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/32

 istory, in which time is broad as well as long. Al-Ghazali belongs to the small company of torch bearers in the Dark Ages.

He was born at Tus, in Khorasan, Persia, in the year 1058 A. D., and died in 1111 A. D. When Al-Ghazali was born Togrul Bey had just taken Bagdad, Henry IV was Emperor, Nicholas II was Pope, the Norman conquest had just begun in the west, and Asia Minor was overrun by the Turks in the Near East. Among Al-Ghazali’s other contemporaries in the west were Hildebrand the Pope, Abelard, Bernard, Anselm, and Peter the Hermit. About the time he wrote his greatest work, God frey of Bouillon was King of Jerusalem. Al-Ghazali was struggling with the problem of Islam in its relation to the human heart thirsting for God, about two hundred years after Al-Kindi had written his remarkable apology for the Christian faith at the court of Haroun-ar-Rashid and two hundred years before Raymond Lull laid down his life a martyr in North Africa.

The condition of the Moslem world had utterly changed since the days when Busrah with its rival city Kufa were dominated by the victorious Arabs of Omar's Caliphate. The Abbasside Caliphs of the eleventh century were almost as much the shadows of former power as the Emperors of the East; they retained little more than their religious supremacy. Togrul Bey, the grandson of Seljuk, had been confirmed by the powerless Caliph Al-