Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Al-Ghazali (1059-1 111)
It was at that critical moment that one of the most richly endowed thinkers of Islam, al-Ghazali, appeared upon the scene to save the situation. Abu Hamid ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Ghazali was born in 1059 in Khorozan, in Persia. Though he lost his father while still very young, he received an excellent education. His outstanding intellectual gifts were soon recognized, and at the age of

33 he obtained one of the most important academic positions of the time, namely that of professor at the famous Nizamiyah University in Baghdad, founded by Nizam al Mulk, the great wazir of the Seljuq ruler Alp Arslan. A few years later he went through a serious crisis that was both mental and physical, and gave up his academic duties. He became a wandering ascetic resumed, for a while, his teaching vocation but finally withdrew into a life of solitary work and contemplation. He died at Tus in 1111 A.D.

As a result of the original crisis, Ghazali was transformed from a worldly teacher of philosophy and religion into a mystic. From his autobiography we learn that, after having made a profound study of the philosophers, the jurists and the theologians, Ghazali concluded that ultimate truth can be attained only through mystical revelation. His most important writings are an elaboration of that thesis. In this process of elaboration Ghazali succeeded in cleansing sufism of its unhealthy accretions, and in liberating Islamic philosophy from some of its cold rationalism, not to say secularism. Those of his works which enabled him to achieve this task were principally the autobiographical ”Deliverance from Error”, ”The Revival of the Religious Science” and the more famous ”Tahafut-ulFalasifa” or Incoherence of the Philosophers. In this last book, while accepting the findings of mathematics, science a”d logic, and employing the weapons of Aristotelianism, he attempted to/^molish
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the reputation of Aristotle (and the Greeks) as the guides of Muslim philosophy. Unlike Farabi he denied that reason (and thus philosophy) can fathom the absolute and the infinite, and insisted that it should limit itself to the finite and relative. Absolute truth can be attained only through that inward experience that is the essence of genuine religion.
As would be expected, Ghazali’s fundamental conceptions were diametrically opposed to those that his Muslim predecessors had so laboriously evolved out of Neoplatonic tenets. Thus, while they held that the universe was finite in extent but infinite (eternal) in duration, he tried to prove that an infinite time presupposed also an infinite space, since space is related to body, and time is related to the movements of bodies (i.e. those of the stars and planets). Having cast aside all the intermediate agents between God and His creation, such as the Logos, Nous or First Cause, Ghazali considered God as being directly responsible for everything that is So while the other philosophers claimed that God dealt only with universals but not with particulars, Ghazali’s God was concerned even with the minutes details of the world, he had created and that is the real philosophy of Islam. Ever since the days of the Mutazilla, it had become axiomatic that an acceptance of divine attributes (the classical ninety- nine Islamic ’names’ of God) implied an acceptance of divine plurality. This, however, was inconsistent with His unity and the strict monotheism of the creed. Ghazali did not hesitate to accept God’s attributes, which he regarded as coexistent with His unity.
Though philosophers like Farabi and Ibn Sina gave much thought to problems of the Caliphate, good government and political conduct, questions of morality preoccupied them much less. For Ghazali, on the other hand, such questions were of paramount importance, and in his, ”The Beginning of Guidance”, he deals in great detail with every aspect of what he considers to be right moral and religious conduct. Nothing pertaining to such conduct escapes his attention, and he provides careful instructions for the solution of even such problems as jesting, self-justification, backbiting, arguing, cursing, over-eating and so on.
The most impressive attributes of Ghazali - a part from his more strictly philosophical attainments - are his great rectitude, his seriousness of purpose, and the almost tragic urgency behind his message. He embodies in his person and his doctrine a synthesis between heartfelt piety and philosophical objectivity, a mystical

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ardour for God and an almost scientific precision in the manner in which he tries to give it expression. There can be no doubt that he deepened Islam’s religious conceptions and ’spiritualized’ orthodoxy. At the same time, he gave Sufism a respectability that it had lost long before his advent. His appeal was to the righteous but not the self-righteous, to the individualist but not to the libertine in the field of religion. His position in Islam is comparable to that of St. Thomas Aquinas in Christianity. G.F. Moore is not the only Western scholar who maintains that Ghazali’s personal contribution to theology was more considerable than that of the Christian theologian.
As early as the twelfth century, Ghazali’s books (not only on metaphysics and logic, but also on physics) were translated (chiefly in Toledo) into Latin and, from the very beginning, they exercised a profound influence upon Christian and Jewish scholasticism. While such Jewish thinkers as Maimonides and Bar Hebraeus were attracted by his ethical teachings, Christian philosophers avidly accepted Ghazali’s doctrine r»f creatio ex nihilo that did away with all the intermediaries between God and His creatures. It is more than likely that St. Thomas took over Ghazali’s concepts on the impotence of reason for explaining things divine; on God’s unity as implied in His perfection on the names of God and on the possibility of beautific vision. Education
During the Abbasid period the Muslim culture and civilization was at its zenith. It was a period of economic prosperity, development of trade and commerce, growth of artistic activities and of great intellectual awakening of all the periods of Muslim history,” says Hitti, ”undoubtedly the Abbasid period is the most striking and unequalled in depth and variety of talent.” During this period the Muslims came under the influence of the Greek literature and philosophy. It was also in this period that the Arabs became acquainted with the Indian sciences, particularly medicine, mathematics and astronomy. This contact of the Arabs with the outside world revolutionized their outlook towards different spheres of their life. It seemed as if all the world from the caliph down to the humble citizens suddeMy became students, or at least patrons, of literature. In quest of knowledge men travelled over three continents and returned home, like bees laden with one, to impart the precious stones which tlvy have accumulated to crowds of eager disciples, and to compile, with incredible industry, those works of encyclopedic range and erudition from which modern sciences, in
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the widest sense of the work, was derived far more than is generally supposed.”8
As a result of this inter-change of ideas the Arabs developed an intense passion for learning. The lover for learning was so great that deserving pupils in the elementary schools of Baghdad were often rewarded by being paraded through the streets on camels whilst almonds were thrown at them. This was the reason that this period witnessed the intensification of the efforts towards formalization of education system initiated during the Ummayyad times. In the history of Islam, the Abbasid period was known as Golden Age of Muslim learning and science. The age of conquest had passed that of civilization had commenced. ”The Abbasid Caliphs not only encouraged the learning but also enjoined public discussion and founded schools where, besides Arabic literature, theology, philology, grammar, rhetoric mathematics, physics, astrology and other branches of sciences were studied.”
There was no regular system of education nor a fixed syllabus, each professor having his own method of teaching and syllabus. Besides the mosque and the buildings adjoining shrines, there were other places endowed by the well learned men delivered their lectures.