Aḥmad al-Ghazālī's reputation as an Islamic thinker has unfortunately been overshadowed by that of his more celebrated elder brother, Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, author of the famous Revivification of the Sciences of Religion. The former was in fact the foremost metaphysician of love in the Sufi tradition and the chief founder of the philosophy of love in mystical Islam, and his impact on the later Persian Sufi tradition was more profound than his brother the theologian.

He spent most of his life in his khānaqāh (Sufi cloister) in Qazvīn, where he was famed for his eloquence as a preacher, and died there in 1126. Al-Ghazālī was the teacher of Abūʾ l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī, who was in turn the master of his nephew...