Ghazali in Political Prescription and Epistemological Polemic

Like most medieval Islamic political theorists, al-Ghazālī identified the leading purpose of government as the maintenance of  peace and security. In a secure environment, Muslims would be free of the worrisome exigencies of survival and able to practice salvific Islam. Without security the sharī'a would crumble, tempting people to sidestep right practice in order to protect their interests in a violent, uncontrolled situation, jeopardizing their salvation in the process.

In al-Ghazālī’s conception of political order as expressed in the Kitāb al Mustazhirī and echoed elsewhere, the caliphate was the cornerstone of law and of government. In this chapter I will show that al-Ghazālī envisioned the caliph as a crucial mediating link between (1) the Islamic community guided by the ulamā, (2) Seljuq coercive force, and (3) God’s authority.

Both ʿulamāʾ and rulers acknowledged the authority of the caliph; this mutual acknowledgement tied the Seljuq rulers to the Islamic community via the sharī'a, valued by both parties. The legitimacy of Islamic government depended on the maintenance of the caliphate, even if the caliph commanded only nominal obedience from the secular rulers and the 'ulamā'. 

The primary threat to the fragile political order in al-Ghazālī’s day was the infiltration of Isma'ili missionaries. Al-Ghazālī inveighed at length against the Ismaʿilis before outlining his thoughts on the caliphate and offering advice to his young patron, the caliph al-Mustaẓhir. I will conclude this chapter by outlining al-Ghazālī’s objections to Isma'īlism, especially regarding the faulty roots of Ismaʿīlī religious knowledge and the implications of knowledge for the constitution of an Islamic polity.111 Al-Ghazālī’s polemic brings his own views on knowledge and politics into sharp relief.

The Kitāb alMustaẓhirī was among the last works that al-Ghazālī wrote before his 488/1095 crisis and flight from Baghdad. The circumstances surrounding its composition were marked by political tumult of a kind unseen in Baghdad since the Seljuq invasion. On 14 October 1092, an Ismaʿīlī “Assassin” “in the guise of a suppliant or a petitioner” fatally stabbed Nizām al-Mulk. Sultan Malikshāh probably abetted the murder, for he had been on bad terms with his vizier in preceding weeks. A month later, Malikshāh succumbed to an illness contracted while hunting. A period of civil unrest and upheaval followed his demise. Bedouins, “emboldened by the death of the sultan and the absence of the army, waylaid and fell upon” pilgrims making the Hajj. Rival Seljuq princes Barkyārūq and Tutūsh struggled for supremacy, neglecting the maintenance of peace and order in the interest of gaining personal ascendancy. Barkyārūq triumphed by 487/1094. The caliph al-Muqtadī signed the new sultan’s diploma. 

Moments later, he began hallucinating and promptly died. In the space of a year and a half, the leading lights of al-Ghazālī’s society had been snuffed In this bleak hour, al-Ghazālī attended a small, private session of condolence held for the new caliph al-Mustaẓhir, the son of al-Muqtadi. The Baghdad notables present swore their allegiance to the new caliph, a callow youth of sixteen. Among his first acts in office was to commission from al-Ghazālī, then the preeminent religious scholar in Baghdad, a work refuting the doctrine of the Isma'īlīs, whose politically and doctrinally subversive activities
had flourished amid the recent upheaval.

The K. alMustaẓhirī was not intended for the caliph’s personal consumption but instead as an apologetic tool, a rallying point for Sunni ulamā combating the Ismaʿīlī challenge while reckoning simultaneously with the alien Seljuq Turks. The book attempted to navigate the fragile vessel of the caliphate between these twin challenges to its future. Its intended audience certainly included the caliph and the ulamā, who alone were sufficiently educated to trace the efflorescent style of al-Ghazālī’s arguments. But al-Ghazālī also claimed to address a broader audience, “to follow the via media” between abstruseness and oversimplification, “for the need of this book is general, with respect to both the elite and the common folk, and embraces all the strata of the adherents of Islam.” 

He sought to write a book that would be “pleasing to men’s ears,” even those of modest intelligence who had not “delved deeply into the sciences.” Thus al-Ghazālī intended portions of his work, read aloud, to reach a broad segment of the population as inoculation against the Ismaʿīlī appeal, though the full text and the sequential thread of his argument might be accessible only to the educated, especially the 'ulamā.

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Al-Ghazālī and the Sufi Tradition

Al-Ghazālī’s close affiliation with the Seljuq state in Baghdad came to an abrupt end in the year 488/1095. An epistemic crisis shook the foundations of his certainty, even his confidence in the reliability of sense perceptions and rational data. While he kept his post as official bastion of state orthodoxy, he descended into a state of secret skepticism. He feared for his salvation, and berated himself, saying

“Away! Up and away! Only a little is left of your life, and a long journey lies before you! All the theory and practice in which you are engrossed is eyeservice and fakery! If you do not prepare now for the afterlife, when will you do so? And if you do not sever these attachments now, then when will you sever them?”

Yet he could not tear himself free from his endowed chair at Baghdad. His internal torment lasted fully half a year, until, he relates, “the matter passed from choice to compulsion. For God put a lock on my tongue and I was impeded from public teaching…my tongue would not utter a single word: I was completely unable to say anything.” Al-Ghazālī was quite literally paralyzed with a doubt that none of his great learning or powerful associates could remove. His deliverance, he claimed, came in the form of a divine “light” that reestablished his certainty.

Under the pretext of making the hajj, al-Ghazālī left Baghdad. He turned his face toward Damascus, not as a touring scholar but as a solitary traveler. In Syria his “only occupation was seclusion and solitude and spiritual exercise and combat.” In Baghdad he had been a Seljuq courtier. Now asceticism and complete devotion to God filled his days, passed alone in a minaret. Desire consumed him to concentrate on remembrance of God (dhikr) and purifying his soul from worldly passions. These practices were hallmarks of Sufism.

The Sufism that was widespread in Sunni lands by al-Ghazālī’s day had its roots in ascetic self-denial (zuhd), a trend that had begun centuries earlier. While Western scholarship has tended to emphasize extra-Islamic stimuli in the rise of this movement, writers within the Sufi tradition averred that Islamic asceticism and its later development, Sufism, were organic outgrowths of the Qurʾān and the sunna of Muhammad. The early forerunners of Sufism prefigured staples of Sufi practice in striving

"to achieve a psychological and experiential proximity with God through self-imposed deprivations…, self-effacing humility, supererogatory religious practices, long vigils, pious meditation on the meaning of the Qurʾanic text and a single-minded concentration on the divine object."

These individuals stripped the external life of its material refinements in order to magnify the vibrancy of the soul within. The ascetic impulse took a reactionary form after the Arab conquests, when luxurious plunders circulated among the victors. By contrast, the early ascetics developed the habit of wearing rough woolen garments to distinguish themselves from ordinary believers and to mortify the bodily desire for comfortable dress in a dusty, sweltering climate.

While in some ways the ascetics’ manner of life was novel and extreme, they did not abandon the historical foundations of Islam. Proto-Sufi writers were quick to affirm that their tradition was consistent with the Qurʾān and sunna, and Qurʾānic recitation and memorization remained central to their practice. However, ascetic masters derived a certain authority from their putative connection with the divine. This authority tended more and more to displace the transmitted authority of hadīth. Hadīth lost some of their perceived immediacy as the life of the Prophet faded into the past, and ascetics—figures of demonstrable spiritual prowess—filled the resultant authority void. This authority adjustment was marginal; none of the early spiritual masters was known for claiming authority from God directly opposed to authority transmitted via the Prophet. Nevertheless, this perceived tension occasioned one of the major enterprises of early Sufi writings: the presentation of asceticism as continuous with the Muslim mainstream.

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Seljuq Power and Religious Knowledge

Although al-Ghazali’s education preceded the full flowering of the Nizamiyya schools, it was directly funded by Nizam al-Mulk. When Nizam al-Mulk succeeded al-Kunduri, he rescinded al-Kunduri’s ban on Ash'ari theology and invited the renowned “Imam al-Haramayn” al-Juwayni to return from the Hijaz, where he had fled to escape persecution. He even set up a school for al-Juwayni in Nisabur. Al-Ghazali spent years studying under al-Juwayni, and remained in Nisabur until joining Nizam al-Mulk’s court in 478/1085.

Before al-Juwayni, al-Ghazali had taken instruction from other noted scholars, some of whom were Sufis. Sufism was heavy in the air at the time and place of al-Ghazali’s education. At least one early teacher in the madrasa, Yusuf Nassaj, was apracticing mystic. Al-Ghazali pursued higher study after the madrasa, focusing on the field of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) under the tutelage of Ahmad al-Radhkani. Fiqh was to become his area of greatest expertise. After his introduction to Islamic law, al-Ghazali left ?us to study with al-Juwayni in Nisabur, then the capital city of Khurasan.

At the Nisabur school, al-Juwayni taught fiqh, kalam (systematic theology), and ušul aldin (fundaments of Islam). He associated with the great Sufi al-Qushayri and had mystical leanings of his own. Al-Juwayni was among the first to apply Ash'ari kalam to the study of fiqh. In the decades following, and in some measure because of al-Juwayni’s work, Ash'ari kalam was the favored theological system of both Shafi?i and Maliki fuqaha’ (legal scholars). The Ash'ari approach to kalam was to treat it as “a rational metaphysics,” hardly distinguished from philosophy. “Science” and systematic logical processes played a prominent role in the grounding of religious knowledge. Specifically, they were assigned the role of independently demonstrating the veracity of core Muslim beliefs. As we will see, al-Ghazali later attacked this approach to knowledge.

Thus, his stance relative to mainline Ash'ari kalam was quite ambiguous, for he repudiated those elements of Ash'arism that advocated logic outside certain limits, but did not leave the Ash?ari fold altogether. Al-Ghazali excelled under al-Juwayni’s tutelage. His earliest biographer, 'Abd al-Ghafir, told of tension between the teacher and student on account of al-Ghazali’s precocity and even arrogance. Though the Imam al-Haramayn “made an outward show of pride” in al-Ghazali, he harbored in his heart a “dislike for his speed in expression and his natural ability.” Reports of bad blood notwithstanding, al-Ghazali spent a number of years studying under al-Juwayni and inherited many of his teachings, notably his Sufi inclinations, Shafi'i legal allegiances, and Ash'ari theology. While in Nisabur, he began to instruct younger students, to write, and to form independent legal opinions.

In 478/1085, the year that al-Juwayni died, al-Ghazali left Nisabur at the invitation of Nizam al-Mulk. Based on al-Ghazali’s own testimony, it appears likely that ambition for personal renown was a primary impetus for this relocation. Al-Ghazali was foremost among the many leading intellectuals that Nizam al-Mulk drew into his schools. As al-Ghazali later lamented in the Ihya’, these scholars often cooperated eagerly in exchange for recognition and wealth. Al-Ghazali soon distinguished himself in the frequent lectures and debates on fiqh and kalam that were held at Nizam al-Mulk’s court. Nizam al-Mulk was so taken by al-Ghazali’s intellectual acumen that in 484/1091 he appointed the young scholar to head the most prestigious educational establishment in Seljuq territory, the Nizamiyya of Baghdad.

Nizam al-Mulk made the promotion of intellectual life a priority during his long vizierate (455/1063-485/1092). His eponymous Nizamiyyas attracted prominent scholars in the fields of theology, law, philosophy, and medicine. These institutions have been romanticized as spontaneous outgrowths of a cultural and intellectual flowering around this time. In this view, they sprang up to meet a heightened demand for knowledge and education. An alternative thesis, which takes greater account of political conditions and the vizier’s likely priorities, views the Nizamiyya schools, and especially the Nizamiyya proper at Baghdad, as bastions of Sunni “orthodoxy.” In this capacity, they were key strongholds in the struggle against the subversive Isma'ili politico-religious threat.

As the reigning religious scholar at the Nizamiyya, al-Ghazali was on the front lines of ideological resistance to such groups, whose religious teachings were as inimical to Sunni orthodoxy as their political agenda was to the stability of Seljuq rule. Al-Ghazali’s appointment, far from freeing him to pursue a quiet life of teaching and contemplation, made him a key player in the battle for doctrinal and political supremacy in Seljuq lands. His state-sponsored authorship of works denouncing the Isma'ilis, like Fada'ih alBatiniyya wa Fada'il al-Mustazhiriyya (Kitab al-Mustazhiri), constitutes prima facie evidence that al-Ghazali was an active participant in this battle.

Religiously motivated conflict was not confined to this struggle; factional strife was rampant even within Baghdad. Doctrinal affiliations had major significance in the political realm. In fact, from the perspective of Islamic theorists at the time, political theory was a subset of religious knowledge. Political rivalries were inevitably communicated in the language of doctrinal distinction. Bloody conflicts over doctrinal points were frequent, even among small groups within cities. Ibn al-Athir recounts one such outbreak in 475/1082-3, between Shafi'i and Hanbali fuqaha' in Baghdad. He relates how the Ash'ari preacher Sharif Abu?l-Qasim al-Bakri al-Maghribi disparaged Hanbalis from his well-salaried post at the Baghdad Nizamiyya, to
which Nizam al-Mulk had personally appointed him.

"One day [Abu'l-Qasim] went to the house of the chief Cadi Abu Abd Allah al-Damghani, on the Qalla'in canal. An argument occurred between some of his followers and a group of Hanbalis which led to a riot, and the crowd that assembled was large. He broke into the houses of the Banul-Farra' and took their books. One of the books was The Book of Attributes by Abu Ya'la. Later, passages from it would be read in his presence, while he sat on his chair to deliver his homilies, and he would use it to attack them. He had many disputes and confrontations with them."

The urban climate in Seljuq lands was marked by such factional tensions. The participants in these struggles were fervently attached to their doctrines—mutually exclusive dogmatism played the leading role in fueling animus between groups, and religious affiliation was the leading component of personal identity.

The same 'ulama' who participated in these doctrinal squabbles were indispensable to the maintenance of Seljuq authority. In the absence of strong, indigenous local governments, they were the only visible leadership in many towns under Seljuq rule. There had developed a “caste-like local domination by families of ulama.” Their authority was based on their knowledge of  the Qur'an and the sunna, the model of the Prophet’s behavior as related in hadith. Hadith were transmitted orally by respected 'ulama'. Although important written collections of hadith had been compiled long before, oral transmission remained the accepted mode. This practice preserved for each hadith the crucial seal of its veracity: the isnad (chain of transmission). During al-Ghazali’s lifetime, the tradition of oral transmission was fading, but had not died altogether—there was still a strong sense that one ought to learn under a respected instructor rather than on one’s own from a book.

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Seljuq Ascendancy in the Central Lands of Islam

The Seljuqs were a branch of the Turkic Oghuz tribe that had ruled a Central Asian empire in the 2nd/8th century. In the early years of the 5th/11th century, Seljuq tribal princes consolidated power in Persia. The character of Seljuq rule in the following decades would reflect Persian links forged during this period—the Seljuqs often endorsed Persian culture and language, even to the exclusion of their own Turkic roots and the Arab heritage so integral to the Islamic faith. In 447/1055, the Seljuq leader Tughril Beg replaced the last Shīʿī Būyid prince as military sovereign in Baghdad. As a Sunni partisan, at least in name, he was fêted with honorary titles by the ʿAbbāsid caliph. Thus, in the official propaganda, the illiterate Seljuq warlords had become heroes by freeing Sunni Islam from the clutches of its Shī’ī opponent.

Makdisi has argued that, contrary to the standard portrayal, Tughril Beg was no savior. In fact, the caliph did not need saving. Makdisi points out that the Shīʿī Būyid dynasty was fast disintegrating and harbored no animosity toward the caliphate. After all, the Būyids had refrained from molesting the caliph during their tenure in Baghdad (since 343/945). Nonetheless, Tughril Beg was more than a cynical tribal warlord tolerating the caliph in order to legitimize his conquest. The Sunni Seljuq tribal warriors that he commanded were better equipped than apathetic Būyid princes—in military and ideological terms—to defend the caliph against external threats, especially the Fatimid-backed Ismaʿīlī insurgents. In actuality, the Caliph al-Qāʾim chafed under the Seljuq warlords. They allowed him even less freedom than had the feuding Būyids. The Seljuqs officially recognized the primacy of the 'Abbāsid caliph, although they were firm in retaining coercive force for themselves. Despite its shortcomings, the Seljuq arrival in Baghdad created a theoretical opportunity for the caliph to resume his historical role as the head of the Islamic community. In fact, this reinstatement did not occur, forcing theorists like al-Ghazālī to reckon with an imperfect reality.

The Seljuq offensive did not flag after the conquest of Baghdad. Tughril Beg marched on Mosul in the next year, laying siege to Tikrīt along the way. The caliph was a convenient legitimizing accessory to these campaigns, receiving protection in exchange for his blessing. The Seljuqs maintained a strong military force to execute their ongoing operations. Unlike other Islamic powers, Seljuq leaders commanded fellow tribesmen. While this uniformity lent vertical cohesion to the Seljuq command, tribal traditions, especially those of succession, sometimes troubled the Seljuq state. In the Oghuz tribal heritage, an office did not pass from father to eldest son, but instead to the oldest male family member. The tension between this arrangement and the hereditary model prevalent in Sunni regions contributed to several upheavals that disrupted al-Ghazālī’s life, notably in the years preceding his great crisis. These internecine conflicts disabused him of his intimacy with political power and deeply affected his thinking.

The Seljuq army was active not only in border regions, but also in territories already under firm Seljuq control. The court of the Seljuq rulers was primarily a military headquarters, though frequented by bureaucrats and ulamā. From his court, the sultan dispatched expeditions against enemies like the Ghaznavids in Persia, Byzantine Christians beyond Adharbayjān, and internal rebels. He also deployed troops within Seljuq territory in order to demonstrate his power. Nizām al-Mulk, vizier to Tughril Beg’s successors, also favored this strategy of intimidation and preemptive suppression, which was especially effective in al-Ghazālī’s homeland, the Seljuq East.

Hogga has laid heavy emphasis on this facet of Seljuq rule, arguing that a state of permanent war pervaded civil society.18 New garrisons were installed in the towns, and military replaced civilian police. In many cases, the soldiers that composed these detachments were Turkic tribesmen, an unfamiliar element in the urban social fabric. Their presence was not always welcome. The 7th/13th century Arab historian Ibn al-Athīr relates that when Tughril Beg entered Baghdad, local mobs rose against his soldiers and inflicted casualties. The Seljuq troops responded by looting in the city. “The people were sorely oppressed and in great terror.” Citizens throughout Seljuq domains experienced similar traumatic events whenever tensions rose with their occupiers.

As they continued their conquests, the Seljuq sultans needed sustainable mechanisms for controlling their far-flung holdings. Administration lay not in the hands of the tribal leaders themselves, but with the ʿulamāʾ and the existing educated Persian administrative class. The great Seljuq viziers were eminent representatives of this class. They were often the real rulers of the Seljuq empire, even while paying lip service to the sultan and caliph. Nizām al-Mulk was only the most prominent of these men; he was not unique. His predecessor, the vizier of Tughril Beg, Amīd al-Mulk al-Kundūrī, gained fame and influence alongside his master. Before al-Ghazālī’s day, the Ḥanafī al-Kundūrī decreed that Ash'arī theologians be denounced from the pulpits of mosques in Seljuq lands. His decree drove al-Ghazālī’s famous teacher al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085) from Khurasān, as well as al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), perhaps al-Ghazālī’s most direct Sufi forbear.

When Alp Arslan succeeded Tughril Beg in 455/1063 the vizierate passed to Niẓām al-Mulk, who had risen to prominence with Arslan. As Nizām al-Mulk consolidated his administration, it grew unclear which of the two was actually master. After the assassination of Alp Arslan in 465/1072 and the accession of Malikshāh, there was no doubt that Nizām al-Mulk held the reins of control. The story of Alp Arslan and Nizām al-Mulk closely parallels the life of al-Ghazālī. Nizām al-Mulk, like al-Ghazālī, hailed from the city of Ṭūs in Khurāsān; this commonality may have played a role in al-Ghazālī’s appointment to the Baghdad Nizāmiyya. Alp Arslan had governed Khurāsān before his ascent to the Seljuq sultanate in 1063/453.

Niẓām al-Mulk used his position to promote the religious factions that al-Ghazālī would later adhere to: Shafīʿī fiqh and Ashʿarī kalām, both prominent in the Khurāsānī context. He also favored Sufism, of which Khurāsān was a hotbed. These correlations hint at partisanship. They also demonstrate that religious allegiances penetrated the political domain in medieval Islam via the regional sectarian affiliations of political leaders. When Ni'ām al-Mulk brought al-Ghazālī to prominence, he was privileging the young scholar’s doctrinal convictions. These convictions could then be called upon to shore up the legitimacy of Seljuq control. Regional affinity was only one path by which religious knowledge entered the political scene. The proliferation of sectarian madrasas under the Seljuqs cannot be divorced from the influence of sponsors like Nizām al-Mulk, who had strong regional attachments that entailed doctrinal convictions.

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Al-Ghazālī Among Sufis and Seljuqs

This chapter will follow the course of al-Ghazālī’s life, identifying the major forces that shaped it. As a keen observer of his surroundings, he was not only swayed by these factors but also reacted to them in his writings. I will first place al-Ghazālī in his proper geopolitical setting under the Seljuq Turks. TheSeljuq control apparatus was heavily engaged with the Islamic religious establishment via law and education, especially vis-à-vis the activities of the Seljuq vizier Niẓām al-Mulk.

I will look at al-Ghazālī’s intellectual upbringing in light of these liaisons between knowledge and political power. In 488/1095, after he had attained the height of renown in the state-sponsored academy, al-Ghazālī suffered his well-known epistemic crisis. He subsequently found peace in following the Sufi way, a tradition to which he had been exposed, but never so fully embraced. This Way of mystical experience would furnish the foundation of his thought during his most intellectually fertile years. Sufism was familiar and well established in Sunni Islam by al-Ghazālī’s day, and increasingly formed the primary religious identity of its adherents.

Al-Ghazālī’s birthplace—the city of Tūs in Khurāsān—lay in the historical heartland of Sufism, where “the shadow of God’s favor rested,” according to the Sufi master Hudjwiri (d. c. 469/1077). Khurāsān—now far northeastern Iran—was historically Persian and Sasanian. Al-Ghazālī’s father died when his two sons were still young. He left the boys with a Sufi friend and provided money sufficient for their early education. When this inheritance had been exhausted,the boys were committed to a traditional madrasa, a school where students were drilled in the revealed texts of Islam: the Qurʾān and the vast corpus of hadīth.

Less than five years earlier, the Seljuq armies had swept through Khurāsān on their ride from the Central Asian steppes to the Islamic heartland. Al-Ghazālī’s youth coincided with the Seljuq consolidation of power in all corners of their new empire. This militarization of society was marked by incessant campaigns, omnipresence of troops, replacement of civilian with military administrative personnel, and widespread establishment of garrisons. Barbaric tribal soldiers were a highly visible presence during al-Ghazālī’s childhood in settled Khurāsān.6 He could not have failed to be aware of their activities—and of the government they maintained—well before his official attachment to the Seljuq political establishment in 478/1085.

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The Iqtiṣād in Translation

There has never been a full English translation of Al-Iqtiṣād fī al-itiqad, but most of its second part has been translated into English by ʿAbdu-r-Raḥmān Abū Zayd and published under the title, Al-Ghazālī on Divine Predicates and their Properties; Michael E. Marmura has published a translation of the first chapter of part two in his article Al-Ghazālīís Chapter on Divine Power in the Iqtiṣādî; and there is a full Spanish translation of the Iqtiṣād, published in 1929 by Miguel Asín Palacios as El justo medio en la creencia. I have been unable to find evidence of published translations of the Iqtiṣād (whether in whole or major sections) in any other language.

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An Introduction to AL-IQTIṢĀD FĪ AL-IʿTIQAD

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 C.E.) ranks as one of the most prominent figures in the history of Islamic thought. His works have been published, studied, and commented upon widely by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In the Western tradition of orientalist scholarship, Ghazālī has received no small amount of attention, and, as is often the case when a variety of perspectives and talents are brought to bear upon a particular subject, the amount of controversy has tended to increase while what can be affirmed with certainty or without opposition has commensurately diminished.

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