Al Ghazali
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
Al-Ghazali, known in Europe as Algazel, was one of the most illustrious Muslim scholars. He was born in 1058 near the city of Tus and died in 1111. He was the son of a poor, illiterate man and as a youth he studied law, theology and philosophy before becoming a teacher of law. He became famous throughout Islam for his eloquence and learning.
Al-Ghazali spent much of his life teaching and writing, staying in Jerusalem, Damascus and Baghdad where he flourished and where he taught at the Nizamiyyah College.
For Al-Ghazali, personal knowledge should spur on to good deeds which please God and lead to salvation. He was also a very influential scholar. His Maqasid Al-Falasifah (The Aims of the philosophers), translated into Latin in the 12th century, became very influential amongst scholastic Christian theologians.
In his thirties, Al-Ghazali became the principal teacher at Madrasah Nizamiyyah of Baghdad, the most renowned institution of learning in eastern Islam 
His ideas on education dominated Islamic educational thought for centuries after his death. He studied the education of the child and the role of the master.
One of the elements Al-Ghazali insisted upon is that a child should be taught the words of the creed in his earliest days and be taught the meaning gradually as he grew older; corresponding to the three stages of memorising, understanding and conviction. The way the child relates to the world at large occupies a large concern in Al-Ghazali's mind. The religion Al-Ghazali preached was a vivid one, full of the love of God on the one hand and of the horrors of sin and hell on the other.
Al-Ghazali's views on religion and faith were written largely in Jerusalem after he secluded himself in the Aqsa Mosque and details on such views are found in the article on the said city.
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