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/149



come! these are the alighting-places of her whom thou lovest, draw up and alight/

Of his spiritual experiences during these ten years of retirement and wandering, and during the years that followed, when he taught others the way of the mystic, we will speak later.

We know that he left Bagdad, returned to Tus, his native place, and settled down to study and con templation. Strange to say, at this time of his life he seems to have found the greatest delight in go ing back again to the study of Tradition, especially the collections of Al-Bokhari and of Muslim. All his biographers seem to agree in this. He had charge of a madrasa and of the khanka or monas tery for Sufis. Every moment was filled with study and devotion until in the fifty-fifth year of his life (lunar calendar) the end came.

The austerity and privations of his long wan derings doubtless wore down his strength. One who had risen to so high a position of authority on religious matters also had to pay the price of leadership in controversy with opponents, and of their envy, and their slander, as we are told by al Ghafir. This may have been, Macdonald thinks, one of the causes for his removal from Nishapur to Tus. A friend remarks in regard to his attitude towards those who opposed his teaching and envied his influence: " However much he met of contra diction and attack and slander, it made no impres sion on him, and he did not trouble himself to an