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/148



I, p. 12.

From Alexandria Al-Ghazali went to Damascus and then to Nishapur and from there to Bagdad, or from Damascus direct to Bagdad, where he taught the Ihya and preached. As-Subki tells us that the people crowded to hear him, and that notes of his sermons to the number of 183 were taken by one of those present, who read them to Al-Ghazali be fore they were circulated.

The following story is told of his life at this time: Once while teaching the Ihya at Bagdad, he began to quote: " He has made beloved the homes of men, as abodes of desire which the heart has decreed; whenever they remember their homes these remind them of the pledges of youth there, and they long thither." Then he wept, and those present wept with him. Thereafter some one saw him in the open country with a patched dervish garment on, a water-vessel and an iron-shod staff in his hand, all in strange contrast to the states in which he had seen him before, with three hundred pupils around him, including one hundred of the chief men of Bagdad. So he said, " O Imam, is not the teaching of science more fitting?" But Al-Ghazali looked at him with red eyes and said, " When the full moon of happiness rises in the firmament of will, the sun of setting departs in the East of union." Then he recited, " I abandoned the love of Layla and my happiness was far, and I returned to the companionship of my first alight ing-place; then cried to me my longings, Wei