Islam's star professor quit the top job and vanished for a decade
In 1095 al-Ghazali held the most prestigious teaching post in the Muslim world, at Baghdad's Nizamiyya. Then he lost his appetite, his digestion and even his voice for lecturing. Doctors concluded the illness was spiritual. He gave away his wealth, left on the pretext of pilgrimage, and wrote his greatest work in retreat.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was born around 1058 in Tabaran, in the Tus district of Khorasan, shortly after the Seljuks took control in Baghdad. He studied law locally, then in Nishapur under al-Juwayni, regarded as the finest Muslim scholar of his day. After al-Juwayni died in 1085, he joined the court of Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful Seljuk vizier, who eventually placed him at the head of the Baghdad Nizamiyya.
The crisis came at the height of that career. Unable to speak properly in class and failing every medical remedy, he decided his trouble lay within, convinced he had chosen status and ego over God. He settled his family's affairs, adopted an ascetic life and travelled to Damascus and Jerusalem, visiting Medina and Mecca in 1096, before years of seclusion back in Tus. He still wrote and received visitors but stopped teaching at state institutions.
From that period came his masterpiece, the Iḥyā', a book about bringing religious learning back to life, written because he believed Islam's inner spiritual tradition had withered and the insights of the first Muslims had been forgotten. He did much to systematise Sufism and bring it into mainstream Islam. A Shafi'i jurist and a leading figure of Asharite theology, he became the chief critic of the Mutazilites, though his views departed from strict Asharite teaching in places.
In 1106 he reluctantly agreed to teach again at the Nizamiyya of Nishapur, correctly expecting resistance, but later went home to Tus and in 1110 turned down a summons back to Baghdad. He died on 19 December 1111, leaving several daughters and no sons. Sunnis count him as the renewer of the faith for his century and gave him the title Proof of Islam.
Source: Al-Ghazali
