ARISTOTLE

384-322 B.C.

AND

AL GHAZALI

1058-1111 A.D.

MASARRAT HUSAIN ZUBERI

NOOR PUBLISHING HOUSE.
FARASHKHANA, DELHI-110 006

Dedicated
to
the new generation
which
is unlikely to find a
more sympathetic and
helpful guide than'
A1-Ghazali.

Contents

Introduction	IX
Chapter One	Aristotle: His Influence on Muslim Philosophy 1
Chapter Two	Al-Ghazali: His Times and Legacy	23
Chapter Three	Epilogue	85
Appendix One	AI-Ghazali's Influence on the West	139
Appendix Two	Reformation and Renaissance	147
Appendix Three	Al-Ghazali's Last Testament	155
Index		157

INTRODUCTION

Aristotle and Imam Ghazali are two immortals of history who put their seal on European and Muslim philosophical scholarship through succeeding generations. The generations disappeared in the fold of time but their teachings continue to attract mankind. Still they remain difficult and controversial as in their own times.

I confess to some boldness in tackling them. Since their death-Aristotle's and A1-Ghazali's - (one died in 322 B.C. and the other in 1111 A.D.) there have been, without interruption until the present, schools and scholars who have studied, expounded, adopted and re-adapted their doctrines and, methods, approved or condemned them. But their light still shines.

I throw some light on their influence from an entirely different angle. With some daring, I defend the early Muslim philosophers, influenced by Aristotle, against Al-Ghazali and defend Al-Ghazali against the charge of snuffing Aristotelianism and thus stagnating Muslim thought over centuries.

The general 'theme of such accusation is that in his enthusiastic defence of religion, Al-Ghazali, unintenationally, shut the door to scientific enquiry. "The mystic way of the Sufi prescribed is incompatible with rational methods of science" and the accusation takes another form that "the Muslims, unfortunately, followed Al-Ghazali, and neglected, little by little, the study of sciences. Their once great civilization faded. On the other hand Ibn Rushd defended sciences and medieval Europe followed the way prescribed by him to attain it. This is the true spirit of Latin Averroeism which led to the rise of European Science.[1]

This calumny first propagated in the West has, unfortunately, been taken up as a refrain by Muslim scholars of the present [2]day as well.

I have, in all humility, attempted putting him in his correct historical perspective to defend Al-Ghazali against this persistent Calumny.

Though Averroeism became a symbol of intellectual revolt in the 13th-14th Century Europe, Al-Ghazali's own[3] influence can not be ignored or belittled.

Influence of Muslim thought on the West is an engrossing subject as it played a significant part in sparking both the humanist and scientific movements. The later Reformation and the earlier Renaissance owed much to the borrowings from the East.

The Muslim East continued to outshine Europe up to early 19th Century, when the Industrial Revolution led to colonial imperialism. The diversion of international trade to new Atlantic and Indian Ocean routes spelt economic ruin to the Mediterranian and the Adriatic Coastal countries including the Ottoman Turks.

Necessity is the mother of invention and Industrial rivalry between European countries on the Atlantic Coast gave a new urgency to it. Soon they became rival claimants[4] to the glorious East which was predominantly Muslim. Their victims included the old China and the unexplored Africa as well.

So poor Al-Ghazali's flight to Sufism was not the turning point in history. It was the discovery of America and the Cape of Good Hope sea route to India.

CHAPTER ONE

ARISTOTLE: HIS INFLUENCE ON MUSLIM PHILOSOPHY.

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. at a place called Stagira in Macedon: His father, Nichomachus, was the Court Physician to Amyntas II, King of Macedon and father of Philip and grand-father of Alexander the Great. He was still a child when his father died and was brought up by his father's friend - Proxenus - whose son later became Aristotle's son-in-law.

At the age of 17 in 368 B.C. he moved to Athens and joined Plato's famous Academy and remained there for nearly 20 years studying Mathematics, Physics, Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Rhetoric and Poetics. He stayed on at the Academy as a teacher (but still a learner) till the death of his teacher and patron, Plato, in 346 B.C. Not only the death of Plato but his natural disappointment in not succeeding him as the Head of the Academy induced him to leave Athens, otherwise too, the Academy was narrowing his own steadily growing and expanding intellectual interests.

He along with a few friends - devoted students and sympathising colleagues - decided to move to Assos in Asia Minor to visit his former fellow student and member of Plato's Academy Hermias, who was then ruling there. He was not only welcomed but encouraged to settle down at Assos and establish a new Academy. It was his ambition too and a natural resultant to his growing encyclopaedic knowledge. He was unhappy with the new trends the old Academy was embarking upon Plato's nephew and successor - Spensippus, who, Aristotle suspected, was reducing metaphysics to mathematics. I do not support the other version that it was Spensippus himself who sent Aristotle and his friend Xenocrates to open a branch of the Athenian Academy in Asia Minor. The possibility is remote because there is no trace of any subsequent relationship and there was sharp widening different approach of the two in the field of academic liberalisation. Hermias was more pliable. Aristotle began teaching at Assos. He even married Hermia's niece, Pythias, and had every intention to settle down there permanently. Asia Minor was also a part enshrining the cultural Greek heritage. Homer was born in Symrna - now Izmir, and sang of Helen of Troy which is on the Turkish coast of Bosphorus, Socrates visited the area and preached at Bergarna. Plato travelled a lot and must have surely visited this culturally rich area.

Aristotle's stay at the newly founded Academy at Assos was cut short on a tempting offer from the Court of King Philips to return to Athens and become a tutor to his son - Alexander, to be eternally the Great.

Socrates,[5] Plato and Aristotle - the Trinity of friends and lineal teachers -.shaped the whole intellectual tradition of the West-and laid the philosophical foundations of Western Culture and Islamic scholasticism.

All the three sought a cure for the ills of the society not in politics but in philosophy and, as preached by Plato, these ills would not cease until philosophers became rulers or rulers became philosophers. Though Aristotle does show his debt to his philosopher - teacher, Plato, in so many things, his own intellect being so shining that whatever he touched he transformed and he, in his own metaphysical way, tried to put it to a test. Like Plato, who responded to his friend Dion's call to become tutor to Dionysius II of Syracuse in Sicily and risked the task of planning the training of Dionysius in severe sciences to fit him for the position of a constitutional king - a philosopher king, Aristotle accepted the request of his father's patron and friend to become tutor to his son.

Both attempts came to naught. Dionysius became tough with his Regent, exiled and later executed him. Plato left him soon. It is not known what Aristotle taught Alexander during the two years that he was with him and what Alexander learned from him. The relationship may have been intimate as both had a sharp intellect but there is no evidence that Aristotle had any direct influence on his moral or political ideals and ambitions except indirectly through his nephew, Callisthenes, who became a friend and admirer of Alexander and accompanied him as an official historian on his glorious campaigns. It is asserted that it was Callisthenes whose flattery had encouraged Alexander to see himself in the role of a god and when at Bactra, Alexander attempted to impose the Persian court ceremonial, including prostration before the King, on the Greeks and the Macedonians as well, even Callisthenes refused to abase himself. Though Alexander was forced to give up the attempt, Callisthenes paid the price as shortly afterwards he was held privy to another conspiracy and executed. This also led to suspicion by Alexander that even Aristotle may have had a hand in the conspiracy. But Alexander never returned to Athens and only a year later Aristotle too died.

We have to go back to the two of this trio-Socrates and Plato-before dilating upon or understanding Aristotle.

Socrates was clearly a man of deep piety with the temperament of a mystic, though it is historical irony, that he was indicted, convicted of impiet,. the form of irony that he himself perfected in his dialogues.

He had strong belief in one God - His universality as exhibited in Nature's orderliness and in His Divine guidance through revelations given in dreams, signs and oracles (the last being a concession to the order of the day, though he had a healthy contempt for it). The two contemporary sources we have about him are Xenophon and Plato. Xenophon depicts Socrates as regular in prayer, praying to God who alone knew what was good for him and so emphasised that his prayer should be "Lord, give me what is good." As Plato argues in "Phaedo," Socrates believed that soul of the man partakes of the divine and has immortality. Plato also gives abundant testimony that Socrates had a distinctly mystical temperament and tells of his "rapts in one of which he remained standing for 24 hours spell-bound in a trance." Plato speaks of the `Divine Voice' often heard by Socrates from childhood and according to F.M. Cornford in "Before and After Socrates" "it was neither an intuitive conscience nor a symptom of mental disorder but an interior psychic audition."

Socrates mission, as he assumed, was from God to convict the "god of falsehood" by making his fellowmen aware of their ignorance and of the supreme importance of knowledge of what is good for their soul. He admitted he was wiser than others because he alone was aware of his own ignorance.

It has been correctly said that "unfortunately no complete separation of the Socratic and the Platonic stands is possible." The main source of Socrates is Plato. Socrates left not a scrap of paper in writing. We have of Socrates what Plato has left behind. The modern scholars have, however, held that Socrates and his historical contemporaries Parmenides of Elea (who held that all is static) and the Pythagorian Timaeus were alive when Plato circulated earlier portions of his dialogues and must be taken to enshrine the philosophy expounded by Socrates and in the latter group Plato's own stands begin to colour the passage of Socrates' ideas through his own mind. The truth can be that he advanced Socrates' basic metaphysical approach and with his own advanced acute intellect gave it a form and new dimension. He securely laid the foundation of Socratic moral and political doctrine that man should concern himself with the development of a rational and moral personality and that this development is the key to man's felicity. Success in this depends on rational insight into the true scale of good. Men miss felicity when they accept apparent good for real. If he could ever know with assurance what absolute good[6]is he would in practice never pursue anything else.

The contribution of Plato, through "Phaedo," is to give meta-physical basis to justify faith in the immortality of the soul. He takes Socratic approach to a newer field - to give a rational clue to the structure of the universe in his theory of ideas or the doctrine of form. Plato adumbrates a passionate belief in "personal immortality" - maintaining the divinity of the soul and to him its survival of death is a consequence of the divinity. So the whole life has to be spent in trying to liberate the soul from the body, "whose appetites and passions interrupt and distort the pursuit of wisdom and goodness." The way for vision of the good must be prepared by an intellectual discipline in hard thinking that leads through study of the exact sciences.

By his cross-examining technique, Socrates tried to ascertain what did the people mean when they talked of common ethical qualities like self-control or Justice or Courage or Morality. He found that he was wiser than they because he was conscious of his ignorance while they were not. The cure of ignorance is knowledge. Till one realised the importance of morals in knowledge, the confusion and contradictions would continue. Socrates argued that if only we knew what Justice was, the problems of being just would be simple and in search of that knowledge he never ceased, nor in his constant examination of himself and of others.

"Life[7] without self criticism is not worth living." But in real life Socrates was hardly an orthodox character. In the mind of most of the politicians he was linked with the scepticism and questioning of the accepted beliefs, which they blamed for their many misfortunes, what was needed, they felt, was a greater respect for the principles of conventional morality, not a questioning of them.[8]

To Socrates and Plato moral excellence has to be achieved through sound education and not with the control of political institutions. In "the Republic" his main concern is ethical. Plato held that each man has the capacity to make some contribution to a rational, moral and just society. To live otherwise is not only spiritually diseased, it leads to degeneration in personal and national character.

How contemporary he sounds, in his seventh[9] letter, written when he was an old man: Plato said, "I had much the same experience as many other young men. I expected, when I came of age, to go into politics. The political situation gave me an opportunity. The existing constitution was overthrown and a Committee of Thirty was set up and given supreme power. (Mind you he is talking of 404 B.C.). As it happened some of them were friends and relations of mine and they at once invited me to join them ….I thought they were going to reform society and rule justly; so I watched their proceedings with deep interest. I found that they soon made the earlier regime look like a (golden) age. Among other things they tried to implicate my old friend Socrates in a criminal case. Not long afterwards the Thirty fell and the Constitution was changed again. Those were troublous times and many things were done to which one could object. Though for a time, they behaved moderately. Some of those in power, however, brought my friend Socrates to trial on a monstrous charge (of impiety), the last that could be made against him, and he was condemned and executed."

Aristotle:(384,322 B. C). The portrait is after a painting by Raphael: done by Pakistani artist - Meraj.

"When[10] I considered all this, the more closely I studied the politicians and the laws and customs of the day; and the older I grew, the more difficult it seemed to me to govern rightly ………..At the same time law and morality were deteriorating at an alarming rate, I postponed action, waiting for a favourable opportunity. Finally, I came to the conclusion that all the existing States were badly governed and that their constitutions were incapable of reform without drastic treatment and a good deal of good luck. I was forced, in fact, to the belief that the only hope of finding justice for society or, for the individual, lay in true philosophy, and that mankind will, have no respite from trouble until either real philosophers gain political power or politicians become ,by some miracle, true philosophers."

Plato founded the Academy in 386 B.C. as a School for statesmen - where the would be politician might learn to be a philosopher-ruler. This was Plato's aim and hope. He wrote "the Republic" round about 375 B.C. and Part VIII on Education gives the substance what he thought should be the courses and the methods. The type of study required was meant to be one that should provoke the mind to think. The courses were (1) Arithmetic; (2) Plane Geometry (As with Arithmetic) the emphasis was on intellectual training, not practical usefulness, with the vision of the form of Good as the ultimate objective; (3) Solid Geometry; (4) Astronomy - again his purpose was not to advance physical science but to train the mind to think abstractly; (5) Harmonics; (6) Dialectics - the exercise of pure thought.

It culminates in coherent knowledge.

Knowledge - Pure Thought + Reason

Opinion - Belief + Illusion.

It is interesting to recount the Courses in the Academy.[11]

I Stage : Till 18,General education.

11 Stage : 2 years of Military Training and Service.

III Stage : Between 20-30: selection and study of mathematical studies.

IV Stage : Selection and later 5 years dialectic training.

V Stage : 35-40: Practical Experience in subordinate Offices.

VI Stage : After selection, those survive, are fully qualified Philosopher-Rulers and divide their time between philosophy (which they prefer) and ruling.

In the ethical scheme of "the Republic" three distinct spheres of activity are treated. the philosopher, who yearns for wisdom; the votary of enjoyment, a slave to his appetites and the man of action trying for practical distinction. These combine in varying degrees in any man and competing claims can be harnessed into an integrated personality through intellectual discipline and hard thinking and study both of the exact sciences and of metaphysics and dialectics. Degeneration both personal and moral national character is arrested further by reaffirmation of the immorality of the soul.

The philosophy derived from Plato's Dialogues has been given the name of Platonism and Neoplatonism. The influence of Plato [12] can be traced throughout human culture from Aristotle, who influenced subsequent philosophic thought down the centuries, in the direction of semiitic culture through Jewish Philosopher Philo of Alexandria-who made a bold attempt to create a philosophical system on the basis of the old Testament, later to Christian Philosophy in the teaching of St. Augustine who was firmly Platonist and insisted on the Soul's superiority to and independence of mind, and finally the necessity of divine grace to illumine mind and intellect was stressed in Islamic re-statement of the revealed religion by early Muslim Philosophers through (Aristotelian) influence.

The fame of Plato's "Republic" quite outshone that of Aristotle's "Politics" during classical antiquity. It was then generally believed antiquity that Aristotle's main source was unpublished lectures of Plato delivered during his last years. His works in fact became well-known through Latin translations of Boethus in the 6th Century A.D. - translated into Syriac and after the Syrian and the Egyptian Muslim conquests into Arabic - between (800-1000 A.D.).

Aristotle had little use of mathematical metaphysics expounded by Plato's two immediate successors at his Academy - Spensippus and Xenocrates and rejected his doctrine of transcendental, eternal forms altogether: he retained in his system that (a) the reality of anything lay in a changeless, though immanent, Form or Essence comprehensible and definable by reason and (b) the highest realities were eternal, immaterial, changeless, self-thinking Intellect that caused ordered movement of the universe and to which man's intellect at its highest was akin.

Recent scholarship of Randall and Werner Jaeger has made clear that Aristotle's aim is to understand, to find out way things as they are. In the Arab world much greater interest was shown in the metaphysical, political and social side of Aristotelian tradition and an attempt to reinterpret and adapt them to the conditions of contemporary Muslim world. As Randall says Aristotle sought intelligibility rather than power. Or "we can say that for Aristotle the highest Apex (Power) a man can have over the world is to understand it - to do, because he sees, why it must be done, what others do because they cannot help themselves." Aristotle wrote on every subject then known: Metaphysics, Logic, Psychology, Ethics, Politics; and his scientific interests in Sciences, Physics, Biology and Mathematics, Poetry and Art found fresh expression.

Aristotle was really the founder of Logic though his predecessors employed the principles of correct reasoning, it was he who classified, clarified, systematised it and made it a vehicle of judgment and proof. This had tremendous influence on Muslim philosophers. Both the (processes) of deduction and induction propounded by Aristotle were adopted by the Muslim thinkers and held sway both in the East and the West for nearly two thousand years since his times.

Aristotle also gave scientific content to metaphysics. He went beyond Plato in this respect and held that every object of experience embodies two factors - a substratum (matter) and its form or essence. Here too he goes beyond his - Teacher and Master - Plato's Form theory and expounds that there are four fundamentals which are common to all spheres of the World. - (a) Matter or substratum (b) Form or Essence (c) Efficent Cause and (d) the End or the Final Cause.

Matter is the initial imperfection, It is not non-existent as Plato thought but exists as potentiality. Form consists of essential elements common to all individual objects of the same type and is the actualisation of the material potentiality. All movement is change from potentiality to actuality and for every thing in existence there is a moving or efficent cause. The Essence is shape; it shapes and its own completion is the End.

Inorganic things, the Essence, the Efficent Cause and the End are one sequence. The Soul is both the form of the body and its moving final cause.

There are things in existence that both move and are unmoved. Therefore there must be a third something which moves but is itself not moved. This something - the "unmoved mover" is God Himself.

He is the Pure Eternal Form without any alloy of matter, the Absolutely Perfect Actuality. He is the Absolute Spirit identical with Reason, loved by everything and sought as the Perfect Ideal by every-thing. He Produces Motion by being loved and so is the final Cause of all Activity. In Him the distinction of the Individual and the Universal completely disappears and He is the One Unified and Unifyer Absolute, But the Greek Pantheism peeps in and in the end Aristotle stumbles into believing through astromonical considerations - to postulate that different spheres should have an Unmoved Mover Spirit and there are 47 or 52 such Spirits in all - or was it his final subterfuge to escape the charge of impiety which condemned Socrates to death. In fact, like Socrates, he was indicted on the capital charge of impiety in 323 B.C. after the death of Alexander the Great - the pretext being the dedicatory poem written on the execution of his friend and helper King Hermaels by the Persians, nearly 20 years earlier which was interpretated as deification of him. But he was "wiser" than Socrates and he hurriedly withdrew from Athens across the Strait of Evripos to Chalcis where he

died at the age of 62 or 63.

Aristotle also raises the question of, the good for man. To him the highest realisation of the Essence of Man consists in the active exercise of the faculty which is so distinctive of him - namely the faculty of Reason. Man's supreme excellence, therefore, consists in proper performance of his functions as a rational being throughout the whole of his life. This will enable him to attain happiness which is possible only in habitual sub-ordination of the animal side of man's nature: his appetites, desires, passions to the rational rule and consistent exercise of Reason in search of knowledge and pursuit of truth and virtue. Virtue is the direction of the will towards the golden mean[13]- the balance between excess and defect, like difference between liberality and prodigality, between meanness and courage, between foolhardiness and cowardice.

In his views on "Kingship" he departed from Plato's "Philosopher - King" idea by asserting that "it was not merely unnecessary for a King to be philosopher, but even a disadvantage. Rather a King should take the advice of true philosophers. Then he would fill his reign with good deeds, not with good words."

Since Aristotle's death there have been, without interruption until the present, Schools and Scholars who have studied, expounded, adopted and adapted his doctrines and methods, approved or condemned them. He has been studied in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and now in every known language.

The Romans received the Aristotelian thought through Boethius, a Roman Scholar and Statesman in early 6th Century, when he translated Greek texts available to him into Latin. Christianity was then the official religion. But new religious movements arose earlier such as Nestorianism after Nestorius, a monk of Antioch, who become Bishop of Constantinople, in 438 A.D. and who in 431 was condemned as heretic in the Assembly of Ephesus. The resulting persecution led to their flight to Syria and Persia. The Nestorian preachers adopted Syriac as the common man's language for preaching. They translated into Syriac Greek authorities, such as Aristotle and his commentators, because some knowledge of these gave them -philosophic basis to expound their theology. It was a group of Nestorian translators, who, by making Arabic versions from the Syriac, first brought Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world.

While the Alexandrian School kept alive interest in medical and allied sciences, the Nestorian Churches in Syria and Persia were more interested in logic and speculative philosophy.

And they were Syrian translations which came into the hands of Arab Scholars. And among the very first Arab Scholars was Al-Kindi (185/801.260/873) who mastered the Syriac language from which he himself translated several works. He probably learnt the Greek languageas well.

Al-Qifti,[14] the renowned chronicler, says that "Al-Kindi translated many philosophical books, clarified their difficulties and summarised their deep theories." Al-Kindi's full name was Abu Yusuf Yaqub-Ibn-Ishaq-Ibn-Al-Sabbah-Ibn-Al-Ashaz-Ibn-Qais-Al-Kindi. Just at the advent of Islam Kindah was one of the major well-known tribes to which he belonged, hence his prefix Al-Kindi. His grand-father, Al-Ashaz-ibn-Qais, was reputed to be a companion of the Holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) at whose hand he became a Muslim When Kufa and Basra were founded Al-Ashaz was amongst the first immigrants to Kufa. Al-Kindi's father Ishaq-ibn-Sabah later become so prominent that caliph Al-Mahdi appointed him Governor of Kufa.

Kufa and Basra within a century of their foundation had become centres of Islamic learning and controversial theology. Kufa was more inclined to rational studies. It was in this atmosphere of intellectual erudition that he was brought up. Like every young Muslim,he learnt Quran by heart, studied Arabic Grammer and Hadith. Knowledge and learning was for all and had become a passion with the whole community. The sum total of knowledge that a cultured man in the hey day of Islamic glory was supposed to acquire included Mathematics, Astronomy, Music, Medicine, Ethics, Philosophy, Poetry besides Quran and Hadith and Jurisprudence based on them. The concept of knowledge was its totality-Religious, Social, Economic, Ethical, Dialetical and Al-Kindi was no exception. As he gradually became more interested in sciences and philosophy, he could not ignore the Greeks and learnt their language and acquired proficiency in Syriac again following the injunction of the Holy Prophet when after learning three R's after the Battle of Badr - Zaid bin Satit was asked to learn Hebrew, which even Hazrat Umar learnt later.

It is truly said that there would be no philosophy without the Greeks, and particularly Aristotle, as whoever ventures to cut himself off from the collective experience of the past centuries will never achieve anything as a philosopher or scientist:, since the span of one individual life is much too short. "It is fitting to acknowledge the utmost gratitude to those who have contributed even a little to truth, not to speak of those who have done much …. we should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it from whatever sources it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples. For them who seeks the truth, there is nothing of higher value than the truth itself; it never cheapens him or abases him who searches for it, but ennobles him and honours him." These are the words of Al-Kindi found in the preface of the earliest metaphysical work in Arabic dedicated by him to the reigning Caliph AI-Mustasim-billah. Al-Kindi's main contribution was his attempt to bring philosophy in accord with religion.

He puts forward the following reasoning to postulate accord between philosophy and religion - Theology is part of philosophy - the prophets' revelation and philosophical truth are in accord with each other and that the pursuit of theology is logically ordained. He emphasised that "the totality of every useful science and the way to attain it is the getting away from anything harmful and taking care against it - the acquisition of all this is what the true prophets have proclaimed [in the name of God.] The Prophets have proclaimed the unique divinity of God, the practice of virtues ordained and accepted by Him and the avoidance of vices, which are contrary to virtues in themselves.

When he was accused of "Kufr" he lashed out against those who trade religion for a living, but in fact he did make some concessions to orthodoxy. In his treatise on "The Number of the works of Aristotle" he does give higher place to revealed religion over philosophy but there too makes a neat distinction between Prophets who receive knowledge direct from God and it is received without research, effort, study and industry and they postulate Truths through God's illumination, inspiration, support and direction and the ordinary human beings who have only one way of attaining knowledge, (enjoined by God and Holy Prophets) with research and industry; through logic, mathematics, philosophic discourses and learning.

Aristotle's "the Great Mover of the Moved" is reinterpreted by Al-Kindi who wrote "God, great is His-Praise, is the reason and agent of motion being Eternal. He can not be seen and does not move, but in fact causes motion without himself moving. He is simple in that he can not be dissolved into something simpler and He is indivisible because he is not composed and composition has no hold on Him. But in fact He is separate from the visible bodies since He is - the reason of the motion of the visible bodies." The originality of Al-Kindi lies in his reconciliation of the Islamic concept of God with the philosophical ideas which were current in later Neo-Platonism in the Middle East. Keeping in mind the attributes of God In Islam, as given in the Quran, Al-Kindi sharpens them in subtler language. "God is the True one. He is transcendent and can be qualified by only negative attributes. He has no matter, no form, no quantity, no relation. He has no genus, no differentia, no species, no accident. He is immutable … He is, therefore, absolute oneness nothing but oneness. Everything else is multiple."

The world in Aristotle's system is finite in Space but infinite in Time, because the movement of the world is coeternal with the Unmovable Mover. This is against not only Islamic thought but against the main Idea of all revealed religions that God created world out of nothing. So there was a time when there was Nothing but the Mover. He is (the Qu’ranic appellation – “the cleaver of the Earth and the Heavens.”) Muslim philosophers faced this problem. Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina were accused of atheism because of their pro-Aristotle conception of the world being co-eternal. In fact this remained a controversial point in Islamic philosophy and Al-Ghazali takes this as the first point against the philosophers. Al-Kindi, however, maintained that the world is not eternal. Apart from giving mathematical theories on motion of infinity, he argued that physical bodies are composed of matter and form and move in space and time...Matter, form, space, movement and time are the five substances in every physical body. And according to Quran they move in their own orbits. Being so connected with corporeal bodies, time and space are finite, given that corporeal bodies are finite and they are finite because they can not exist and move except within definite limits. Time is not Movement: it is the number which measures the motion. Being composed of matter and form, limited in space and moving in Time, every body is finite, even if it is the body of the world. And being finite it is not eternal. God alone is Eternal. Walzer, one of the noted translator and commentator of Al-Kindi, sums up his contribution as "Revealed Truth takes the place of Plato's myth in Al-Kindi's attempt to build up, for the first time, not an Arabic Republica of Greek Philosophy but a Greek Philosophy for Muslims," which is hardly the truth.

Abu Bakr Mohammad-bin Zakarya-bin-Yahya better known as Al Razi (865-925 A.D.) was a Persian by birth and was in his times more famous as a practising doctor of medicine than a doctor of philosophy. As his teacher and master in medicine was Ibn-Rabban-al-Tabari whose father Rabban was well versed in Scriptures and Greek philosophy, his interest in philosophy was aroused. At the same time, Al Razi was a pure rationalist. He believed in reason and in reason alone. In medicine his Clinical studies reveal a very solid method of investigation based on observation and experimentation and in philosphy, though familiar with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen he never failed to assert his own opinions based on reason. On the very first page of his "al-Tibb-al-Ruhani" he exalts reason. "God, glorious is His name, has given us reason in order to obtain through it, from the present and future the utmost benefits that we can obtain. It is God's best gift to us…… we should refer to it everything and judge all matters by it. We should do according to it as it commands us to do "

Al-nazi is against prophecy, against revelation against all irrational thought. To him God is Perfect and Pure Intelligence. From the Soul, Life flows. He argues since we have admitted the wisdom of the Creator, we must admit that the world was created. If one asks why was it created at a given moment we say that it was because Soul attached itself to matter in that moment. God knew that this attachment was cause of evil, but after it had been brought about, God directed it to the best possible way. But some evils remained, being the source of all evil, this composition of soul and matter could not be completely purified. This could explain creation of Adam and his Fall.

Al-Razi does not believe in the eternity of the world but claims to be a Platonist, though following Galen teaches that the world came into being in time whereas matter alone is eternal. Although he denies the creation from nothingness, he gives reason for creation which is nearer to Islamic conception: God is Omniscient, Absolute knowledge, Justice and Mercy. Man should, according to Plato make himself like God, in the greatest degree possible for man. Hence the creature nearest to God's favour is the wise, the most just, the most merciful and the most compassionate. He believed in God and in his best Creation the Man because of endowment of reason; in progress through reason he had no use for Intermediaries - Prophets and their revelations. Though Abdur Rahman Badawi, Prof. of Philosophy, Cairo, calls 'him an atheist, I think this is not justified because of his strong reasons establishing the existence and unity of a Super Being.

Ar-Razi, Kindi and Farabi all wrote on Ethics and Philosophy, drawing extensively on the Greek material, but giving it new colouring. Abu-Nasr Al-Farabi (870-950 A.D.) has been given the name of "the Second Teacher," that is, Aristotle, the second. Since his day, the number and older of the works left behind by Aristotle or at least attributed to him which have been commented upon by Farabi, or after his example, by others, remain almost fixed. The so-called "Theology of Aristotle" was considered by Farabi, to be a genuine work. Farabi's main attempt at first was to demonstrate that Philosophic stands of Plato and Aristotle were not too different and he attempted to harmonise them with each another. He held that Plato and Aristotle differ from each other only in phraseology and that in relation to practical life, their doctrine of wisdom is the same. To him, they were the two "Imams" of Philosophy.

His second attempt was to reconcile philosophy and religion both of which he held to be objectively propagating the (one) basic Truth. He gave Platonic Philosophy a pharaseology and form, without changing the content, to make it more consonant with Islamic teachings, which, he, in turn, interpreted more rationally. Dr. Ibrahim Madkour, Prof. of Philosophy, Cairo University, rightly stresses that Farabi expounds Philosophy in a religious way and philosophizes religion, pushing them in two converging directions so that they may come to an understanding and co-exist. He goes on to say that "Farabi has undoubtedly been the first scholar to raise a new edifice of philosophy on the basis of this accord: later philosophers have followed the lines chalked out by him: Ibn Sina has been to a certain extent occupied in the exposition and delineation of its Platonic and Aristotelian aspects; while Ibn Rushd has been busy indicating the accord between Aristotelian Philosophy and Religion."

I will refer to only two aspects of his quite abstruse but coordinated re-interpretations both of Aristotle's philosophy and the revealed religion. He classifies Intellect into (a) practical intellect which deduces what should be done and (b) theoretical intellect which helps the Soul to attain its perfection. The intellect is capable of rising gradually from intellect-in-potency to intellect-in-action and finally to acquired-intellect. The acquired-intellect rises to the level of communion, ecstasy and inspiration which is the highest form attainable by the chosen few. And the One who Chooses, is Himself beyond Comprehension, but illuminates the intelligence to reach the apex, leading to inspiration and heavenly vision. The theory of Intelligence put forward by him is based on Aristotle and Farabi himself says that his theory depends upon the third part of "De Anima" of Aristotle and/but the mystic addition is his own, introduced by him to be the link between human knowledge and revelation. He provided prophecy with a rational but higher stand and in the Middle Ages had tremendous influence - Jews & Christians also accepted it. Following his Greek Imams - Farabi wrote several treatises on "Politics," .the best known one of which is his "Model City." Plato's Philosopher King and Aristotle's King helped by the Philosphers are again merged and given a new pedestal. The Chief must be brave, Intelligent, lover of Knowledge, upholder of Justice and be cap-able of rising to the level of the Agent Intelligence thus getting inspiration and revelation. The agent intelligence is the source of the divine laws and guidance. He borrowed the concept from Aristotle's theory of dreams but gave it a revealing Prophetic content denied by his Master.

Al-Farabi accepted reward and punishment in a future world and pleaded that the conduct of the common man could be improved and that's why there is so much insistence on it in the Holy Quran. As a Philosopher having drunk deep at the Greek fountain, but being a Muslim he again equated it with the Muslim injunctions that only the souls of the good, who had lived a life resembling that of God, as far as human beings can, lose their individuality and then become part of the "Active Intellect" of the Kingdom of Heaven and the bad souls survive as Individuality and remain in utter wretchedness.

Ibn Sina (980-1037 A.D.) is one of the brightest Intellects of the world. Though influenced both by Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi he tried to reconcile religion and philosophy through allegorical interpretation. Ibn Sina was, however, a greater systematic thinker of the higher order. As his clear, exhaustive and well classified "Qanun" remained a sought out text book for medicine for centuries in the whole civilised world, the same genius manifests itself in his great, philosophical encyclopaedia `Ash-Shifa' in which he deals at length with all the philosophical, mathematical and natural Sciences.

It is significant how widespread and common were the Aristotelian teachings when Ibn Sina was still a young man living with his father at Bukhara when a guest named Al-Natali arrived. Al-Natali earned his living as a roving teacher of Aristotelian doctrine and introduced him to the teachings of the Master which was then preached like a religion. He learned logic, studied Euclid and attempted to study Aristotle's metaphysics and, as he himself says, found himself utterly incapable of understanding its meaning, until one day, he casually purchased one of Al-Farabi's books and with its help he was able to comprehend it. Al Ghazali brackets him with Farabi as the two leading interpreters of Aristotle.

When he was appointed personal physician to Nuh-bin-Mamur, the Samanid Governor of Khorassan, he found in the Prince's library many works of Aristotle, hitherto unknown to his contemporaries and he became the sole transmitter of the doctrines contained there in, particularly when the whole library perished later in those turbulent times. Ibn Sina was living at the Court of Emir of Khawarazam when Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna invited the scholars of his Court but Ibn Sina decided against it and went to Isfahan to the Court of Alaud Daula Muhammad.

It is impossible to deal here with all or even one aspect fully of his immensely rich philosophy. Very briefly his basic concepts were based on Aristotle's `De Anima' but modified in the treatment. He accepted Aristotle's definition of soul but at the same time put it as an incorporeal substance. He gives a very elaborate and unique discussion of Inner Senses, Internal Perception but differs again from the Aristotle's concept of imagination and splits it up into five different faculties. Ibn Sina did not consider Prophecy like Farabi as the highest kind of imagination. He identified it through intellect with sagacity, a power of "hitting at the Truth in an imperceptible time" Wazel is of the view that he derived this from Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics" as inspiration coming from "Active Intelligence;" to my mind more of Farabi than of Aristotle's. According to most modern authorities Ibn Sina is so deeply steeped in Aristotelianism that he became the Aristotle for the whole world for centuries. The influence of Ibn Sina's thought has been enormous. And his millenium anniversary observed is again the indication of revivalism of his thought.

Abu-Al-Walid Mohammad-Ibn-Ahmad-Ibn-Mohammad-lbn Rushd was born in Cordova in 1126[15] AD. His father Mohammad and his grandfather Ahmad first [Ibn-Rushd] both held the high office of Chief Justice of Andalus. With that family background he naturally studied the Quran, the Traditions, Jurisprudence, Arabic Poetry and Literature and as Cordova rivalled Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo as the great seat of Islamic learning, he pursued studies in Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Logic, Philosophy and Medicine.

The works of Farabi and Ibn Sina had also reached the Western corner of the Muslim world and Ibn Rushd was familiar with them all. Ibn Rushd deserves a place of honour in the long series of commentators on Aristotle, upholding his important tradition. Most of his works are lost in Arabic original but a great number of his commentaries were translated into Hebrew and Latin and were held to be of great importance for mediaeval Jewish and Western Latin Aristotelian scholars. For more than three hundred years they read Aristotle mainly with the help of the commentaries of Averroes as he came to be known in the West and of Avicenna who was Ibn Sina. The widespread interest in Aristotle taken in the Muslim world is best illustrated by the story how Ibn Rushd was induced to start writing his famous commentaries. Ibn Tufail, one of the two Maghrib philosophers (the other being Ibn Bajjah), and author of the famous story "Hayy-bin YaQzan "one day summoned Ibn Rushd and told him that Amir Abu-Yaqub" has complained to him of the difficulty of the expression of Aristotle and his translators and it would be easier for people to grasp them if some one would tackle these books, summarize them, expound their aims after understanding them thoroughly." Ibn Tufail excused himself on the plea of old age and of his work as a Minister and asked Ibn Rushd to take up the work. For over 25 years (between 1169-1195 A.D.) Ibn Rushd wrote a series of commentaries on most of the Aristotle extant works e.g. the Organon, De Anima, Physica, Metaphysics Rhetorica, Poetica and Ethics. Aristotle's "Politica" was not available to him and therefore he wrote a commentary on Plato's "Republic." [Ibn Rushd's) commentaries were translated in Europe. They were literally incorporated in.the Latin version of Aristotle's work. He and Ibn Sina, as Averroes and Avicenna, ruled the classical and religious thought of Europe for Centuries. Even Dante in his "Divine Comedy" mentions Averroes "the Great Commentator" and Avicenna along with Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen as great benefactors and prodigies of human intellect. Their influence on religious thought of Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine] and St. Francis of Assisi is openly acknowledged. Ibn Rushd in his books "the Fasl" and the Kaslif' and the "Al-Ithisal" embodies his bold views that it is the metaphysician alone, employing certain proof, competent to interpret revealed Shariah law To him, to establish the true inner meaning of religious beliefs and revelations is the aim of philosophy in its quest for truth. He applied Aristotle's three arguments - demonstrative, dialectical and persuasive. In his defence of philosophers against Al-Ghazali's reasoned outburst branding them as "Kafirs," Ibn Rushd mainly based his defence on Quranic Injunctions where men of Intellect are ordained to think, study and ponder deeply on the Creator and his Creations to get inner light and add to it. The objective of religion, as defined by him, is to attain the truth, the true theory and true practice (Ai-ilm al Haq, Wal-anial-al Haqq). True knowledge is the knowledge of God. To my mind, learning and knowledge have to be combined to reach the Truth. The first Kalma is only a Statement -The Second is Shahada which you can't give unless you have advanced and progressed to the state wherein you can affirm definitely that you know and stand witness to God and His revelations through His Messenger.

Ibn Rushd says that "the way of acquiring knowledge is of two kinds: apprehension and assent. Assent is either demonstrative, dialectical or rhetorical - for the philosopher, for the religious teacher and for the masses, and is possible only through comprehension."

It is interesting to note, and may be valid even today, that Ibn Rushd advocates that masses should be given only orthodox explanations of the Scriptures and- the rest of speculative study is for the intellectual few, hankering after the truth. To him philosophers are those who follow the way of speculation and are eager for knowledge of the truth and those who wish to attain this knowledge they should apply demonstrative arguments to the interpretation of theological teaching of Shariah - a term which he uses to include both the text of the Quran and its injunctions in practice, which we now associate with the person of the Holy Prophet (Peace be on him).

While he carried on the long tradition of attempted synthesis between religious law and Greek philosophy, he went a step further. He made Plato's political philosophy, modified by Aristotle, his own and held it as valid for the Islamic State as well. If Plato's philosopher Kings are not available to rule, there should at least be Aristotle's philosophers on hand to advise and influence the King. For him Plato's ideal State is the best after the ideal State of Islam. But he looks at Plato's "Re‑

ublic" through the eyes of Ibn Sina and in his attempt at synthesis of religion and philosophy, he takes to the Aristotelian theory of Intellect and of the Unmoved Mover as modified by Farabi. To all this he gives his ethical and political philosophy a distinctly Islamic Character and tone and hence his significance as a religious-Philosopher for us too.

With Ibn Rushd we come to end of the reign of Philosopher Ulema or Imams. That he was forced to write a refutation to Al-Ghazali's attack on philosophers shows the way the wind was blowing, soon to turn into a thunder storm of orthodox scholasticism. The right wing of the Mutazallites and in spite of the Ismailia movement, the majorityof Muslims retained their orthodoxy and regarded as 'bidat' any innovation.

The latter innovations and quiblings of the Mutazallites got mixed up with Plato and Aristotle's commentaries as dangerous to orthodoxy culminating into heresies. And coup be grace was given by the Hujjatil-Islam-Abu Hamid Mohammad AI-Ghazali (1058-1111 A.D.); and later the meekly loving Sufism, represented by Maulana Ruud and others, beaconed to other luminary lights and the flame of Aristotlelianism was finally snuffed. The fall of Baghdad to the Mongol hordes was the death knell - the tolling of the. bells. But that's another tale and let us tell it in the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

AL-GHAZALI: HIS TIMES AND LEGACY.

The last chapter ended with Ibn Rushd and I had said that "with him we come to the end of the reign of Philosopher ulema or Imams." The majority of Muslims retained their orthodoxy and in the welter of confusion then prevailing their philosophical reasoning somehow got mixed up, in the orthodox mind, with the latter innovations (bidat) of the Mutazallites and both got labelled as heresies...

It is time that the final coup de grace to the reign of philosopher-Imams was given by Abu Hamid Mohammad Al-Ghat Ali (1058-1111 A.D.) but he too was the product of his times. So let us have a quick look at his period.

The glory of the Abbasids began to fade within a century after Harun-al-Rashid (786-809 A.D.) with a weakened centre, the provincial Governors began to assert themselves. They had large locally recruited armies and perforce began to exercise wide powers. The caliphs had to acquisce and legalise[16] those powers.

The administrative necessity was in decentralized authority. But strong ambition of the Provincial Governors with a weakened centre could lead to only one result - disintegration. While in the West, the Ummayyads of Spain never accepted the over all suzerinty of Baghdad, the Fatimids of Egypt repudiated and challenged it. In the East the all powerful Governors carved for themselves kingdoms as large as their arms could make them. They in fact founded autonomous dynasties wherein even succession was not in the hands of the Caliph but they maintained the myth of legal suzerainty and to claim legality formal recognition was sought and gladly granted. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, (997.1030 A.D.) acknowledged the nominal suzerainty of Caliph Al-Qadir-Billah (991-1031 ) from whom he got the title of Yamin-al-Dawlah and even Sultan of Delhi Altamash (1211-1227 A.D.) sought similar recognition from the Caliph Al-Nasir-Billah (1180-1225) even when the twilight had set in and only seventeen years intervened between Al-Nasir-Billah and the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Mustasim Billah (1242-1258).

The first to found a semi-independent autonomous state in the Eastern areas of the Empire was T'ahir-Ibn-Al-Husaini of Khurasan, who had helped Al-M'amun against his brother Al-Amin and was awarded by a grateful M'amun with the governorship of all the lands east of Baghdad. T'ahir established his Capital at Merve. The dynasty came to be known as T'ahirids and for four generations ruled Khurasan till 872 AD. when they were supplanted by Saffarids, a dynasty founded by another General Yaqub Ibn-al-Layth-al-Saffar; starting in Sijistan-' almost Southern Afghanistan, extended their rule to whole of Southern and Eastern Persia up to Oxus in the North.

The dynasty lasted till 903 A.D. though the nibbling by the Sam'andis started much earlier. Sam'andis were descendants of one Saman, a Zoroastrain noble of Balkh. Ismail Ibn Ahmad (892-907), a great-grandson of Saman wrested Khurasan from Saffarids and another brother Nasr-Ibn-Ahmad (913-943 )A.D. extended the boundaries of their kingdom. The Caliph recognised them as Amirs but they were virtually independent of him. Following the general Muslim pattern, their Capital Bukhara and its twin Samarqand, outshone Baghdad as centres of art and learning. It was a Sam'anid Prince, Abu S'alih Man‑sur-ibn-Ishaq to whom Al-Ra'zi dedicated his famous book on medicine and entitled its Al-Mansuri' in his honour. And it was a Sam'anid prince Nuh. the second. (976-97) that invited Ibn-Sina to Bukhara and gave him free access to his rich and vast library.

A well established and well run state, the Sam'anids had to face a new threat internally from the Turkish nomads to the North who later had a rejuvenating role to play but to begin with it was a highly disturbing one. Among the Turkish slaves, whom the Caliphs and the Sultans and the Amirs of the day, everywhere, honoured with high Government posts, was one Alptigin, a member of the body-guard who rose high and fast and was promoted to the Governorship of Khurasan. His slave and son-in-law was Subaktigin (976-997) A.D. who was father of the brilliant Sultan Mahmud "the But-Shikan" who opened the northern gates of India to Islam.

Though the Ghazanavides (976-1186 A.D.) heralded the first victory of the Turks against Iranian predominance in the Eastern part of the Empire, it soon fell apart. The Western Provinces, the remnants of the Saffarids and Sam'anids, were taken over by the Buw'ahids - a Shiaite dynasty founded by a Shia General, Ahmad-ibn-Buwayh, who planted themselves even in Baghdad, made and unmade Puppet Caliphs, who were completely under their control, even had the Khutba read in the joint name of the Caliph and the Amir-ul-Umara "Muiz-al-Dawlah." They were supreme for over a century (945-1055 A.D.). The Eastern and Southern Persia fell to Seljuk Turks. In 1037 they look over Merve and Nishapur from the Ghaznavids and in Course of a few years they occupied and ruled Bukhara, Balkh, Sijistan, Jurgan, Tabaristan, Khawarizm, Hamadan, Ray and Isfahan. At Hamadan they were sitting at the door steps of Baghdad where the internecine wars were rampant. The Shiat overlordship over a Sunni Caliph and a wholly Sunni population was widely resented and led to open riots. The Fa'timids, the challengers, were Ismaili Shias and deepened the confusion. The Seljuks under Tughral Beg were waiting for an opportunity. And on December 18, 1055 at the head of his Turkoman tribes marched into Baghdad. Al-Basasiri, the Turkish Commander and military Governor of Baghdad withdrew from Baghdad and the Caliph Al-Qaim-Billah (1031-1075 , A.D.) welcomed the Seljuk invader as a deliverer and bestowed on him the title of Sultan. Al-Basasiri did not give up hope and was in correspondence with the Fat'imids in Syria. Taking advantage of temporary absence of Tughtil from Baghdad on an expedition, he re-entered Baghdad in 1058 and forced the supine Caliph Al-Qaim-Billah to sign a decree renouncing his rights and rights of all Abbasids as a Caliph in favour of the rival Fatimid Al-Mustansir (1035-1094) in Cairo. For forty Fridays the Khutba was read in the name of the Ismaili Imam in Baghdad itself. In 1060 A.D. the Seljuks re-entered Baghdad, killed Basasiri and restored the Abbasid Caliphate and Tughril began his reign in the name of the Caliph as a Sultan over the realm which in the East extended beyond the boundaries over which Harun-al-Rashid had ruled. How real and near the danger of the Fatimide take over was could not be forgotten by the Seljuks.

The Fatimids in Egypt and the Ummayyads in Spain were in complete independent control of all Muslim lands West of Syria. The Fatimids asserted politically the religious differences that divided the Ummah into two separate religious sects and established a claim to be the genuine Caliph. Their active rivalry began soon after their disillusionment when the Abbasids who had professed that they were in fact out to restore the descendents of the Holy Prophet (Peace Be-Upon Him) to their rightful place, occupied the throne for themselves. The minor revolts may be ignored but in 785 A.D., Idris-Ibn-Abdullah-Ibn Hasan Ibn Hazrat Imam Hasan (R.A.). after failure of one revolt in Medina, according to Ibn Khaldun, fled to Maghrib and in 788 founded a dynasty of the Idrisis in Morocco with the Capital at Fez, which lasted for nearly two centuries (788-974). The revolts against Abbasids were legitimately led by the descendants of Hazrat Imam Hasan rather than Hazrat Imam Husain. The Idrisi dynasty was the first Shia dynasty in Muslim history. The descendents of Hazrat Imam Husain remained quiet but were recognised as the real Im'ams till Hazrat J'afar Sa'diq,

the sixth Imam. Hazrat J'afar disinherited his eldest son Ismail and appointed Hazrat Musa, the second son as the next Irmam. Ismail's disinheritance became a point of dispute, Hazrat J'afar's very right to disinherit the eldest son was questioned and though the majority accepted the decision, the Ismaili Sect was born. As Ismail predeceased his father in Medina he was subsequently .hailed as the hidden Imam till the appearance of the Mahdi and this occurred in the person of the founder of the Fatimide dynasty Ubayd-ullah-Al-Mahdi in 909 A.D. According to Fatimide geneology Ubaydullah was the son of Hussain-bin-Ahmad-bin-Abod-Allah-bin-Mohammad-bin-Ismail-bin Imam J'afar Sadiq. But before him a series of Imam Satr (concealed Imams) emerged teaching the faithfuls through agents (Dai's) but never directly.

As the Ismaili's posed the greatest threat to orthodoxy at the time when Al-Ghazali lived they deserve some attention. The birth of the sect due to an act of the sixth Imam J'afar Sadiq has been mentioned. The Ismaili's really shook the foundations of the Muslim world. Even in the time of Imam J'afar the extremists were led by one Abdullah-bin-Maimun. Both the father and the son were disciples of one Khattab's who was a dai or a missionary agent of Imam S'adiq who held and propagated the view that the Quran has to be understood in an inward or Batin symbolically rather than in a literal sense and the Divine Light is transmitted through successive Imams. They are divinely guided and they alone could correctly interpret the Quran and the guide the faithful. Hazrat Imam S'adiq repudiated him. He was tried as a heretic and in 755 A.D. was executed by the first Abbasid Calliph Al-Mansur.

Abdullah bin Maimun took up his teachings (minus the reincarnation theory). His dai's spread themselves throughout the Abbasids Caliphate whom now they hated as usurpers. Each one of them carried on a profession - as a merchant, artisan or tabib-and ingratiated themselves into various strata of the society, preached secretly and initiated the converts into secret doctrines and ritual. The strong rule of the early Abbasids and stabilisation of conditions under them forced them under-ground, working from various cells spread from Morocco to the Punjab.

A century later about 875 A.D. they suddenly surfaced up and one Hamdan Karamat won over the whole Yemen, the one place, which, up to the present day, has been continuously espousing every heretical cause that might bring them some political independence. The followers of Karamat, known as karamathians, successfully enlisted the support of Berbers[17] who were, like them, endowed with an independent spirit, and in 909 A.D. produced the hidden Imam and proclaimed him Caliph and the Mahdi at Rakkada near Kairawan. Thus the Fatimide anti-Abbasid Caliphate-began with Ubaidullah, Al Mahdi. He was claimed to be son of Husain-bin-Ahmad-bin-Abdullah-bin Mohammad Ismail bin Imam J'afar S'adiq. It was the fourth Fatimide Caliph Al-Muiz (953-975 A.D.) who conquered Egypt in 969 A.D. and made it the seat of the Fatimide Dynasty. It was his General and Governor Jawahar who founded - Cairo - and laid the foundation stone of Al-Azhar in April 970 A.D. So Al-Azhar started as a seat of Shia learning. Under the next two Caliphs Al-Aziz and Al-Hakim the boundaries of the Empire were extended to Palestine, Yemen even Hijaz and their suzerainty recognised from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Syria remained in turmoil and there were internecine wars between the Fatimides and the Buwayhids who controlled the Abbasid Caliph at Baghdad. Both were Shia dynasties but could not come together. It is strange that Buwayhids did not dethrone the Abbasids and replace them by a new Mid line. But they were orthodox Shia's and on religious and political grounds opposed to Ismailis. Their twelfth Imam was still to appear and they could not produce an interim one. They could not bring in Fatimids who would be the real rulers and not the puppet ones in whose name they exercised full authority and they also could not afford to antagonize the entire population who were all Sunnis.

On the other side the Fatimides conquered Muslim Africa but failed in their attempts to capture Muslim Asia. They were denied the ultimate prize of a universal Muslim Empire ruled by a descendant of Hazrat Ali. Three factors were responsible for this denial - (1) the Buwayds effectively ruled Iraq and Persia and contested their claim to Syria; (2) these two major contenders encouraged the third one the Byzantines who took over Crete and Sicily tried to control the Mediterranean trade and rekindled the hope of recapturing Syria and the Holy land which subsequently led to the crusades and (3) the open breach between the Fatimides and the Karmathians, who were called Al d'awa-al-B'atiniya. This was an extreme militant group which offered a real threat to the Abbasid Empire. They established a State in Bahrain, from where they led forays into Basra, which they looted; threatened Baghdad itself and then turned south marched into Hejaz, pillaged the Kuba and took away even the Holiest Prize, the Black Stone, to Bahrain, their incursions into Syria were common and the marched even into Egypt

Such was the political conditions when the Seljuks marched into Baghdad. The three Caliphs were at the head of the three independent Caliphates - the Ummayeds in Spain, who just ignored the Abbasids, the Fatimids in Egypt, who Challenged the right of the Abbasids to rule in the name of Islam, the Karamathians, who were a constant threat to both the Fatimids and the Abbasids.

Al-Ghazali was born in 1058 A.D., three years after the Seljuk occupation of Baghdad, (1055) in not too poor a family as is commonly believed. Like most of the Muslims of the middle class his father must have been an educated man well versed in Quran and Muslim theology. His love of learning is also evidenced by the story that on his death the father left all the money he had with a S'ufi friend charging him to see that his two sons Mohammad and Ahmed were well educated. How well his S'ufi friend looked after the two boys is proved by the subsequent fame of both of them. Mohammad, the elder and the better known as Al-Ghazali, and not the so well known but distinguished enough in his own time as a scholar, poet and mystic, who even officiated as Head of the Nizamiya college at Baghdad when the elder brother left it abruptly. (I was lucky to have been present when the tomb stone of the grave of Ahmad Ghazali was accidently found buried in a room within the precincts of a mosque, which was being renovated by the Archaeology Dept., of Iran in a village near Tus. Probably the mosque, which was definitely of the Seljuk period, was at Ghazala, where both the brothers, in their native village Ghazala, were educated. The village has since disappeared completely).

As studying, learning and teaching the Quran was incumbent on every Muslim, mosques were the earliest centres of formal education. Free lectures were given on the Holy Quran and Sunnah; later a Jurisprudence, Logic, Ethics, Philosophy were also included gradually. However, standard educational institutions were later set up and handsomely endowed not only providing free education but also free board and lodging. Throughout the Muslim world education was free at all levels and illiteracy was almost unknown.

The first known Madrasa or College was established in Nishapur around 950 A.D. though a Baitul-Hakama had been founded in 830 A.D. by Al-Mamun but that was an Academy rather than a School and to it were attached a translation Bureau, a Library and an Observatory but formal educational institutions were founded by Samanids. Many more were founded during the rest of the century besides the one in Nishapur.

Nizamul-Mulk Tusi gave great encouragement to the movement and founded nine or ten Nizamiah Colleges from Baghdad to Herat.

When Al-Ghazali went to Nishapur for advanced studies in 1077 A.D. Nishapur and the neighbouring areas had been for nearly over a century in the forefront of educational development owing to the comparative peaceful calm of the Samanids and their great open patronage of arts and learning while Baghdad had an uneasy time torn by strife and threatened on all sides.

The most prominent teacher of his times - Abdul Ma'ali Al-Juwayni, Imam-al-Haramayn was then heading the school to which Ghazali now went for further study.

Alduwayni's father had founded a School of Jurisprudence and related subjects at Nishapur in 1016 A.D. and on his death in 1046 A.D., the young Juwayni at the age of only 20 took it over. Soon he was the leading light - Zia-al-Din, Sheikhul-Islam and Imam-al-Harmayn Fame of his vast learning, his erudite scholarship spread to the whole Muslim world and his fatwaaz were the fmal word for the learned.

Al-Ghazali was not in the habit of acknowledging his debt to others and never mentions Al-Juwayni's role in shaping his mind but he was in fact what Al-Juwayni made him. Al-Ghazali was not the first to take up cudgels against the philosophers and refute their "blasphemies." The movement was as old as Al-Ghazali himself. The reaction was against the Mutazallites, whose free, rational, liberal thinking crystalised in the common public mind was epitomised in their preaching of the createdness of the Quran and total indeterminism. Though the Muslim historians and others call them the Mutazallites - the seceders; they called themselves "Ahl-al-Tauhid-wa-al-Adl," `People of unity and justice." They admit that Allah is all knowing, all powerful, all seeing but these divine attributes are one with the Divine Essence. If their separateness is accepted then there will be plurality of "Eternals" which would be against the basic belief in His unity and would amount to "Kufr." Similarly His Justice demands that man should be totally free to choose his path of good and evil and then alone can he deserve reward and punishment in the hereafter. If man is not the free untrammelled creator of his own acts and if these acts are the creation of God, how can he go against His will. Would it not be injustice on the part of God that, after creating man helpless he should call him to account for his sins and send him to hell. As Al-Shahrastani in his- -"Kitab al-Millatwa-al-Nihal" - mentions "the Mutazallites unanimously maintain that man decides upon and creates his own acts, both good and evil; that he deserves reward or punishment in the next world for what he does. In this way God is safe-guarded from association with any evil or wrong or any act of unbelief and transgression. For if he created the wrong, He would be wrong and if he created injustice, He would not be just." To them, the evil and goodness of things are "inherent in man and obvious to the intellect and require no ordinance or proof from Shariah."

Al-Ghazali (1058 - IIII AD.) after an imaginary sketch
done by Khalil Gibran.

Shameful and unjust deeds are evil in themselves and therefore, God has forbidden indulgence in them. His decree forbidding them did not make the acts shameful and unjust.

"They held that God was Omnipresent, Timeless, Directionless. His Arsh was "Samawati-wal-Ard" His beatific vision was not possible in this worlds [18] or thereafter."

The most embittered theory was that Quran was not in "Lohi-Mahfuz" but it originated or was created with the Prophet-hood of the Holy Prophet. Illogically they took their stand on Verse 101 of Surah 5 of the Holy Quran ignoring the warning given in the very succeeding verse 102, forgetting that in His Timelessness there is no past and future. The artificial barriers are for us and not for Him. The Mutazallites denied (1) Munkir Nakir and punishment and reward in the grave; (2) Kir'amun-K'atibin as useless as God knows all that happens; (3) coming of Yajuj and Majuj and of Dajjal and (4) Prayers for the dead. The benefit of prayers goes to the one, who prays and benefits him, and to no others.

These view became commonly current due to the patronage extended by the Abbasids particularly, Al-Mamum (813-833 A.D.) who accepted the doctronies of theirs and made them the official creed. Imam Hanbal's treatment is well known to be repeated. The hey-day of the intellectuals came with the availability of Arabic translations of the Greek Philosophers. The Mutazallites took them over and in their rationality made reason the sole basis of Truth and Reality and therefore, were active in interpreting Faith in terms of Pure Reason. The philosophers attempted to bring about a synthesis between Greek philosophy and precepts of Islam.

The orthodox section reacted against the Mutazallites and their extreme rationalistic attitude towards commonly held beliefs had to produce a reaction. Along with the Mutazallisin Caliph, Al-Mamun, the free thinker, extended his patronage to the B'atineyah movement which was Shiaite in its complexion. They were the seekers after the inner or spiritual interpretation of the revelation. They believed and propagated that every thing Zahir (evident) had a B'atin (inner or allegorical, secret meaning) As the Greek philosophy was so much in fashion they also used it as a tool to their B'atini interpreatations.

Al-Mamum befriended them and went so far as to don their colour green and as they were Shias, he even proclaimed the eighth Imam Hazrat All Rids (died 818 and buried in Meshhad) as his heir-apparent.

Politics, combined with orthodoxy, led to national outburst of the majority Sunni section, nurtured in the traditions of Medina, Mamun's two successors Mustasim (833) and Wasiq (842) tried to contain the reaction but the dams burst when Al-Mutawakkil (847-861) restarted the persecution of Shias and culminated in Al-Qadir (991-1031) who drove the B'atiniyas out in 1029 from the mosques and madrasahs. The reaction to B'atiniya gave birth to movements Al-Mazhab-al Z'ahid or Dawoodi School founded by Dawood-bin-Ali Khalaf: They repudiated all philosophical or allegorical interpretations and recognised only the Quran and the Hadith as the only sources of Jurisprudence and the interpretation would be Z'ahiri-open, literal and the obvious. They accepted Ijma later but denied the validity of Qiyas (analogy) Rai (opinion) and Taqlid (Decision based on older judgments).

The Z'ahiri School enjoyed its widest acceptance in the tenth century and the most famous Jurist of the Century was Abdullah-bin-Ahmad-ibn-Al-Mughallis (d.936) through whom the Fiqah of Dawoodibn-Ali became extensively known and popular with the masses. But its strongholds were Syria, had deep roots in Mamluke Egypt and spread to Muslim Spain where the Chief exponent was the famous Ibn-Hazen (994-1063). Ibn-Hazm was a prolific writer and is believed to have written 400 books comprising 80,000 folios of some twenty million words.

The genius within him could not be confined to the obvious of the Z'ahirids and he branched off into speculative and rationalist theology. He even tackled abstruse theories of Time and Space and seems to have forestalled Kant (d.1804), seven and half centuries earlier. It's elaboration, however, would be a lengthy digression. It may, however, be noted that Ibn-Haim enlarged a Z'ahirite system on an intellectual dogma and revised Muslim law from that point of view. His views enjoyed only a limited acceptance. In fact he and his philosophy both remained persecuted in Spain. 'Ibn Rushd naturally mentions him with disdain in his "Tahafut-al-Tahafut," the rejoinder to Al-Ghazali's "Tahafut-al-Falasfa. "

The keener minds had to fend other, outlets from the barren, brazen through bold. Zahirite literal interpretations and two fresh stirrings occurred. Al-Kindi, the philosopher of Arabs, dominated the 9th century and ushered in the glorious reign of the philosophers. The swing of the pendulum took them to the other extreme of Z'ahirate doctrines. All was speculation, Pure Reason, Pure Essence. The Islamic philosophy was refined, linked and synthesised with the Greeks and Plato and Aristotle became the philosopher Imams.

Al Kindi died in 873 A.D. And the same year was born Abul-Hasan Ali-lbn-Ismail-Al-Ashari (873-941). He was an ardent Mutazallite because of the influence of his teacher, the great Mutazallite scholar and preacher Abu All Mohammad-bin-Abdul-Wahab Al-Jubbai. A sudden revolt and change occurred some say due to a dream and others tohis intellectual differences with his teacher and after due deliberation he publicly announced his recantation. He went to the Juma Mosque at Basra and declared: "He who knows me, knows who I am, and he who does not know me, let him know that I am Abdul Hasan All Al-Ashari, that I used to maintain that the Quran is created, that the eyes of men shall not see God and that the creatures create their actions. Lo, I repent that I have been Mutazallite, I renounce these opinions and I take the engagement to refute the Mutazallites and expose their infamy and turpitude."

After the change he wrote voluminously. Ibn Furak counts them to be 300 and lbn Askir Damashqi lists the titles of 93. Amongst the extant ones the most important is (discourses on Islam and differences amongst the Muslims), edited and published in Istanbul in 1929.

As could be expected, he had to face opposition both from the Mutazallites who at last came to question revelation on the criteria of Reason alone and from the extreme orthodox Zahirist (traditionalists) and the Jurists who would regard innovation as heresy if any one went behind the literal meaning or to explain or establish its truth on a rational basis. For them there was God and His word revealed to the Holy Prophet and that was enough. He makes it plain by saying. "A section of the people - Zahirites and others - make capital out of their own ignorance; discussions and rational thinking about matters of faith became a heavy burden for them and therefore they became inclined to blind faith and blind following (Taqlid)." They condemned those who tried to rationalise the principles of religion as innovaters. They considered discussion about Harkat (motion) Sukut (rest) Body, Space, Atom, the leaping of atoms and attributes of God to be a sin. They said that had such discussions been the right thing, the Holy Prophet and his Companions would have definitely done so; they further pointed out that the Prophet before his death discussed and fully explained all those matters which were necessary from the religious point of view, leaving none of them to be discussed by his followers; and since he did not discuss them, it was evident that to discuss them must be regarded as innovation.

This was briefly their objections to what came to be known as Kal'am in matters of faith.

Al-Ashari met these objections in three ways. He pointed out that the Prophet had nowhere laid a ban on such rational discussion or said that he who would attempt to discuss them was to be condemned as an innovator, Hence charging or condemning such men as innovators was itself an innovation.

Secondly, he contended that the Prophet was not unaware of body, motion, rest, atom etc., and the general usul (principles) were mentioned in the Quran and Hadith.

Thirdly, the elaboration is not there because the problems about them did not arise during his life time. Had these questions been raised then, he would have definitely explained them as he did in so many matters raised, when even raised by his enemies.

The companions of the Holy Prophet discussed so many new problems which faced them during the expansion period and in the absence of direct verdict (Naas) from the Prophet they even differed amongst themselves. The famous case is whether land in conquered lands could be divided as booty amongst those who took part in the campaign leading to the conquest. Even the Ashrai Mubasshara were divided on the issue. And Hazrat Umar decided by taking a rational view of the verse[19] of the Quran.

Al-Ashari asserted that Islam is not opposed to the use of Reason and in fact rationalisation of faith is a necessity in Islam.

But he had renounced the extremes of the Mutazallites. There was great controversy over the question whether the Quran was created or un-created and eternal. This question was bound up with another question whether speech is one of the attributes of God or not. The Mutazallites denied all attributes of God including that of speech. They argued that if speech is an attribute of God then speech would be eternal too and God would continue to speak and there would be multiplicity of eternals and not only one Quran which would be contrary to the very basis of the Quran. As it was revealed in twenty three years life time of the Holy Prophet, it should be regarded as created and created for him.

Against this Asharites argued that the Quran in its meanings is untreated and eternal because it is "Knowledge from God" and is therefore inseparable from God's attribute of knowledge which is eternal and uncreated. Hence Quran is also uncreated and eternal. Further, Quran makes a distinction between creation and command when it says "Are not the creation and command alone." Hence God's Command, His word or Kalam is different from created things and so his Kalam must be uncreated and eternal.

The Asharisni revolted against their extreme view of raising Reason above Revelation. To them revelation merely confirmed what is accepted by Reason and if there is a conflict between the two, Reason is to be preferred and revelation may be so interpreted as to be in conformity with the dictates of Reason. The Asharites held that revelation, and not Reason, is the real authority to determine what is good or bad. Actions in themselves are not good or bad. Divine Law and Shariah makes them so. What is commanded by Shariah is good, what is prohibited is bad. But kalam can find the reason behind the command or the prohibition. Reason has to be subordinated to Revelation. Its function is to rationalise the faith and not to question the validity or truth of the principles, revealed in the Quran, and incorporated in Shariah.

The third most controversial issue - not yet resolved is determination versus free will. The orthodox firmly held that every thing is predetermined by God, who has absolute power over everything including human will and human actions. The predestination leaves no manouvering ground to any human, who can not create any thing including his own action. The Mutazallites swung to other extreme and argued that reward and punishment is related to man's free will to choose the path and mould his own actions. This power to choose was created by God and given to man, reward and punishment according to Shariah is due to following the right path ordained or going away from it. Al-Sharastani explains: "God creates, in man, the power, ability, choice and will to perform an act; and man endowed with this derived power, chooses freely one of the alternatives and wills an action and corresponding to this intention, God creates and completes the action. It is this intention on the part of the man which makes him responsible for his deeds and misdeeds."

My own view is some-what different. It is correct to state that God has given man the power, ability and to choose his course. But He has not left him rudderless. The Quran very clearly lays down the guide-lines and in unambiguous language tells him that his destiny here and in the hereafter lies in his own hand.

In the Quran the message is centered at God, the Creator and man, His sublime creation. He gave him intellect to acquire knowledge and free will to choose his course in life but made it clear and absolute that there is only one God, the supreme Creator. His was the sovereignty and He was sending the man down to this tiny earth as Khalifa. The short period of life was to be a period of preparation for the eternal life to follow when he would give an account of life spent and the work done. To help him to pass the final test, He would tell him the guidelines - the straight path. The man's prayer shall be: "Show us the straight path; the path of those whom thou: hast favoured; not of those who have incurred Thy wrath, nor of those who have gone astray." The freedom of choice of the path endowed was in no way restricted but in fairness, the result and the consequences were spelled out in no uncertain terms. If you follow the directions given from time to time you would have contentment, bliss and success and when you return He would bestow eternal peace and happiness in a place which is named `Jannat' and if you ignore the guiding lines and became a prey to your own passions and desires, you would lead an unsatisfied life and when you return to Him, you would fail in the final test, deserve punishment in eternal agony, shame and degradation, consigned to their flames in the abode called `Douzakh.'

So the Quran is called `Al-Furgan,' the criterion of Right and Wrong and says: "Beautiful for mankind is love of the joys that come from women and offsprings, and stored up heaps of gold and silver and horses branded with their mark and cattle and land. This is comfort of the life of the world. Allah, With Him is a more excellent abode" (Surah 3, Al Imran, Verse 14). The righteous shall inherit the world and the hereafter. He Himself defines what righteousness is: "It is not righteousness that you turn your faces to the East and the West; but the righteous is he who believeth in Allah and the Last Day and the angels and the Scripture and the prophets; and giveth his wealth, for love of Him, to kinsfolk and to orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and to those who ask, and to set slaves free; and observes proper worship and pays the poor-due. And those who keep their treaty when they make one, and the patient in tribulation and adversity and in times of stress. Such are they who are sincere (and truthfull). Such are the God-fearing (who keep their duty)." (Surah 2, Al-Baqarah, Verse 177).

Al-Ashari had tremendous, continuous and deep influence not in his own times but in subsequent ages too. Ibn Taimiyah said in his 'Minhaj-al-Sunnah' that "the most comprehensive of the books he went through on views of different people on the basic principles of Islam was Al-Ashari's "Al Magaalati-al-Islamiyyin" and that he discussed many of such views in detail as were not ever mentioned by others." His pupils further developed his doctrines and dogma. Amongst the older Asharites were the famous theologian