedied. The teaching of Al-Ghazali was intended not for the masses but for the initiates. ”

“ Al-Ghazali exercised a commanding influence on Jewish thought in the Middle Ages. In the appendix is a list of some of the translations of his books made in Hebrew. Jewish students of philosophy, including Maimonides, drew many of their theories from the Maqasid and his other works. Al-Ghazali’s attacks on philosophy were imitated by Judah ha-Levy in his Cuzari; but it was chiefly his ethical teaching rather than through his philosophy that Al-Ghazali attracted the Jewish thinkers. ”

“ A Mihrab or prayer-niche made of cedar wood and dating from the Eleventh Century. (Cairo Museum.)
It is clear, however, from Al-Ghazali’s teaching that only Moslems are intended in his classification of those who may receive the Zakat. There is no universal brotherhood in Islam. Jews and Christians are outside the pale, save as they have “the rights of neighbours.” ”

“ We cannot understand a man unless we know his environment. Biography is only a thread in the vast web of history, in [24] which time is broad as well as long. Al-Ghazali belongs to the small company of torch bearers in the Dark Ages.
He was born at Tus, in Khorasan, Persia, in the year 1058 A. D., and died in 1111 A. D. When Al-Ghazali was born Togrul Bey had just taken Bagdad, Henry IV was Emperor, Nicholas II was Pope, the Norman conquest had just begun in the west, and Asia Minor was overrun by the Turks in the Near East. ”

“ Life of lives, the goal of all our longings. [140]
Think lovingly of a God whose Name is love,
Who joys in rewarding, and come on secure of fear.
Whence I am, I behold you undying spirits like myself,
And see that our lot is one, and you as I.’”
We are indebted to the Rev. Dwight M. Donaldson of Mashad, Persia, for the interesting photographs of the ruins of Tus and of the supposed tomb of Al-Ghazali. The mosque is very old and probably dates from the time of Al-Ghazali. The grave shown in the picture, however, may not be the grave of Al-Ghazali the mystic but of another celebrated Ghazali. ”

“ After this, a youth in Al-Ghazali’s day would begin the study of Fiqh, or Moslem jurisprudence. We know from the contents of the standard works on this subject, written before Al-Ghazali’s time, and later by himself, what engrossed the attention in the schools of Tus and Jurjan. [27] His first lesson would be on ceremonial purity by the use of ablution, the bath, the tooth-pick and the various circumstances of legal defilement when ghasl or complete ablution is prescribed; of the ailments of women and the duration of pregnancy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his days jets of rose-water spurted from its fountains, and on the cold marble floors of its spray-cooled rooms young Persian damsels would sit, their hair dishevelled before bathing, and, splashing their soft naked feet in the clear water of the reservoirs, would sing, to the tune of the guitar, the ghazals of their vineyards.
The fountains play no longer; the songs have ceased; no longer do snow-white feet step gracefully on the snowy marble. It is but the vast and solitary quarters of cess-collectors like us, men oppressed with solitude and deprived of the society of women. ”

“ The ghazel is more irregular than the Greek or Latin Ode, one verse having often no apparent connection either with the foregoing or subsequent couplets. Ghazels were often, says Baron Revizky, written or spoken extempore at banquets or public festivities, when the poet, after expressing his ideas in one distich, impatient of confinement, roved through the regions of fancy, as wine or a luxuriant imagination inspired.' [18]
{xxix} This is excellent, and thoroughly intelligible. ”

“ If the ghazi succeeds in escaping, he will earn undying fame, and if he is slain or caught and hung, he makes forthmth a glorious entrance into the joys of Paradise, and the bards will voice his praises in odes to be sung all over the country-side for many a long day to come. ”

“ Besides this, the more earnest spirits, weary of the political confusions of the time, devoted themselves all the more fervently to cultivating the inner life, in which they sought compensation and refuge from outward distractions. Ghazzali was the most striking figure among all these. Of his early history not much is known. His father is said to have died while he was a child, but he had a brother Abu'l Futuh Ahmed Alghazzali, who was in great favour with the Sultan Malik Shah, and owing to his zeal for Islam had won the title of "Glory of the Faith." ”

“ This single rule of the one repeated rhyme being observed, the Ghazel admits otherwise of the greatest possible variety; it may be composed, as is this present, in short trochaics, in longer or shorter iambics, or, in fact, in lines of whatsoever length or arrangement of syllables the poet will. In Germany, the Ghazel has been perfectly domesticated. Rückert and Count Platen are, I believe, considered to have cultivated it with the greatest success. ”

“ The population fluctuates according to the season and the amount of trade passing into India. It seldom rises above 8000 people nor falls much below 3000 people. The inhabitants are largely drawn from the Nasir, Suliman Khel and other Ghilzai clans, who are concerned with the through caravan trade viâ the Gomul, together with a certain proportion of Duranis and Tajiks. There are, also, 250 families of Hazara labourers and perhaps 200 Hindu shopkeepers, bankers and traders. The community in Ghazni is very mixed, ignorant, superstitious and, if the Hindu element is excepted, without wealth. ”

“ In the eleventh century, a man of great ability, of whom the Muhammadans are justly proud, made a vigorous effort to reconcile orthodox Islam with the Sufi doctrines current in his time. This man was Ghazzali. He consecrated the labour of a lifetime to this task, and his chief work, "The Revival of the Religious Sciences," is a veritable encyclopædia of Islam. He did not work in vain, but succeeded in erecting a system in which dogmatic theology is cleverly combined with the theosophy of the Arab school of mysticism. But Islam such as Ghazzali conceived it is no longer that of ancient times. ”

“ Le Strange (p. 348) writes as follows: "Ghaznah became famous in history at the beginning of the eleventh century as the capital of the great Mahmud of Ghaznah, who at one time was master both of India on the east and Bagdad on the west." Istakhri says: "No city of this countryside was richer in merchants and merchandise, for it was as the port of India." The river Gozan, on which we are told Ghaznah lies, must appear to the reader to be ubiquitous. On p. 33 we find the Habor of Kurdistan is its affluent ”