10 Facts About Ahmad Ghazali

Ahmad Ghazali is best known in the history of Islam for his ideas on love and the meaning of love, expressed primarily in the book Sawaneh.

The younger brother of the better known theologian, jurist, and Sufi, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, Ahmad Ghazali was born in a village near Tus, in Khorasan.

Ahmad Ghazali turned to Sufism while still young, becoming the pupil first of Abu Bakr Nassaj Tusi and then of Abu Ali Farmadi.

Ahmad Ghazali was advanced in Sufism by 1095, and his brother Abu Hamid asked him to teach in his place in the Nezamiya of Baghdad and assume responsibility during his planned absence.

Ahmad Ghazali's thought, centered as it was on the idea of love, left a profound mark on the development of Persian Islamic mystical literature, especially poetry celebrating love.

Ahmad Ghazali's belief that all created beauty is an emanation of divine beauty was likewise Hallajian or neo-Platonic in origin.

Since God is both absolute beauty and the lover of all phenomenal beauty, Ahmad Ghazali maintained, to adore any object of beauty is to participate in a divine act of love.

Ahmad Ghazali travelled extensively in the capacities of both Sufi master and a popular preacher.

Ahmad Ghazali initiated and trained eminent masters of Sufism including Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani, Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi, The latter was the founder of the Suhrawardiyya Order and its derivatives such as the Kubrawiyya, Mevlevi and Ni'matullahi orders.

Ahmad Ghazali died in Qazvin in 1123 or 1126 and is buried there.