Medieval · c. 1058–1111
Who influenced Al-Ghazali?
Influences and legacy
The theologian who dismantled the philosophers' certainty and rebuilt faith on experience.
Al-Ghazali was influenced by Avicenna, and went on to influence René Descartes. That is 2 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Unknown author, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Al-Ghazali?
Al-Ghazali, known in Latin as Algazelus, was a Sunni scholar of the Shafi'i school and the Ash'ari creed, counted among the most influential jurists, theologians, philosophers, logicians and mystics in Islamic history. His contemporaries gave him the title "Proof of Islam", and many Sunnis regard him as the renewer of the faith for his century.
Appointed head of the Nizamiyya in Baghdad, the most prestigious academic post in the Muslim world, he went through a spiritual crisis and withdrew from public life for more than ten years, writing much of his major work. His Revival of the Religious Sciences sought to restore a spiritual tradition he thought had gone dead, and his Incoherence of the Philosophers is a landmark critique of Aristotelian science.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Al-Ghazali?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Avicenna 980–1037
Who did Al-Ghazali influence?
1 thinker on this map draws directly on Al-Ghazali.
- René Descartes 1596–1650
The line of teachers behind Al-Ghazali
The longest documented line of influence ending at Al-Ghazali runs 9 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Al-Ghazali
Indirect influences
The second generation
Contemporaries of Al-Ghazali
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Al-Ghazali, with no direct line between them.
- Peter Abelard 1079–1142
- Anselm of Canterbury 1033–1109
Al-Ghazali by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 1
- Thinkers upstream
- 18
- Thinkers downstream
- 132
- Wikipedia languages
- 121 — #5 of 58 among medieval philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Questions about Al-Ghazali
- Who influenced Al-Ghazali?
- Avicenna.
- Who did Al-Ghazali influence?
- René Descartes.
- When did Al-Ghazali live?
- c. 1058–1111. The map files Al-Ghazali under the medieval period.
- How rare is the Al-Ghazali card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Al-Ghazali in 121 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More medieval philosophers
- Augustine of Hippo AD 354–430
- Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274
- Avicenna 980–1037
- Ibn Khaldun 1332–1406
- Averroes 1126–1198
- Erasmus 1466–1536
- Hypatia c. 355–415
- Hildegard of Bingen 1098–1179