Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali was born in 1058 CE in Tus, a city in the Khurasan region of Persia (present-day northeastern Iran). The son of a wool-spinner (ghazzal, from which his name derives), al-Ghazali lost his father at an early age and was placed under the care of a Sufi friend of the family. This early exposure to mystical spirituality would profoundly influence his later intellectual development, though he first achieved fame through his mastery of the traditional Islamic sciences.

After completing his education under distinguished scholars, including Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni, al-Ghazali was appointed at age thirty-three to the prestigious chair of theology at the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad, the most influential educational institution in the Islamic world. There he taught to immense acclaim, attracting hundreds of students and earning recognition as one of Islam's foremost legal scholars and theologians. His intellectual prowess and rhetorical skill made him a formidable defender of Sunni orthodoxy against competing theological and philosophical movements.

At the pinnacle of worldly success in 1095, al-Ghazali experienced a profound spiritual and psychological crisis. Tormented by doubts about the ultimate value of his scholarly achievements and unable to reconcile intellectual knowledge with spiritual certainty, he suffered what modern scholars might describe as an existential breakdown. After six months of inner turmoil, he abandoned his prestigious position and embarked on eleven years of spiritual retreat and pilgrimage, traveling to Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Mecca.

During this transformative period, al-Ghazali devoted himself to Sufi practice, seeking the experiential knowledge (dhawq) that intellectual study alone could not provide. This synthesis of rigorous scholarship with mystical experience became the hallmark of his mature thought. Upon returning to teaching in 1106 at Nishapur (birthplace of his contemporary Omar Khayyam, whom he reportedly met and disliked), and later in his native Tus, he had fundamentally reconceived the relationship between reason and faith, philosophy and mysticism.

Al-Ghazali's literary output was prodigious, encompassing works on jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, ethics, and mysticism. His Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) delivered a devastating critique of Aristotelian philosophy that shaped Islamic intellectual history for centuries. His masterwork, Ihya Ulum al-Din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), stands as one of the most comprehensive and influential treatments of Islamic spirituality ever written.

Al-Ghazali died in 1111 in Tus. According to his brother Ahmad, his final moments reflected the spiritual attainment he had sought throughout his life: he performed ablutions, prayed, kissed his burial shroud, and said, ?I hear and obey the command to go into the King,? before stretching out his feet and peacefully departing this world.