He later studied under al-Juwayni, the distinguished jurist and theologian and "the most outstanding Muslim scholar of his time," in Nishapur, perhaps after a period of study in Gurgan. Al-Ghazali's contemporary and first biographer, 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher. A posthumous tradition, the authenticity of which has been questioned in recent scholarship, is that his father, a man "of Persian descent," died in poverty and left the young al-Ghazali and his brother Ahmad to the care of a Sufi. He was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of Tus, Khorasan (now part of Iran). He was a Muslim scholar, law specialist, rationalist, and spiritualist of Persian descent. Modern estimates place it at AH 448 (1056/7), on the basis of certain statements in al-Ghazali's correspondence and autobiography. The believed date of al-Ghazali's birth, as given by Ibn al-Jawzi, is AH 450 (1058/9). Among his other works, the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa ("Incoherence of the Philosophers") is a significant landmark in the history of philosophy, as it advances the critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th-century Europe. That resulted in his writing his magnum opus entitled Ihya 'ulum al-din (" The Revival of the Religious Sciences"). Īl-Ghazali believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslims had been forgotten.
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His works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was awarded the honorific title "Proof of Islam" ( Hujjat al-Islam). Islamic tradition considers him to be a Mujaddid, a renewer of the faith who, according to the prophetic hadith, appears once every century to restore the faith of the ummah ("the Islamic Community"). 1058 – 19 December 1111) was one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, and mystics of Sunni Islam.
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