al-ĠAZZĀLI, ABŪ HĀMID MUḤAMMAD IBN MUḤAMMAD AT-ṬŪSĪ. - One of the greatest philosophers, mystics and theologians of Arabic-speaking Islam, well known to Latin scholasticism and especially to St. Thomas under the name of Algazel or Algazelut. B. at Ṭūs in Khorasan in 1058, d. there in 1111. A professor of theology at Baghdad, having embraced Sufism, he moved to Syria, to Mecca and to other places, wholly dedicated to the ascetic and literary life. Finally, after teaching again at Nishapur in Persia, he retired together with some disciples to a religious life in his native city.
His doctrine is characterized by the primacy granted to the heart and to feeling over the intellect and reason, to religion and revelation over philosophy, to morality and the ascetic life over formalistic rites, to interiority over exteriority. He was therefore an opponent of pure Aristotelianism, although his spirit was thoroughly permeated with the doctrine of Aristotle, the great educator of all Arab thinkers. He reproached Aristotelianism for its inability to demonstrate the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and other fundamental doctrines of the Islamic religion. According to him, superior men must devote themselves to the ascetic and mystical life of Sufism, which would be the only path to moral perfection; one must not, however, fall into the excesses of the pantheistic doctrines of certain mystics. The action of al-G. on Islam was profound and lasting; he infused into it something of the Christian spirit.
His works are numerous. Against the Aristotelianism of the Arab philosophers he wrote the Tahāfut al-falāsifah, Destructio philosophorum. In the Propositions of the Philosophers, a book likewise translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, he gives a brief exposition of logic, physics and metaphysics. The book The Deliverer from Error has an autobiographical character. His principal work, however, is The Revivification of the Sciences of Religion, one of the most remarkable books of Islam, not far in some points from Christianity, whose influence his broad and comprehensive spirit felt to no negligible degree.