Part 9
“We witness that He knoweth all the things that can be known, comprehending that which happeneth from the bounds of the earth unto the topmost heavens; no grain in the earth or the heavens is distant from His knowledge. Yea, He knows the creeping of the black ant upon the rugged rock in a dark night, and He perceives the movement of the mote in the midst of the air; He knows the secret and the concealed and has knowledge of the suggestions of the minds and the movements of the thoughts and the concealed things of the inmost parts, by a knowledge which is prior from eternity; He has not ceased to be describable by it, from the ages of the ages, not by a knowledge which renews itself and arises in His essence by arrival and removal.
“We witness that He is a Willer of the things that are, a Director of the things that happen; there does not come about in the world seen or unseen, little or much, small or great, good or evil, advantage or disadvantage, faith or unbelief, knowledge or ignorance, success or loss, increase or diminution, obedience or rebellion, except by His will. What He wills is, and what He wills not is not. Not a glance of one who looks, or a slip of one who thinks is outside of His will; He is the creator, the Bringer back, the Doer of that which He wills. There is no opponent of His command and no repeater of His destiny and no refuge for a creature from disobeying Him, except by His help and His mercy, and no strength to a creature to obey Him except by His will. Even though mankind and the _Jinn_ and the Angels and the _Shaytans_ were to unite to remove a single grain in the world or to bring it to rest without His will, they would be too weak for that. His will subsists in His essence as one of His qualities; He hath not ceased to be described through it as a Willer, in His infinity of the existence of things at their appointed times which He hath decreed. So they come into existence at their appointed times even as He has willed in His infinity without precedence or sequence. They happen according to the agreement of His knowledge and His will, without exchange or change in planning of things, nor with arranging of thoughts or awaiting of time, and therefore one thing does not distract Him from another.
“And we witness that He is a Hearer and a Seer. He hears and sees and no audible thing is distant from His hearing, and no visible thing is far from His seeing, however fine it may be. Distance does not curtain off His hearing and darkness does not dull His seeing; He sees without eyeball or eyelid, and hears without earholes or ears, just as He knows without a brain and seizes without a limb and creates without an instrument, since His qualities do not resemble that quality of created things, just as His essence does not resemble the essences of created things.
“And we witness that He speaks, commanding, forbidding, praising, threatening, with a speech from all eternity, prior, subsisting in His essence, not resembling the speech of created things. It is not a sound which originates through the slipping out of air, or striking of bodies; nor is it a letter which is separated off by closing down a lip or moving a tongue. And the Koran and the _Tawrat_ (the Law of Moses) and the _Injil_ (the Gospel) and the _Zabbur_ (the Psalms) are His books revealed to His Apostles. And the Koran is repeated by tongues, written in copies, preserved in hearts; yet it in spite of that, is prior subsisting in the essence of God, not subject to division and separation through being transferred to hearts and leaves. And Musa heard the speech of God without a sound and without a letter, just as the pious see the essence of God, in the other world without a substance or an attribute.
“And since He has those qualities, He is living, Knowing, Powerful, a Willer, a Hearer, a Seer, a Speaker, through Life, Power, Knowledge, Will, Hearing, Seeing, Speech, not by a thing separated from His essence.
“We witness that there is no entity besides Him, except what is originated from His action and proceeds from His justice, after the most beautiful and perfect and complete and just of ways. He is wise in His actions, just in His determinations; there is no analogy between His justice and the justice of creatures, since tyranny is conceivable in the case of a creature, when he deals with the property of some other than himself, but tyranny is not conceivable in the case of God. For He never encounters any property of some other than Himself so that His dealing with it might be tyranny. Everything besides Him, consisting of men and _Jinn_ and Angels and _Shaytans_ and the heavens and the earth and animals and plants and inanimate things and substance and attribute and things perceived and things felt, is an originated thing, which He created by His power before any other had created it, after it had not existed, and which He invented after that it had not been a thing, since He in eternity was an entity by Himself, and there was not along with Him any other than He. So He originated the creation thereafter, by way of manifestation of His power, and verification of that which had preceded of His Will, and of that which existed in eternity of His Word; not because He has any lack of it or need of it. And He is gracious in creating and in making for the first time and in imposing of duty—not of necessity—and He is generous in befitting; and well-doing and gracious helping belong to Him, since He is able to bring upon His creatures different kinds of punishment and to test them with different varieties of pains and ailments. And if He did that it would be justice on His part, and would not be a vile action or tyranny in Him. He rewardeth His believing creatures for their acts of obedience by a decision which is of generosity and of promise and not of right and of obligation, since no particular action towards any one is incumbent upon Him, and tyranny is inconceivable in Him, and no one possesses a right against Him. And His right to acts of obedience is binding upon the creatures because He has made it binding through the tongues of His prophets, not by reason alone. But He sent apostles and manifested their truth by plain miracles, and they brought His commands and forbiddings and promisings and threatenings. So, belief in them as to what they have brought is incumbent upon the creation.
“The second Word of Witnessing is witnessing that the apostolate belongs to the apostle, and that God sent the unlettered Qurayshite prophet, Mohammed, with his apostolate to the totality of Arabs and foreigners and Jinn and men. And He abrogated by his law the other Laws except so much of them as He confirmed; and made him excellent over the rest of the prophets and made him the Lord of Mankind and declared incomplete the Faith that consists in witnessing the Unity, which is saying, ‘There is no god except God,’ so long as there is not joined that of witnessing to the Apostle, which is saying ‘Mohammed is the Apostle of God.’ And He made obligatory upon the creation belief in Him, as to all which He narrated concerning the things of this world and the next. And then He would not accept the faith of a creature, so long as he did not believe in that which the Prophet narrated concerning things after death. The first of these is the question of Munkar and Nakir; these are two awful and terrible beings who will cause the creature to sit up in his grave, complete, both soul and body; and they will ask him, ‘Who is thy Lord, and what is thy religion (_din_), and who is thy Prophet?’ They are the two testers in the grave and their questioning is the first testing after death. And that he should believe in the punishment of the grave—that it is a Verity and that its judgment upon the body and the soul is just, according to what God wills. And that he should believe in the Balance—it with the two scales and the tongue, the magnitude of which is like unto the stages of the heavens and the earth. In it, deeds are weighed by the power of God Most High; and its weights in that day will be the weight of motes and mustard seeds, to show the exactitude of its justice. The leaves of the good deeds will be placed in a beautiful form in the scale of light; and then the Balance will be weighed down by them according to the measure of their degree with God, by the grace of God. And the leaves of evil deeds will be cast in a vile form into the scale of darkness, and the Balance will be light with them, through the justice of God. And that he should believe that the Bridge (_as-Sirat_) is a Verity; it is a bridge stretched over the back of Hell (_Jahannam_), sharper than a sword and finer than a hair. The feet of the unbelievers slip upon it, by the decree of God, and fall with them into the Fire. But the feet of believers stand firm upon it, by the grace of God, and so they pass into the Abiding Abode. And that he should believe in the Tank (_Hawdh_), to which the people shall go down, the Tank of Mohammed from which the believers shall drink before entering the Garden and after passing the Bridge. Whoever drinks of it a single draught will never thirst again thereafter. Its breadth is a journey of a month; its water is whiter than milk and sweeter than honey; around it are ewers in numbers like the stars of heaven; into it flow two canals from _Al-Kawthar_ (Koran 108). And that he should believe in the Reckoning and in the distinctions between men in it, him with whom it will go hard in the Reckoning and him to whom compassion will be shown therein, and him who enters the Garden without reckoning,—these are the honoured (_muqarrab_). God Most High will ask whomsoever He will of the prophets, concerning the carrying of His message, and whomsoever He will of the unbelievers, concerning the rejection of the messengers; and He will ask the innovators (_Mubtadiʾs_) concerning the Sunna; and the Moslems concerning works. And that he should believe that the attestors of God’s Unity (_muwahhids_) will be brought forth from the Fire, after vengeance has been taken on them, so that there will not remain in Hell an attestor of God’s Unity. And that he should believe in the intercession (_shafaʾa_) of the prophets, next of the learned (_ʿulama_), next of the martyrs, next of the rest of the believers—each according to his dignity and rank with God Most High. And he who remains of the believers, and has no intercessor, shall be brought forth of the grace of God, whose are Might and Majesty. So there shall not abide eternally in the Fire a single believer, but whoever has in his heart the weight of a single grain of faith shall be brought forth therefrom. And that he should confess the excellence of the Companions—May God be well pleased with them—and their rank; and that the most excellent of mankind, after the Prophet is Abu Bakr, next Umar, next Uthman, next Ali—May God be well pleased with them; And that he should think well of all the Companions and should praise them like as he praises God, whose are Might and Majesty, and His Apostles. All this is that which has been handed down in tradition from the Prophet and in narratives from the followers. He who confesses all this, relying upon it, is of the People of the Truth and the Company of the Sunna, and hath separated himself from the band of error and the sect of innovation (_bidʾa_). So we ask from God perfection of certainty and firm standing in the Faith (_din_) for us and for all Moslems through His compassion.—Lo! He is the Most Compassionate!—and may the blessing of God be upon our Lord Mohammed and upon every chosen creature.”
The above is Doctor Macdonald’s careful translation of what Al-Ghazali taught was involved when Moslems say: _There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is Allah’s Apostle._ Surely he gave this shortest of all creeds its full significance and value.
It is necessary, however, not only to see in it the faith of Al-Ghazali but his credulity as well, if we desire to understand the man and his times. Once his early scepticism was overcome, he was always and everywhere an orthodox Moslem, and therefore swallowed the Traditions and the Koran apparently without any philosophic doubt. He believed that Mohammed was the greatest of all the prophets, and that, so he says, “God has established Mohammed’s prophetic character by miracles, such as the splitting of the moon, and the praising of him by stones, the gushing out of water from between his fingers. One of the greatest miracles, proving his divine mission, is the Koran, for none of the Arabs were able to produce anything like it. Another sign of his prophetic character is his being able to foretell things which are to come to pass, such as his victorious entry into Mecca, the defeat of the Greeks and their subsequent victories.” (See the special chapter in the _Ihya_ on this subject.)
He was a predestinarian in the fullest sense. In one place he writes: “When God Almighty let His hands pass over the back of Adam and gathered men into His two hands, He placed some of them in His right hand and the others in His left; then He opened both His hands before Adam, and Adam looked at them and saw them like imperceptible atoms. Then God said: ‘These are destined for Paradise and these are destined for hell-fire.’ He then asked them: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ And they replied: ‘Certainly, we testify that Thou art our Lord.’ God then asked Adam and the angels to be witnesses to the act; after this God replaced them into the loins of Adam. They were at that time purely spiritual beings without bodies. He then caused them to die, but gathered them and kept them in a receptacle near His throne. When the germ of a new being is placed in the womb of the mother, it remains there till its body is sufficiently developed; the soul in the same is then dead yet. When God Almighty breathes into the spirit, He restores to it its most precious part of which it had been deprived while preserved in the receptacle near the throne. This is the first death and the second life. Then God places man in this world till he has reached the term fixed for him.”
The great Mystic was also superstitious. Some of his books deal with magical formulæ taken from the Koran and the medicinal use of its text or of the names of God. One of the most celebrated magic squares used on amulets, etc., is called the “Square of Al-Ghazali” or _Al-Buduh_. It may interest in conclusion to give an account of this form of magic, approved by Al-Ghazali, because it is one of the things by which he is best known among the masses in the world of Islam.
In the older Arabic books on magic this formula plays a comparatively minor part; but after it was taken up by Al-Ghazali and cited in his _Munkidh_ (pp. 46 and 50 of ed. of Cairo, 1303) as an inexplicable, but certain assistance in cases of difficult labour, it came to be universally known as “the three-fold talisman, or seal, or table of Al-Ghazali” (_al-wakf_, _al-khatam_, _al-jadwal_, _al-muthallath lil-Ghazali_) and finally has become the starting point for the whole “Science of Letters” (_ʿIlm ul-huruf_) (_e. g._, Cf. Al-Buni’s Shems ul Muʿarif, A. H. 622). Al-Ghazali is said to have developed the formula, under divine inspiration (_ilham_), from the combinations of letters which open Suras xix. and xlii. of the Koran, and which by themselves are also used as talismans.[55] Others trace the formula back to Adam, from whom it passed down to Al-Ghazali.[56]
For the popular mind _Buduh_ has become a Jinn whose services can be secured by writing his name either in letters or numbers. The uses of the word are most varied to invoke both good and bad fortune. It is used against menorrhagia, against pains in the stomach, to render oneself invisible, against temporary impotence, etc. Lane’s Cairo magician also used it with his ink mirror (“Modern Egyptians,” chap. xii.). We find the same in magical treatises. It is also engraved upon jewels and metal plates or rings which are carried as permanent talismans, and it is inscribed at the beginning of books as a preservative. But by far the most common use is to ensure the arrival of letters and packages.[57] No letter from one pious Moslem to another is ever posted in the Near East without putting the figure 8642 in Arabic on the outside of the envelope where it is sealed. And one may see thousands of children in Egypt who have never heard of Al-Ghazali and cannot read the letters of his name wearing his magic square on lead or silver amulet to protect them from the hideous power of the Child-Witch (Um-as-Subyan). In the Azhar University men study his creed but in the villages they follow his credulity and to all the _fellahin_ of Egypt _Buduh_ has become a guardian Angel!
+---+---+---+ | 4 | 9 | 2 | +---+---+---+ | 3 | 5 | 7 | +---+---+---+ | 8 | 1 | 6 | +---+---+---+
Each letter stands for the number as indicated.
+---+---+---+ | د | ط | ب | +---+---+---+ | ج | ه | ز | +---+---+---+ | ح | ا | و | +---+---+---+
VI
His Writings
“I saw the Prophet in a dream, and he was contending with Moses and Jesus regarding the superiority of excellence of the Imam Al-Ghazali, and saying to them, ‘Have you had in your sects such a learned and righteous man?’ alluding to Al-Ghazali, and they both replied, ‘No.’ The Shaikh, the Imam, one acquainted with God, the Master, the support of religious law and truth, Abu’l-ʾAbbas al-Mursi said, when mention was made of Al-Ghazali, ‘Testimony has been already borne to his great and extreme veracity, and it is sufficient for you (to know) that it was he regarding whom the Prophet contended with Moses and Jesus, _and to whose great and extreme veracity the most truthful have borne testimony_.’”
—_Ad-Damiri’s Hayat al-Hayawan._
“Verily I saw in the Gospel of Jesus (on him be peace) that he said: From the moment the dead is placed on the bier until he rests on the edge of the open grave God Most High asks of him forty questions.”
—_Al-Ghazali in Risalat Ayyuha ’l-walad (sec. 5)._
VI
HIS WRITINGS
More by far is known of Al-Ghazali from his writings than from the records of his life. The meagre facts of the biographers and even the spelling of his name, as we have seen, are disputed. His pen, however, left so large a legacy that many of his works are still found only in rare manuscripts, and have never been published. Moslem writers mention ninety-nine works, and Brockelmann in his “History of Arabic Literature” catalogues sixty-nine which are still in existence. They include systems of theology, eschatology, works on philosophy, lectures on mysticism, on ethics, and on canon law.
Many have assigned to Al-Ghazali the highest position among all Moslem writers. Ismael Ibn Mohammed Al Hadrami says: “Mohammed the son of Abdullah was the Prince of all the Prophets; Mohammed the son of Idris Al-Shafiʾ was the Prince of Imams; but Mohammed the son of Mohammed, the son of Mohammed Al-Ghazali, was the Prince of Writers.”
We have interesting evidence of Al-Ghazali’s position as a writer even in his own day in the precious relic shown in our illustration. In the Arabic Museum at Cairo there is a _maqlama_ or pen-case which once belonged to Al-Ghazali. It was presented to the Museum by M. Kyticas and is made of brass overlaid with silver. It bears the following inscription: “_Made for the library of our Master, the most great and noble Imam, our revered Leader, the Mouthpiece of verity, the greatest Scholar of the world, the King of wise men, the Stay of all living, the Treasury of truth, the most illustrious among his contemporaries, the Restorer of religion_, [an illegible word] _Hujjat ul-Islam, Mohammed Al-Ghazali._”
[Illustration: Pen case of Al Ghazali, made of brass inlaid with silver, preserved in the Arab Museum, Cairo.]
This bronze is the oldest piece of damascened metal work and the only example of that epoch with _naskhi_ inscription in the possession of the Museum. That the case was not made at a later period and presented to Al-Ghazali’s library _after_ his death is evident from the fact that it was the custom to present a book or celestial globe to a library, but not a pen-case or even an inkstand. Then, too, the word “_al-marhum_,” meaning “deceased,” does not appear on it as it does on other objects which were offered in memory of a deceased person. An objection to the authenticity of the bronze is the use of silver in a pen-case designed to be used by a Sufi doctor pledged in some measure to an ascetic life. But this objection may be answered by stating that the case was not made to the order of Al-Ghazali personally, but by his disciples in order to obtain his good-will and patronage.[58]
We need not, moreover, be surprised at the apparent lack of modesty which the inscription on the pen-case indicates. Judging from other instances of this period, Al-Ghazali himself might well have written the inscription.