SOURCE: “The Life of al-Ghazzālī, with Special Reference to His Religious Experiences and Opinions.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 20 (1899): 71-132.

In the following essay, the critic examines aspects of al-Ghazālī's life, travels, and studies which readily influenced his theological positions.

In the history of the development of Muslim theology two names stand out conspicuously, each marking a great point of departure. They are those of al-Ash‘arī¹ and al-Ghazzālī. The former was the principal founder of scholastic theology in Islām; it was under the hands of the latter that that theology took its final form, and the Church of Muhammad owes it to his strange experiences in personal religion and in the emotional life that the form was not even harder and more unyielding than we find it now. What rigidity of grasp the hand of Islām would have exercised but...