Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/101



carpets, brilliant lights, and a skilful minstrel with the eye and neck of a gazelle? "

From all this we can imagine what Al-Ghazali enjoyed when he went to dine with the Nizam Al Mulk or other men of wealth and there was no famine in Bagdad!

The Nizamiyya College which Al-Ghazali at tended and in which he was one of the leading lecturers at two periods of his life, was built on the eastern river bank of the Tigris, near the Bridge of Boats and close to the wharf and the large market-place. The college was founded in A. D. 1065, being especially established for the teaching of Shafi ite law. Close to the college was another college called the Bahaiyah and the Hos pital Maristan Tutushi.

The traveller, Ibn Jubayr, attended prayers in the Nizamiyya on the first Friday after his arrival in Bagdad, in the year 581 (A. D. 1185), and he describes it as the most splendid of the thirty and odd colleges which then adorned the City of East Bagdad. . . . Ibn Jubayr further reports that in his day the endowments derived from domains and rents belonging to the college amply sufficed both to pay the stipends of professors and to keep the building in good order, besides supplying an extra fund for the sustenance of poor scholars. The Suk, or market of the Nizamiyya, was one of the great thoroughfares of this quarter, and it is described as lying adjacent to the " Mashra ah " or