Al-Gazali und der Sufismus.

• Author: Frank Griffel
• Position: Book review

Al-Gazali und der Sufi sinus. By MERDAN GONEs. Arabisch-Islamische Welt in Tradition and Moderne, vol. 8. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ, 2011. Pp. 306. [euro]56 (paper). known, a generality, or even a c1iche. His descriptions of Islam and of Sufism are deeply normative("Islam is . . ," "Sufism achieves . . . ,")and convey a contemporary mix of Salafi-inspired Sufi-Islam where Sharia and mysticism are considered the two foundations on which Islam rests (p. 11). These convictions are expressed in sentences such as "The conduct of the [Prophet's] companions is the living example of the Sufis even if those companions have never been called Sufis" (p. 48) or "Zuhd was the manner of living during the early period of Islam" (p. 71).

Gune[section]'s view of al-Ghazali is largely that of W. M. Watt and earlier authors. It depends heavily on al-Ghazalis own creation of his historiography in his apology al-Mungidh min al-dalal. According to this view, al-Ghazali's life as a Sufi began with a conversion in 1095, when he suffered a nervous breakdown and took off for ten years of itinerant wandering. Both elements in al-Ghazali's narrative are, in my opinion, not accurate. The Munqidh remains Gune[section]'s most important source together with passages from the Ihya' 'ulum al-din and Kimiya-i sa'adat that he accesses through Helmut Ritter's German translation, misleadingly titled Das Elixier der Gluckseligkeit. Gune[section] seems to be unaware that this selection contains translations from both the Persian Kimiya and the Arabic lye. His frequent referencing of the text of the Arabic Kimiya al-sa'adat in the Majmu'at-edition of minor works by al-Ghazali seems to be a mere obfuscation of the fact that he could not access al-Ghazali's texts in their original language whenever he quotes Ritter's...