Note 532 — Chapter VI

Muhammed Ghazáli, his full name is Abú Hamed Muhammed Ebn Muhammed, surnamed Hajjet ul islam Zain eddin al Tusí, born at Tus, n Khorasan, in the year of the Hejira 450 (A. D. 1058-9), the son of a merchant of cotton thread, ghazal, whence his surname ghazáli; he died in 504 or 505 (A. D. 1110-11). In the latter half of his life, which extended very little beyond the half of a century, he composed more than one hundred works, several of which are thick volumes in folio, such as the most celebrated amongst them entitled Jhyá al âlum eddín, “the revival of the sciences, concerning faith;” upon which the judgment was passed, that, were the Islam destroyed with all its works except this, from this alone it could be restored in all its perfection. This great dogmatic, ethic, and philosophic work was nevertheless, during the author’s life, condemned as heretical and consigned to the flames, by the Academy of Cordova, in Spain, the western Baghdad, or seat of Muhammedan learning. This composition of Ghazáli has been abridged by Abul Faśel Ahmed ben Mussa al Arbeli, under the title Ruh al Ihyá, “the spirit of the book entitled Ihyá.” See Pocock Spec. Hist. Arab., p. 371; Herbelot sub voce Ghazálí; Hammer’s Gemäldesaal grosser moslimischer Herrsher, IIIter Band, S. 182, 1837. By the last mentioned author was published a Biography of Ghazáli, as introduction to the text and translation of a treatise of Ghazali, under the title: “O Kind! die berühmteste ethishe Abhandlung of Ghazáli,” Vienne, 1838.