(b Tus, Persia; d Qazvin, 1126). Persian religious scholar and preacher, brother of Abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Ghazālī. In 1095 he succeeded his brother as a teacher at the Nizāmiyya University in Baghdad. His writings, composed in Arabic, include a condensed version, now lost, of his brother's Ihyā‘ ‘ulūm al-dīn (‘Revival of the religious sciences’), and a longer essay on the question of listening to music (samā‘), entitled Bawāriq al-ilmā‘ fī l-radd ‘alā man yuharrim al-samā‘ (‘Flashes of enlightenment in refutation of those who declare listening to music to be forbidden’). He believed that performing and listening to music were not forbidden by Islamic principles, and dealt with the subject independently of his brother, his essay being less comprehensive and more directly concerned with the musical customs of the dervish orders of Sufism. It begins with a justification of his outlook, then presents arguments against the opponents of music and for the value of music as an aid in attaining spiritual experience. It ends with a description of a dhikr ceremony (see Islamic religious music, §II, 3).
Bawāriq al-ilmā‘ [Flashes of enlightenment] (MS, D-BSb 5505); ed. and trans. J. Robson: Tracts on Listening to Music (London, 1938); repr. in al-Mawrid, xiii/4 (1984), 65–78
EI2 (H. Ritter)
J. During: Musique et extase: l'audition mystique dans la tradition soufie (Paris, 1988)
A. Gribetz: ‘The samā‘ Controversy: Sufi vs Legalist’, Studia islamica, lxxiv (Paris, 1991), 43–62
ECKHARD NEUBAUER