Department of Religious Studies – Islamic Studies

Among subjects of Islamic theology, the cosmology of al-Ghazali has received much attention in the West. Scholars in the Renaissance were familiar with al-Ghazali’s critique of philosophical theories of causality in the 17th discussion of his "Incoherence of the Philosophers" (Tahāfut al-falāsifa). During the first half of the 19th century, when the Western academic study of Islamic theology began, scholars came to the conclusion that in this chapter, al-Ghazali denied the existence of causal connections. That position was connected to an apparent lack of progress in scientific research in the Muslim countries. Ernest Renan (d. 1892), for instances, understood al-Ghazali's critique of philosophical theories of causality as an anti-rationalist, mystically inspired opposition to the natural sciences. This view became immensely influential among Western intellectuals and is still widely held.
When al-Ghazali’s "Niche of Lights" (Mishkāt al-anwār) became available during the first decades of the 20th century, Western interpreters understood that at least here al-Ghazali does not deny the existence of causal connections. During much of the 20th century, Western scholars favored an explanation that ascribes two different sets of teaching to al-Ghazali, one esoteric and one exoteric. The last decades of the 20th century saw two very different interpretations of al-Ghazali’s cosmology in the works of Michael E. Marmura and Richard M. Frank. Both rejected that al-Ghazali held exoteric and esoteric views. Marmura explained causal connections as direct actions of God and Frank regarded them as expressions of secondary causality. Their contributions led to the understanding in the West that al-Ghazali did not deny the existence of causal connections and cannot be regarded as an opponent of the natural sciences in Islam. Quite the opposite, he was a champion of the natural sciences and was often quoted as someone opposed to unscientific views of the world.

A survey of philosophy in the first half of the 6th/12th century that deals with al-Ghazali, al-Lawkari (d. after 1109), and Abu l-Barakat al-Baghdadi (d. c. 1165). I particularly focus on the relationship between Abu l-Barakat and al-Ghazali and present here at first the argument that Abu l-Barakat's philosophy is a reaction to al-Ghazali's critcism of Ibn Sina. In this paper I argue that Abu l-Barakat's method of "i'tibar" ("careful consideration") is developed as a conscious alternative to the demontrative method, whose application in metaphysics al-Ghazali rejects.

Starting with al-Ghazali's famous statement at the beginning of his autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl, that his innermost prompted him "to seek the true meaning of the initial fiṭra and the true meaning of the convictions that come about by emulating parents and teachers," this paper analyses his use of the word fiṭra. The path leads via al-Ghazali's logical writing (Miḥakk al-naẓar and Miʿyār al-ʿilm) to Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna's, d. 428/1037) systematic exposition of fiṭra as a combination of "primary judgments" (awwaliyyāt) and "judgments of the etimative faculty" (wahmiyyāt). These are constrasted with other judgments, particulary the “commonly accepted judgments” (mashhūrāt or dhāʾiʿāt). In al-Ghazālī, the judgments of the fiṭra are seen in direct opposition to those that one accepts on the authority of parents, teachers, or other kinds of social pressures. The inquiry ends in the results that in his understanding of fiṭra, al-Ghazali depends on Ibn Sīnā's much more systematic treatment, which can help us to fill the blank spots al-Ghazālī left in his exposition. There are, however, still significant differences in al-Ghazālī's understanding of fiṭra, as he, for instance, unlike Ibn Sīnā, claims that knoweldge of God as a creator is part of the human fiṭra, while knowledge of Islam and its rules and revelation is not.

""One of the most extensive and insightful studies of al-Ghazali ever undertaken... Griffel's book is a veritable tour de force that will remain a benchmark in Ghazalian studies for a long time to come."
--Jon Hoover, University of Nottingham, in Theological Review.

"[An] excellent new study on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's thought, easily the most comprehensive to date (...)."
-- Eric L. Ormsby, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, in Journal of Shia Islamic Studies.

"Fascinating (...) Griffel's book is provocative, comprehensive, and valuable."
--Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University, in Review of Middle East Studies.

"Masterly... I strongly recommend this book to every student of Arabic intellectual history."
--Damien Janos, Göttingen University, in Journal of the American Oriental Society.

"This work of historical theology is essential reading for those wanting to understand with new depth and clarity the life and teachings of al-Ghazali."
--Martin Whittingham, Regent's Park College, Oxford, in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.

"... a major contribution to the study of al-Ghazali, both his life and his thought. (...) It may be hoped that this book will receive the attention it deserves and may offer as well an opportunity to futher studies on one of the greatest thinkers of Islam."
-- Jules Jansses, De Wulf-Mansionscentrum, Leuven, in Muslim World.

"This work is a detailed examination of Al-Ghazali's position with respect to Greek science and philosophy as it was presented to the Muslim world in the works of Avicenna. In making this examination the author has been able to correct certain misconceptions about Al-Ghazali which have long been held by some Western scholars."
--Nicholas Heer, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, University of Washington, Seattle.

"Frank Griffel's new book is a lucid synthesis of the latest scholarship on al-Ghazali's life and legacy, his interpretive method and his ideas about the world's creation and about divine, human and natural causality. Griffel succeeds in presenting a coherent and nuanced picture of the cosmology of this complex thinker, who was both a scholar of jurisprudence and a mystic, both a critic of philosophy and a philosophical theologian."
--Robert Wisnovsky, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University."

Table of Contents:

1) Introduction by Frank Griffel
2) Gudrun Krämer: Justice in Modern Islamic Thought
3) Frank Griffel: The Harmony of Natural Law and Shari’a in Islamist Theology
4) Felicitas Opwis: Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Concept of Maṣlaḥa in Classical and Contemporary Legal Theory
5) David L. Johnston: ʿAllāl al-Fāsī: Shari’a as Blueprint for Righteous Global Citizenship
6) Noah Feldman: Shari’a and Islamic Democracy in the Age of al-Jazeera
7) Abbas Amanat: From ijtihād to wilāyat al-faqīh : The Evolution of the Shi’ite Authority to Political Power
8) Shahrough Akhavi: Shi’ite Theories of Social Contract
9) Saïd Amir Arjomand: Shari’a and Constitution in Iran: A Historical Perspective
10) Anna Würth: The Normativity of the Factual On the Every Day Construction of Shari’a in a Yemeni Family Court
11) Roy Mottahedeh: Afterword

"Frank Griffel legt die 'Kriterium'-Schrift jetzt unter dem Titel 'Über Rechtgläubigkeit und Toleranz' erstmals in einer deutschen Übersetzung und mit einem ebenso gelehrten wie informativen Kommentar vor– eine Ausgabe, die helfen kann einen seinerseits fundamentalistischen westlichen Antifundamentalismus abzubauen."
-- Ludger Lütkehaus in der Neuen Züricher Zeitung

A re-contruction of Fakhr al-Din's life based on the available sources in Arabic and Persian. I look particularly into his relationship to the ruling dynasties of his time (the Khwarezmshahs, the Ghurids, and the Ayyubids) and find that they competed to become his patons. This should revise an earlier view (which goes back to Ignaz Goldziher) that the kind of rationalism Fakhr al-Din represented was under thread by “an orthodoxy entrenched in the spirit of persecution [that] terrorized all free intellectual mind.” Quite the opposite, Fakhr al-Din's kind of philosophical inspired Ash'arism would conquer the madrasa curricula of his day and become the leading direction in Sunni theology for at least until the 14th century.

This article presents a manuscript at the British Library in London that has been miscatalogued as a copy of al-Ghazali's well-known "Maqasid al-falasifa." The mis-identification is due to a title page that was added after the original beginning had been lost. The text, however, is different from the "Maqasid," even if both pursue similar aims. Like in the "Maqasid," the author of MS Or. 3126 gives a neutral presentation of the teachings of the falasifa, in this case limited to metaphysics (ilāhiyyāt). Whereas in the "Maqasid," al-Ghazali bases his presentation on Ibn Sina's Persian "Danishnamah-yi 'Ala'i," here the author combines quotes from works by Ibn Sina, al-Farabi, and Mishkawayh to a seamless text. The most important source for this book is Ibn Sina's "al-Shifa'."
In thoroughly describing the manuscript I locate and date its paper according to known characteristics of paper-making in the Orient to Iran in the 12th century (or slightly earlier). The handwriting is "Seljuq," which also points in that direction.
The manuscript is both acephalous and suffers from lacunae at the end so that we do not know its original title, nor the author. The text, however, mentions the "Tahafut al-falasifa" among the works of the author. Through a detailled comparison of a passage on the categories with its source in al-Farabi as well as with al-Ghazali's "Mi'yar al-'ilm," I can show that the text of this manuscript adopts al-Farabi and was further adopted by al-Ghazali in his "Mi'yar." This together with the note on the "Tahafut" proves, in my opinion, al-Ghazali's authorship of this text.
This is the unicum of an early text by al-Ghazali reporting the teachings of the falasifa in metaphysics.

Ash’arite authors before al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) held that prophecy can only be verified through miracles performed by the prophet. Early Ash’arite authors denied a human capacity able to confirm a prophet’s claim either through his message or his actions. This position has completely changed by the time of Fakhraddin ar-Razi (d. 606/1210). He relies in his views on prophecy heavily on the teachings of Ibn Sina (d. 429/1037), and ar-Razi reproduces the philosophical argument that humans can best judge the truthfulness of a prophet from his message. The reception of Ibn Sina’s views on prophecy starts with al-Ghazali. Although he shares the early Ash’arite position that humans are unable to judge a prophet’s claim from his message, he introduces elements of Ibn Sina’s teachings in his works. In his Faysal at-tafriqa, he explains divine revelation as a representation of “beings” within the minds of the prophets. The several divisions of these beings follow the philosophical divisions of the inner senses (hawass batina). Al-Ghazali attempts to explain elements of prophecy that his Ash’arite predecessors have left unexplained. His filling of a desideratum, however, leads to a significant shift in perspective, and in his late work al-Ghazali develops a novel method to verify the claims of a prophet.