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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 1, Book 3 Chapter 31: Al-Ghazali Part 2 A. Mysticism 1. Introduction It will not be quite true to say that al-Ghazālī’s final resort to Sufi-mysticism was merely the result of his disillusionment with philosophy and dissatisfaction with scholastic theology. This is only a part of the truth; his confessional statement to this effect in al-Munqidh seems to be rather an over-statement of the actual facts.

Sufistic influences had all along been working upon his mind right from early childhood. We need only recall that his father was a pious Dervish and his guardian a Sufi devout, where he studied during his youth[^1] and even practiced Sufism, first under Yusuf al-Nassaj in Tus and that his own brother, Ahmad al-Ghazālī (d. 520/1126) made a name as a great Sufi.

It is not improbable that he should also learn Sufism from his teacher Imam al-Haramain, for it is reported that the Imam himself had been the student of the renowned Sufi Abu Nu‘aim al-Isfahani (d. 430/1038). So al-Ghazālī eventual adoption of the Sufi way of life was in reality a continuation of these early influences and not simply the consequence of failure to find the philosophical solution of theological problems.

Further, it has to be emphasized that, in spite of his explicit official denunciation of philosophy, al-Ghazālī could never completely part company with it. His Sufi-mysticism was as much influenced by his thorough study of philosophy as by theology; in its final development it was the mysticism of a philosopher and a theologian.

There is a marked note of Hellenic though in his mystical doctrines and even the tracings of Neo-Platonism, and yet paradoxical though it may seem they remain circumscribed within the limits of orthodoxy. He is surely a sober kind of mysticism carefully eschewing all kinds of pantheistic extravagances and severely criticizing the antinomian tendencies of the intoxicated Sufis. On the one hand, he tried to make mysticism orthodox and, on the other, orthodoxy mystical.

It is the mystical element in religion, he insisted, which is most vital and makes religious life a reality. Both to the philosophers and the scholastic theologians he brought home the fact that the basis of all religious certainty is the first-hand living experience of God.