Ahmad al-Ghazali, Remembrance, and the Metaphysics of Love.

AuthorRenard, John
PositionBook review

Ahmad al-Ghazali, Remembrance, and the Metaphysics of Love. By JOSEPH E. B. LUMBARD. SUNY Series in Islam. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2016. Pp. x + 259. $80

Until recently the less famous of the Brothers Ghazali had attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention. Turns out that growing up even posthumously in the long shadow cast by one of the most revered Muslim sages of all, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), is hard. This new study by Joseph Lumbard sheds welcome light on the younger Ahmad (d. 1123), revealing a remarkably creative thinker and author who has at last begun to hold his own under the glare of scholarly interrogation.

Lumbard's chief accomplishments in this study are three. First, he has extracted from a wide range of sources the first (to my knowledge) coherent version of Ahmad's personal religious history. I found Lumbard's thoughtful acknowledgment and critique of the hagiographical dimension of Ahmad's larger narrative particularly interesting. After years in the reflected glow of Abu Hamid, Ahmad not only outshone his sibling in the reverential estimation of some, but became a benchmark against whose spiritual qualifications even earlier stalwarts suddenly found their reputations slipping. More importantly, Lumbard does a very credible job of redressing the lack of historical detail that for so long created a vacuum that only effusive and suspiciously credulous adulation could fill. Lumbard's survey of "Primary Sources for al-Ghazali's Vita" is excellent. The breadth of his coverage of corroborating material, not only regarding hagiographical themes, but across the board, is impressive both in historical sweep and the diversity of authorities he explores. His evaluation of the importance of accounts of Ahmad's "sessions" in rounding out the shaykh's image is noteworthy. Emerging from the welter of evidentiary material is a rich but critically evaluated biography that follows Ahmad from his early years in northeastern Iran, through his gradual westward migration as far as Baghdad, and his continued regional peregrinations as an itinerant preacher that brought him back to northwestern Iran toward the end of his life. Studying with a variety of mentors along the way, both in the "exoteric" religious sciences broadly and Sufism in particular, Ahmad also developed and taught his own distinctive brand of...

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