Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058-1111) (Persian: ابو حامد محمد ابن محمد الغزالی), often Algazel in English, was born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia. He was an Islamic theologian, jurist, philosopher, cosmologist, psychologist and mystic of Persian origin, and remains one of the most celebrated scholars in the history of Sunni Islamic thought. He is considered a pioneer of the methods of doubt and skepticism, a...
more
Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058-1111) (Persian: ابو حامد محمد ابن محمد الغزالی), often Algazel in English, was born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia. He was an Islamic theologian, jurist, philosopher, cosmologist, psychologist and mystic of Persian origin, and remains one of the most celebrated scholars in the history of Sunni Islamic thought. He is considered a pioneer of the methods of doubt and skepticism, and in one of his major works, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, he changed the course of early Islamic philosophy, shifting it away from an Islamic metaphysics influenced by ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and towards an Islamic philosophy based on cause-and-effect that was determined by God or intermediate angels, a theory now known as occasionalism.
Ghazali has sometimes been acclaimed by secular historians such as William Montgomery Watt to be the greatest Muslim after Muhammad (traditionally among Muslims, the greatest...
less
