al-Ghazālī | W. Montgomery Watt (essay date 1963)
W. Montgomery Watt (essay date 1963)
SOURCE: Watt, W. Montgomery. “The World of al-Ghazālī.” In Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali, pp. 7-24. Edinburgh: The Edinburgh University Press, 1963.
[In the following excerpt, Watt provides political, religious, and intellectual background to the education of al-Ghazālī.]
1 THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND
In a sense the background of the life of any individual is the whole previous history of his civilization. For an understanding of al-Ghazālī it will be sufficient to glance briefly at the history of the Islamic empire or caliphate from the death of Muḥammad in 632 to the birth of al-Ghazālī in 1058. In these four centuries four main phases may be distinguished, which may be labelled: conquests; conversion; disintegration; reconstitution. These phases follow one another chronologically, but overlap to some extent.
(1) THE CONQUESTS.
As Muḥammad lay on his...
[The entire page is 6067 words long]
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