(4) Al-Ghazzálí, “the Proof of Islam” and Champion of Orthodoxy. This eminent theologian, who was professor at the Nidhámiyya College of Baghdad from A.D. 1091 to 1095, and died in A.D. 1111, who had explored all realms of speculation accessible to him, and had at last found refuge in the mysticism of the more moderate Ṣúfís, “felt himself called,” as Steiner says,* “to stand forth as the scientific apologist or Islám, and to restore the threatened faith to surer ground.” Tholuck (Bibl. Sacra, vi, 233), cited by H. A. Homes at pp. 7-8 of his translation of the Turkish version of the Alchemy of Happiness (Albany, N.Y., 1873) appraises him very highly. “Ghazzálí,” says he, “if ever any man has deserved the name, was truly a divine, and he may justly be 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, worthy, and sublime which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Muhammadanism; and he adorned the doctrines of the Qur'án with so much piety and learning that, in the form given them by him, they seem, in my opinion, worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Ṣúfí mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Muhammadan theology. From every school he sought the means of shedding light and honour upon religion, while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first of Muhammadan divines.” Dieterici, on the other hand, judges him harshly. “As a despairing sceptic,” says he,* “he springs suicidally into the All-God [i.e., the all-pervading Deity of the Pantheists] to kill all scientific reflexion.”
The teachings of the “Brethren of Purity” were carried to the West by a Spanish Arab of Madrid, Muslim b. Muḥammad Abu'l-Qásim al-Majríṭí al-Andalusi, who died in A.D. 1004-1005. Thanks to them, and later to the great Moorish philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Spain became a centre of philosophical learning, whence, during the Middle Ages, Europe derived such light as it possessed on these great questions. “The strife between Nominalism and Realism,” says Dieterici,* “which for centuries stirred the learned world, is a product of this development, and had already, during the ninth and tenth centuries, set in motion all the minds of the East.”
Of the Sunnites little need here be said, since, though numerous in Persia under the various Turkish or half Turkish dynasties which generally prevailed there until the rise of the Ṣafawís in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and counting amongst their numbers Persians so eminent as Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, Sa'dí, Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, and many others, they were never really in harmony with Persian tendencies and aspirations, and are at the present day almost extinct save at Lár and in a few other districts. It should be mentioned, however, that the founders of the four orthodox schools, those of the Ḥanafites, Málikites, Sháfi'ites, and Ḥanbalites, all flourished during this period of Mu'tazilite domination. Of these the eldest, Abú Ḥanífa, was born in A.D. 700 and died in 767. He was of Persian descent.* Málik was born at Madína in A.D. 713 or 714, and died in 795. He was cruelly flogged by al-Manṣúr for suspected disaffection towards the 'Abbásid dynasty; “from which time,” says Ibn Khallikán,* “he rose higher and higher in public estimation, so that the punishment he underwent seemed as if it had been an honour conferred upon him.” Ash-Sháfi'í was an Arab of the tribe of Quraysh, was born in the year (some say* on the very day) of Abú Ḥanífa's decease, and died at Cairo in A.D. 820. Lastly, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, a native of Merv, but apparently of Arab race, was born in A.D. 780, and died at Baghdad in 855. He was the favourite pupil of ash-Sháfi'í, who said, on setting out for Egypt, “I went forth from Baghdad leaving behind me no more pious man and no better jurisconsult than Ibn Ḥanbal.”* To his steadfast courage in refusing to admit that the Qur'án was created allusion has already been made.
These are the four “Imáms” of the orthodox Sunnites, and
the schools which they founded differ but in minor points, and
The four orthodox schools
of the Sunnís.
are on good terms with one another. The Ḥana-
Of the Shí'ites it will be more convenient to speak at length
The Shí'ites.
in a subsequent chapter, but it may be noted that
the great schism which divided them into the
“Sect of the Seven” (Sab'iyya) or Isma'ílís, and the “Sect of
the Twelve” (Ithná 'ashariyya) which prevails in Persia at the
Origin of the
“Sect of the
Seven” and the
“Sect of the
Twelve.”
present day, had its origin in this period which
we are considering. In the doctrine of the Imá-
Lastly, a few words must be said here of the earlier Ṣúfís,
or Mystics, whose fully developed system of Spiritualistic
The early Ṣúfís.
Pantheism will be described in another place.
Their name, as is now generally admitted, has
nothing at all to do with the Greek <text in Greek script omitted> (which appears,
written with the soft letter sín, not the hard ṣád, in the Arabic
faylasúf, “philosopher,” and safsaṭi, “sophist”); nor, as the
Ṣúfís themselves pretend, with the Arabic root ṣafá, “purity”;
nor with the ahlu'ṣ-ṣuffa, or “people of the bench,” religious
mendicants of the early days of Islám who sat outside the
mosque craving alms from the devout; but is simply derived
from the Arabic word ṣúf, “wool,” as is shown, amongst other
things, by the Persian epithet pashmína-púsh, “wool-clad,”
which is commonly applied to them. Woollen garments were
from the first regarded as typical of the primitive simplicity
affected by the early Muslims: of 'Umar, the second Caliph,
Mas'údi tells us*
that “he used to wear a jubba of wool (ṣúf)
patched with pieces of leather and the like,” while Salmán the
Persian is described by the same historian*
as “wearing woollen
raiment,” and the same fact is recorded*
of Abú 'Ubayda b.
al-Jarráḥ. Later, when luxury became prevalent, those who
adhered to the old simple ways of the Prophet's immediate
successors, silently protesting against the growing worldliness
and extravagance of their contemporaries, were termed
“Ṣúfís,” and, in this earliest form, alike in respect to their
simple attire, their protest against ostentation and extravagance,
their piety and quietism, they present a remarkable
analogy with the early Quakers. There is always in extreme
quietism, and that spirituality which is impatient of mere
formal worship and lip-service, a tendency towards Pantheism;
but in these early Ṣúfís this tendency is much less noticeable
than, for instance, in Eckhart, Tauler, and the fourteenth-