INTELECTUAL GOLDEN AGES

Part 2
 Geography

Just as astronomy grew out of mathematics, geography grew out of

astronomy. Few empires in history spanned an area the size of the Muslim
world in the Golden Age. With a generally unified political system extending
across such a wide area, long-distance travel became safe and relatively
common. It is no wonder, then, that Muslims would emerge as some of the
leading geographers of the middle Ages.

The old myth that Christopher Columbus discovered that the earth is round is
just that—a myth. It had in fact been accepted since ancient times that the
earth was not flat. Sailors were particularly aware, since they could see the
lower part of a boat descend under the horizon before its masts as it sailed
away. The ancient Greeks even attempted to calculate the size of the earth,
although they grossly underestimated the size of the Atlantic Ocean, leading
to a much smaller number than the earth's actual size. Geographers working
in the Abbasid caliphate came to much more accurate conclusions. Using
trigonometry and spherical geometry they calculated that the earth is 12,728
kilometers in diameter—they were off by a mere 37 kilometers. Furthermore
they calculated the earth's circumference to be 39,968 kilometers, when in
actuality it is 40,074 kilometers. Without modern satellites and telescopes,
these calculations can only be described as astounding.

During the 1300s, Ibn Battuta, a scholar of Islamic law from Morocco,
traveled over 170,000 kilometers. His journeys included West Africa,
India, China and Southeast Asia.

Islamic geography was not limited solely to calculations of the earth's size.
Great effort was also put into mapping the world. Ancient Greek maps
(particularly Ptolemy's) were expanded upon and improved. One of the best
examples is the atlas made by Muhammad al-Idrisi, who lived in twelfth-
century Sicily. Although Sicily had previously been part of the Muslim world
until its conquest by the Normans in the late eleventh century, the reigning
king in al-Idrisi's time, Roger II, was a tolerant and well-informed sovereign.
Under his patronage, al-Idrisi produced a world map unrivaled in its accuracy
and detail in the Middle Ages. For hundreds of years afterwards, it was the
benchmark by which other maps were judged. It was not only a drawing of the
physical geography of the known world, but it also included descriptions of the
cultures, politics, and societies of the various regions to which explorers had
travelled.

Just as fascinating to Muslim geographers as the known world was what was
unknown. Western mythology holds up Christopher Columbus as the great
explorer who was the first to brave the vast Atlantic Ocean to discover the
New World in 1492. Besides narratives of his "discovery" discounting the fact
that natives had been living there for centuries, and that there is very strong
evidence that Vikings ventured to what is now Canada in the tenth century,

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 there is mounting evidence of Muslim trans-Atlantic voyages hundreds of
years before Columbus. In the mid-tenth century, the great geographer and
historian al-Masʿudi wrote of a voyage from Muslim Iberia in 889 that sailed
west from the port of Delba—the same port from which Columbus would
sail—for months until it happened upon a very large, previously unknown
landmass. His account states that they traded with the locals and then
returned home. Al-Masʿudi‘s world map even includes an ―unknown land‖
across the Atlantic Ocean because of this account. Another account is
recorded by al-Idrisi, who wrote that a group of Muslim sailors ventured for
thirty-one days across the Atlantic Ocean and landed on an unknown island.
They were taken captive by the local natives, but eventually freed when one
of the natives who spoke Arabic was able to mediate between the two groups
and arrange for their release. A final report of a trans-Atlantic voyage comes
from Mali, the Muslim kingdom in West Africa that peaked in the fourteenth
century. As told to Ibn Battuta, the great Muslim traveler, 200 ships sailed
west from the coast of Africa to discover the unknown. When only one
returned, it reported they had found land across the ocean but had to turn
back because of a storm. The king of Mali, Mansa Abu Bakr, reportedly
outfitted 2000 ships this time, sailed with them into the Atlantic Ocean and
was never heard from again. These stories of Muslim voyages across the
ocean are certainly not definitive proof of trans-Atlantic contact before
Columbus. But the fact that they are recorded by geographers known for their
insistence on accuracy, coupled with allusions to Muslim communities in the
Americas found in the journals of the first generation of European explorers of
the New World, point to possibilities which could entirely rewrite the accepted
history of the Age of Discovery.

Medicine

Common misperceptions about the history of medicine include the belief that
it was mostly guesswork until the past few hundred years. Mental images of
charlatan medical ―experts‖ selling their phony cure-alls come to mind when
thinking about medicine before the twentieth century. In actuality, however,
there exists a long medical tradition in the Muslim world that was based on
earlier Greek knowledge that emphasized empirical study and clinical
professionalism. While this is lost in the modern popular imagination, there
still exist writings from some of the greatest medical minds the world has ever
known who lived and practiced in the Muslim Golden Age. Their work points
to an era of medical enlightenment and advancement that forms the basis of
modern medicine.

In the tenth century, Baghdad instituted a licensing

exam that all doctors had to take before practicing
as physicians.

Muslim advances in medicine picked up where the ancient Greek physician,

Galen, left off. Galen was the giant of this field in ancient times. This second
century CE physician and philosopher wrote extensively on medicine,

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 And supported the theory that the body is composed of four humors: blood,
black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. According to him, diseases were caused
by an imbalance of these fluids in the body. Although some of his ideas were
revolutionary in his time, others were seriously flawed. Despite this, he was
uncritically accepted by physicians for hundreds of years after his death.

The first to critically challenge the ideas of Galen was Muhammad ibn Zakariya
al-Razi, who lived in the ninth century. Based in Baghdad, he was a strong
proponent of a rational, instead of theoretical, understanding of the human body.
In his bluntly titled Doubts About Galen, he concluded that physical ailments
could not simply be attributed to an imbalance among the humors or to
punishment from God as Middle Age Europeans believed, but to certain
external and internal factors that must be resolved in order to treat the problem.
Along these lines, he developed specific and effective cures for common
problems such as coughs, headaches, and constipation. But he was not limited
to simply treating the symptoms or physical causes of ailments. His giant
medical encyclopedia, The Virtuous Life, extols the importance of dedication to
the field of medicine and constant improvement and learning. Furthermore, he
believed that medical practice is a sacred endeavor, and that doctors are
entrusted by God to do good to anyone who requires it, even their enemies or
those who cannot afford attention. He was known for treating poor patients free
of charge in Baghdad‘s famous hospitals. His works were widely disseminated,
and helped guide future generations of physicians in the Muslim world and
Europe for centuries.

The next great Muslim physician, and perhaps the most well-known, was Ibn
Sina, known as Avicenna in Medieval Europe. Despite constantly moving from
city to city in the turbulent political environment of Persia in the early 1000s, he
managed to have one of the most accomplished careers of any polymath of the
Muslim Golden Age. He applied the rational approach to science that Muslims
were taking in other fields to medicine, giving him insight that others, including
al-Razi, lacked. He formulated a theory that everything in the body can be
understood through a causal chain of events. While this may seem like common
sense in today‘s scientifically advanced world, it was a new idea in the early
eleventh century; one that Ibn Sina was keen to prove. Based on years of
clinical observation and scientific study, he concluded that diseases can be
spread through air, water or soil. Furthermore, each disease had unique
characteristics and thus must be treated in a unique way. He was one of the
first to promote experimental medicine, and in his monumental work, The
Canon of Medicine, he insisted that drugs be tested under controlled conditions
and not be trusted simply based on theory. Drugs that were not universally
effective, or could not be proven to actually treat a disease meant nothing to
him, as he believed medicine was a science of observation and rationalism, not
mysticism and luck. His Canon became the standard textbook for anyone
desiring to learn about medicine in the Muslim world and beyond. European
medical schools relied on Latin translations of it into the seventeenth century,
and, in the Yuan Dynasty (thirteenth- and fourteenth-century), it was translated
into Chinese by the sizeable Muslim community in China. It is easy to
understand why the Canon enjoyed such widespread popularity and reverence.

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 Ibn Sina‘s greatest work was not simply a handbook of common ailments and
cures. It was a complete medical encyclopedia. Descriptions can be found in it
of anesthesia, breast cancer, rabies, toxins, ulcers, kidney disease, and
tuberculosis. Beyond this, Ibn Sina wrote about the connection between mental
and physical health, and concluded that negative thoughts can cause illness
just as much as other factors such as toxins, injury or diet. Today the possibility
of a connection between mind and body is attributed to the first generation of
psychologists like Freud and Jung. In reality, it was a possibility that seemed
very real to Ibn Sina and other physicians and philosophers of his time.

In 872, the ruler of Egypt, Ahmad ibn Tulun, spent 60,000

gold dinars establishing a hospital in Fustat. It provided free
healthcare to the public and included a ward for mental
Illness patients.

The greatest medical minds of all time would not have been able to accomplish
great feats without the support of great institutions. The Muslim world of the
Golden Ages, with its vast financial resources and strong political institutions,
established some of the first hospitals in history. The impetus to build hospitals
came from the need to care for the health of poorer citizens. The wealthy were
able to hire private physicians and pay for home treatment, but the poor had no
such luxury. To provide for them, caliphs and emirs established large
institutions in the great cities of the Muslim world aimed at providing affordable
or free healthcare to anyone who would need it.

In the early ninth century, the first hospitals began to appear in Baghdad. As
the hospitals grew over time, they began to resemble modern hospitals in size
and scope. Hospitals had dozens of doctors and nurses, including specialists
and surgeons. They contained outpatient centers, psychiatric wards, surgery
centers and maternity wards. Perhaps the biggest difference was that the
hospitals of that era were free to those who could not afford it; a far cry from the
revenue-fueled hospitals of today. To the patrons of these hospitals, the
Prophetic example of compassion was clear. In their eyes, a society based on
Islam was expected to care for all its citizens, regardless of wealth, race or even
religion. After first being established in Baghdad, these enlightened institutions
of healing spread to the rest of the Muslim world's major cities throughout the
tenth to fourteenth centuries. Hospitals could be found in Cairo, Damascus,
Baghdad, Mecca, Medina, and even distant Granada in Iberia. The Ottomans
would later carry on this tradition of public hospitals, and it was during their long
reign that Europe would begin to catch up, and even surpass, the Muslim world.

In the 1200s, Ibn al-Nafis wrote that blood

circulates from the heart to thelungs where it
absorbs oxygen and then back to the heart and
the rest of the body.

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 The Renaissance saw a move to translate hundreds of Arabic texts into Latin
in the great cultural and scientific centers such as Padua and Bologna.
Europeans were able to further advance the knowledge of giants such as Al
Razi and Ibn Sina, who advanced the knowledge of Galen and Hippocrates.
Today's medical knowledge and institutions come largely from the West, but
are based on the earlier Muslim medical tradition, which in turn was based on
ancient Greece. The clash of civilizations narrative that is promoted by
extremists on both sides of modern conflicts neglects examples of cross-
cultural intellectual traditions such as this.

Physics

Mathematics only took Muslim scientists so far. If they truly wanted to

understand the principles through which God controls the universe, the ideas
formulated by mathematicians had to be applied to the real world. That is where
the talented crop of Muslim physicists came in; like in other fields, Muslim
physicists built on earlier advance by ancient civilizations, whose works were
translated into Arabic. Drawing on various intellectual traditions as well as the
wide range of sciences that the Muslim world was at the leading edge of, the
physicists of the Golden Age developed some of the core concepts of the
subject. Their work helped lay the foundation that giants such as Newton and
Einstein built upon.

One of the primary scientists who contributed to this continuous intellectual

tradition was Ibn al-Haytham, who lived from 965 to 1040. He was originally
from Iraq, and early in his life he worked as a civil official in the Abbasid
government, but soon abandoned the post to join a promising intellectual center
in Cairo, the capital of the rival Fatimid Empire. After running afoul of the
Fatimid ruler, he was put under house arrest in Cairo, which proved to be a
blessing for him, and the field of physics itself. While contained within his home,
Ibn al-Haytham was able to focus his efforts and studies on light. Since ancient
times the study of light and its properties had perplexed even the brightest
minds. One of the leading ideas about light in Ibn al-Haytham‘s time was
promoted by Ptolemy, who argued that light is a ray that is emitted from the eye,
bounces off objects, and comes back into the eye, allowing someone to see.
The ancient Greek tradition of understanding the world entirely through
philosophy ran contrary to the beliefs of Ibn al-Haytham, who advocated that
scientific theory be formulated through empirical study and experimentation.
Thus, he ran hundreds of experiments on the nature of light. By relying less on
philosophy and more on science, he concluded that Ptolemy‘s theory of light
being emitted from the eye was simply impossible. Rather, he argued that light
comes from an object and enters the eye, where the numerous rays of light are
processed by the mind to understand how light travels through them. Ibn al-
Haytham was conducting similar experiments in Egypt.

After years of hard work, research and experimentation, Ibn al-Haytham wrote a
book that was groundbreaking at the time. In his Book of Optics, Ibn al-Haytham
argued that light was composed of rays, which travelled in straight lines.
He furthered this idea by building the Camera Obscura, a device which consists
of a lightproof box, through which a tiny hole (an aperture) is punctured.

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 On the wall inside the box opposite the hole, an image depicting whatever the
hole is pointing at is projected. He argued that this is only possible if straight
rays of light were coming from objects outside the box, were focused by the
aperture, and landed on the opposite wall. Ibn al-Haytham lacked the
technology necessary to advance his Camera Obscura a step further into the
modern cameras that can capture images today. But without his pioneering
study in optics, cameras would not be possible 1000 years later. He also
managed to bring together the fields of optics and astronomy in his calculations
on the depth of the earth‘s atmosphere. Using principles he derived regarding
the properties of refracted light, he concluded that at sunset, the color of the sky
changes based on the angle at which the sun‘s rays hit the atmosphere. Based
on the colors and the sun‘s position in relation to the earth at numerous times,
he came up with a calculation for the depth of the atmosphere that was not off
by much. It was not until spacecraft from the United States and the Soviet Union
blasted off into the skies that they were able to verify his calculations.

Ibn al-Haytham‘s scientific achievements can fill volumes on their own, and
indeed they did. He reportedly wrote over 200 books, but no more than a few
dozen survive today. He pioneered work in magnifying lenses, the laws of
motion, analytical geometry, calculus, astronomy, and even experimental
psychology. When taking all of his accomplishments together, one can truly
appreciate the real legacy of Ibn al-Haytham: the scientific method. Today, this
method is the technique through which all scientists acquire scientific
knowledge. Ibn al-Haytham's absolute reliance on observation and
experimentation—which we now call the scientific method—separated the
sciences from the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The modern world‘s
understanding of the entire field of science is based on the methods initiated by
this intellectual giant. In explaining why he dove so deep into scientific study,
Ibn al-Haytham concluded, ―I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it
became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to
God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.‖

After Ibn al-Haytham‘s death, Muslim scientists continued to build on his

discoveries and find practical uses for them. New inventions and improvements
on old devices were constantly popping up, from improved water clocks to
chemistry laboratory equipment. Crankshafts, water pumps, eyeglasses,
compasses, gliders, drinking glasses and even water-powered robots all
appeared in the Muslim world by the thirteenth century. The list goes on. What
is important to note is that through the advanced study of the sciences, a
technological revolution occurred in the Muslim world. When the light began to
dim on Muslim scientific creativity—as the Crusaders and the Mongols wreaked
havoc on the Muslim heartland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—Christian
Europe picked it up. There, another scientific revolution was spurred from the
works of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, all of whom were familiar with earlier
Islamic scientific literature and were almost certainly influenced by it.

In the twelfth century, a Muslim inventor, al-Jazari, designed

and built numerous automatic machines. Among them were
automatic hand-washing systems, clocks and even musical
robots powered by water.

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 Fiqh and Hadith

With the development of empirical sciences came the development of the

Islamic sciences. Through the in-depth study of the Quran and the actions of
the Prophet, scholars began to formulate the field of fiqh—Islamic jurisprudence.
Contrary to modern understandings of secular law, fiqh applies to everything
from criminal law to how worship should be conducted and what foods are
acceptable to eat. The challenge for scholars of fiqh was how to adapt the rules
set forth by Muhammad in the early 600s to the dynamic world that Muslim
civilization found itself in during the successive centuries. From this challenge,
different interpretations of fiqh developed, propagated by different scholars in
different places, but all aiming to understand and apply the Quran and prophetic
example as authentically as possible. These interpretations became schools of
legal thought, known as madahib (singular: madhab).

The need for interpretations of fiqh developed from the changing nature of
Islamic society in the decades after Muhammad‘s life. The first generation after
the Prophet could rely on how they saw him practice, but by the late 600s,
barely anyone was left who could remember his life and actions. As Islam
spread thousands of kilometers in all directions and new converts to Islam
began to populate the major cities of the Muslim world, the need arose to
interpret Islamic law in a systematic way, facilitating everything from worship to
business transactions. As scholars began to address the subject of fiqh in the
eighth century, difference of opinion arose regarding what could be considered
a source of law. No one disagreed that the Quran and Muhammad‘s actions,
known as the hadith, were the top two resources to rely on. But what if a subject
was not addressed in either of those? Here the jurists differed.

The first of these scholars, Abu Hanifa (699–767), began to introduce the idea
that rational thought should play a major role in the development of fiqh. If a
topic was not addressed in the Quran or hadith, he argued, then jurists specially
trained in fiqh should exercise their best judgment (ijtihad) in coming up with a
ruling, basing it on what Muhammad would have done. It is perhaps no surprise
that Abu Hanifa‘s ideas were most popular in Iraq, where the rationalist thinking
of al-Ma‘mun helped establish the House of Wisdom just a few decades later.
The second great jurist, Malik (711–795), was a contemporary of Abu Hanifa,
but lived in Medina, the city where the Prophet himself had lived and preached.
Contrary to other scholars of his time, he believed that since most of the people
living in Medina at his time were descendants of Companions, their actions
could be considered a source of law, since they must have learned from their
parents, who learned from the Prophet. His rationale in using the traditions of
Medina‘s citizens and strict adherence to the hadith instead of reason was not
accepted by all, but he did build a substantial following, including the Abbasid
caliph Harun al-Rashid.
The third great jurist, Muhammad al-Shafi‘i (767–820), studied the Hanafi
tradition in Iraq and the Maliki tradition in Medina, and was able to build on top
of the ideas of both Abu Hanifa and Malik.

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 While he agreed that ijtihad was necessary, he argued that it should only be
used when making an analogy between a situation Muhammad addressed and
a modern issue. His balanced approach proved very popular, and caused him
to be hailed as the father of usul al-fiqh (Principles of Jurisprudence)—the
foundation of fiqh. The last of the great jurists, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855),
was a student of al-Shafi‘i, and tended to lean more towards strict reliance on
the hadith than ijtihad. His focus on hadith helped further develop that science,
which was perfected under his student, Muhammad al-Bukhari.

The wife of the great fifteenth century scholar of hadith, Ibn

Hajar al-Asqalani, was a scholar in her own right. Anas Khatun
regularly gave public lectures that were attended by men and
women.

Based on the principles set forth by these four jurists, four major madahib of fiqh
developed: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali schools of jurisprudence.
These schools were certainly not differing sects within Islam, but rather different
interpretations of Islamic law. In the end, they all aimed for the same goal:
practicing Islam as authentically as possible even in contexts different from that
in which Muhammad lived. Today, these four schools are still followed by over
one billion Muslims. The Hanafi school is most popular in the Indian
subcontinent, Central Asia, Turkey and the Balkans; the Maliki school has
prominence in North and West Africa; the Shafi‘i school is practiced in the
Levant, Egypt, East Africa and Southeast Asia; and the Hanbali, the smallest, is
mostly confined to the Arabian Peninsula. In Muslim immigrant communities in
Europe and North America, all four schools mingle, leading to new challenges
of how to apply Islamic jurisprudence in diverse communities.

As a natural outgrowth of the science of fiqh, the study of hadith itself became
more prominent in the early Abbasid era. For the most part, sayings of the
Prophet were passed down by word of mouth. People would say that they heard
from person x who heard from person y who heard from person z who heard
from a Companion who heard from the Prophet such and such. While it seems
that most Muslims did their best to faithfully narrate what they had heard, some
doubts began to creep in regarding the authenticity of the hadith corpus as
generations passed. There were even claims that some hadith were entirely
fabricated to begin with and were never uttered by Muhammad. Into this
scholastic fray stepped Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870), who recognized the
threat that such doubts about the hadith posed. He was the first to pioneer a
scientific approach to determining the authenticity of an individual hadith. Like
the pioneering Muslim scientists working at the same time, al-Bukhari refused to
accept anything purely on faith and insisted on an empirical, organized method
in his analysis. In al-Bukhari‘s mind, in order for a hadith to be considered
authentic, both the wording of the hadith itself and the chain of narrators going
back to Muhammad had to be verified. Placing special emphasis on the
narrators, al-Bukhari meticulously researched the lives of the people who
passed on hadiths. If one person in that chain was known to have ever lied,

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 acted dishonestly or openly disobeyed Islamic law, al-Bukhari would refuse to
accept that hadith as authentic. After a life of careful study of the lives of
hadith narrators, al-Bukhari compiled an anthology of over 7,000 hadiths which
he considered to be entirely authentic. His methods were almost unanimously
accepted by Muslim scholars, and his compilation came to be known as Sahih
al-Bukhari, meaning the Authentic [Hadiths] of al-Bukhari. Today, Sahih al-
Bukhari is considered by most Muslims to be the most authentic book after the
Quran itself.

Theology

At its core, Islamic theology is relatively straightforward; it is based on the belief

in the absolute unity of God and the finality of Muhammad‘s message. Belief in
this implies acceptance of the Quran as the Word of God and the hadith as
divinely-inspired guidance. According to traditional Islamic thought, these two
sources provided all that was needed for Muslims to live in accordance with the
Will of God and achieve eternal happiness in Paradise. But in the middle of the
eighth century, a new approach to religion itself began to emerge. As Muslims
translated the scientific texts of ancient Greece, they also translated their
philosophical works. A new generation of Muslim philosophers began to believe
that rationalism could be used to discover divine truths. In their view,
conclusions that they came to using logic and philosophy were on the same
level as the Quran itself. Some even posited that logic could override revelation
in some cases. This group became known as the Mu’tazila, meaning ―those
who separated‖, due to their divergence from mainstream Islamic ideology.
Indeed, their philosophical conclusions were far from mainstream Islamic belief.
They advocated that the Quran was not the literal Word of God, but rather that it
was a creation, just like the created universe. Furthermore, they believed that
God is limited by the attributes he is described as having in the Quran. To them,
God is not omnipotent. Thus, on the topic of freewill versus predestination, they
argued in support of absolute freewill, even arguing that God Himself cannot
control the future and is not aware of what will happen.

As Mu‘tazili ideas began to spread among intellectual circles, a reaction came

from scholars concerned with the theological implications of such ideas. To the
more traditional, orthodox-minded Muslims, the Quran and hadith gave
humanity all the truth and guidance it needed and using philosophy to come up
with divine truths was not only unnecessary, but also dangerous. Leading this
traditionalist charge in the early 800s was Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the same scholar
who founded the Hanbali school of fiqh. Despite persecution by the Abbasid
caliph al-Ma'mun, who was a major patron of Mu'tazili ideology, Ibn Hanbal
argued in favor of a strict, literal interpretation of the Quran and hadith when it
came to theology. In his mind, there was no room for philosophical reasoning,
especially when it led to conclusions that contradicted what the Quran states as
true. As such, Ibn Hanbal advocated that God's attributes should be taken
literally and not questioned.

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 So if the Quran says that God is the All-Seeing, then God is All-Seeing, and no
one should try to understand how God sees all or rationalize how it is
possible.Ibn Hanbal's strict approach to the subject won him followers and
managed to slow the spread of Mu'tazili beliefs, but they continued to be
popular in academic circles until another approach at combating them arose.

"Great indeed is the crime against religion committed by

anyone who supposes that Islam is to be championed
by the denial of mathematical sciences."
- Imam al-Ghazali

While the literal approach reemphasized the authority of the Quran and hadith
in the face of philosophical reasoning, it failed to combat the specific ideas of
the Mu'tazila. This changed when the tenth-century thinker al-Ash'ari began to
advocate a defense of traditional beliefs using reason. While he believed in a
literal interpretation of the Quran like ibn Hanbal, he believed there was no harm
in using philosophical reasoning to defend that interpretation. His approach to
theology became known as the Ash'ari school, and his method of rational
discourse known as kalam. Using this framework, traditionalists began to attack
individual Mu'tazili arguments, using the logic that the Mu'tazila themselves held
in such high esteem. The greatest of these traditional-minded scholars was Abu
Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), who is sometimes credited as the most
influential Muslim in history after the Prophet and Companions. Having studied
both Mu'tazila and Ash'ari thought in depth, he was well versed in the numerous
theological arguments back and forth between the two, as well as in various
other approaches to religion in general. He argued that one's faith should not be
based entirely on philosophical reasoning, but that logic had its place in the
defense of traditional ideas when needed. He cautioned, however, against the
use of philosophy by those without a firm foundation in traditional Islamic belief.

According to his autobiography, he concluded that the true path to God was
through absolute obedience to God and purification of the soul from worldly
desires. This emphasis on purification was a major focus of the Sufis, a diverse
spiritual group insistent on emotional detachment from this world in an effort to
achieve nearness to God. Al-Ghazali's work helped finally turn back the tide of
the Mu'tazila school, which retreated into oblivion in the centuries after al-
Ghazali.Simultaneously, the Sufism advocated by al-Ghazali became incredibly
popular and became a major movement in almost all Muslim Lands.

Shi'ism

While most of the Muslim world accepted the approaches to fiqh and hadith
taken by its leading scholars, a minority rejected them altogether. Their
departure from the mainstream Muslim community was originally political, but
over time a religious dimension evolved. The group that believed ‗Ali and his
descendants had the most right to the caliphate began to develop divergent
thoughts on Islamic law and hadith that stemmed from the political differences
of the early caliphate. This group called themselves Shi‘at ‗Ali, meaning The

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 Party of ‗Ali, but is colloquially called the Shi‘a.For the Shi‘a, it all stemmed
from the election of Abu Bakr as caliph on the day the Prophet died. In the
meeting where ‗Umar historically nominated Abu Bakr and gave an oath of
allegiance to him, ‗Ali was absent. While ‗Ali himself accepted Abu Bakr‘s
caliphate, later generations of Shi‘a began to question its legitimacy. In their
eyes, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet should have been at that
meeting and should have been elected as the first caliph. This led to a belief
that Abu Bakr, ‗Umar, and all who supported them (excluding ‗Ali, of course)
were usurpers, who denied the family of the Prophet their rightful role as
leaders of the Muslim Umma. To the Shi‘a, the entire concept of the caliphate
was void. Instead, they advocated that the Muslim world should be ruled by a
descendant of Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah, who was married to
‗Ali. These leaders were dubbed imams. Instead of a caliphate, the Shi‘a
promoted an imamate in which only descendants of ‗Ali had the right to rule.
The Shi‘a considered ‗Ali as the first imam, while his sons Hasan and Husayn
were the second and third, respectively.

Even with their belief in an imamate instead of a caliphate, the Shi‘a were not
yet a separate sect of Islam. The imamate was simply a political concept
which did not automatically have any religious implications. In fact, Umayyad
and Abbasid caliphs were commonly referred to as imams as well. In order for
the Shi‘a to be considered a religious group instead of just a political one, their
arguments about the first caliphs had to go a step further. That step was the
idea that if Abu Bakr and his supporters were usurpers, then any hadith
narrated by them could not be trusted. This argument carried huge religious
implications.
People who supported Abu Bakr‘s caliphate narrated the vast majority of the
hadith that was accepted by Muslim scholars. The Prophet‘s wife Aisha and
his neighbor Abu Hurairah together accounted for hundreds of the
hadith listed in Sahih al-Bukhari. To the Shi‘a, these hadith could not be
trusted because of their political support for Abu Bakr, ‗Umar and ‗Uthman. To
fill the void created by the rejection of thousands of hadith, the Shi‘a elevated
the sayings of the imams to a level just below, or in some cases equal, to the
Prophet‘s sayings. To the rest of the Muslim world, this was blasphemy. But to
the Shi‘a, the imams, due to their special lineage, were infallible interpreters of
religion, given special knowledge directly from God. Much of this ideology
seems to have been influenced by the Mu‘tazili philosophy. Whereas in
orthodox approaches to Islam, the idea of humans with a special semi-divine
status was unheard of, the neo-Platonic ideas of some of the major
philosophers of the early Abbasid age could help the Shi‘a legitimize their
imamate from a theological perspective.
The main branch of Shi‘ism is known as the ithna’ashariyyah—the
Twelvers—due to their belief that there were twelve imams after Muhammad.
According to them, the line of imams ended with Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi,
who went into hiding when he was just five years old in 874. Thus began the
period known as the ―Minor Occultation‖, during which special representatives
were able to remain in communication with him and receive guidance for the
Shi‘a community. In 941, however, it was announced that al-Mahdi had gone
into the ―Greater Occultation‖, and further communication with the hidden
imam became impossible. The Shi‘a believe that the hidden imam will only

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 return at the end of time to inaugurate a utopian era under his leadership.
Until he returns, however, Twelvers insist that guidance can be found in the
Quran, the hadith compilations that they accept as authentic, and the actions
and beliefs of the twelve imams. The Twelvers were not the only Shi‘a group
to have developed in the turbulent early Abbasid age. Another group believed
in only seven imams, and thus came to be known as the Sab’iyyah—Sevens.
The Seveners were much more successful politically than their Twelver
cousins, and the tenth century saw the rise of major Seveners Shi‘a states in
eastern Arabia and Egypt. The smallest of the Shi‘a groups believe in only five
imams, and are generally known as the Zaydis, due to their acceptance of
Hussein‘s grandson, Zayd, as the final imam. The Zaydis share much in
common with mainstream Islam, and are generally much more moderate in
their views on the early caliphate than the Seveners and Twelvers.
Shi‘a ideas never caught on in the way their proponents had hoped. Despite
intense vigor in preaching and appeals to Muslim emotion by invoking the
conflicts of ‗Ali and Husayn, the majority of the Muslim world did not accept
the theological and juristic deviations of Shi‘ism. In fact, for much of the
mainstream, majority Muslim body, Shi‘a ideology posed a grave danger to
Islam itself. After all, since the beginning the Islamic movement had
considered itself unique. The Quran described in detail how previous nations
who were sent prophets had changed the message and corrupted it to suit
their needs, citing Jews and Christians as prime examples.

According to Islamic belief, Muhammad had been sent as the final prophet
with a pure message that could not be changed or distorted, as previous
messages had. When this internal intellectual force began to threaten the
sanctity of the Islamic movement, the reaction was largely negative. Besides
political persecution by the Abbasid government, mainstream theologians
rushed to refute Shi‘a ideology, and dubbed themselves Ahl us-Sunnah wal-
Jama’ah (literally: the people who follow the example of the prophet and the
consensus of the community), shortened to Sunni. The most influential of
these theologians is Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, the same al-Ghazali who spent
much time refuting the Mu‘tazili arguments of the philosophers. With the
combination of intellectual arguments and political-military defeat of Shi‘a
states in the twelfth century, Shi‘ism waned in popularity from the 1100s. It
was not until the rise of the Safavid Empire in the early 1500s that Shi‘ism
would again become a major force in the Muslim world.

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