Ahmad ibn Salih al-Jaylī said in his Taʾrīkh (History): “Abū Ḥāmid, surnamed al-Ghazālī, excelled in fiqh (jurisprudence). He possessed keen intelligence, quick insight, initiative, and a gift for crafting discourse and organizing ideas, and he immersed himself in the sciences of the ancients.

He goes on: The terminology of those philosophers came to dominate his writings. He was summoned to teach at the Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad in the year 484 AH, and he remained there until the urge for seclusion overcame him; he left off teaching, dressed in coarse clothing, and curtailed his food.

He continues: He took up residence in Jerusalem, and there—that is, in Damascus—he began al-Iḥyāʾ (The Revival of the Religious Sciences). He performed ḥajj and made the visitation, then returned to Baghdad, where his book al-Iḥyāʾ and others were read aloud from his own lips—so he had indeed transmitted them. Al-Jaylī then listed his writings.

I have examined the book al-Kashf wa-l-Inbāʾ ʿan Kitāb al-Iḥyāʾ (Unveiling and Clarification Concerning the Book “The Revival”) by al-Māzarī. It opens: “Praise be to Allah, who has illumined the truth and given it ascendancy, and has shattered falsehood and effaced it.” Al-Māzarī then set forth a number of points on which he criticized Abū Ḥāmid, saying:

“I truly marvel at a group of Mālikīs who know that Imām Mālik used to flee from defining matters precisely and deliberately avoided laying down fixed formulations—even when some report or analogy supported them—out of scrupulousness and caution against issuing fatwas that would bind people. Yet they are pleased with a man whose legal opinions rest on something that has no real substance. His book contains many reports from the Prophet ﷺ in which the sound is intertwined with the unsound; likewise, what he cites from the early generations cannot all be authenticated. He has also inserted flashes of inspiration from the saints and breathings of the elect—matters of lofty worth—but he has blended the beneficial with the harmful, such as unqualified expressions he attributes to some of them that may not be uttered because of their offensiveness. If their meanings are taken at face value, they resemble cryptic hints that feed the cavils of heretics; and those meanings cannot be directed toward the truth except by forcing the language—something scholars would never undertake except with the speech of the Lawgiver himself, whose miracles proving his truthfulness and precluding ignorance or falsehood compel them to seek figurative interpretation—such as his saying: ‘Truly the heart is between two fingers…’”