II
BIRTH AND EDUCATION
AS already stated, Al-Ghazali was born and educated in Khorasan, Persia, and there also he spent the closing years of his life. Persia, as Huart expresses it, possessed "an intangible force, the Aryan genius, the powerful, imaginative, and creative mind of the great Indo-European family, the artistic, philosophic, and intellectual brain which, from the Abbasside period onward, so mightily affected Arab literature, enabling it to develop in every quarter of the Caliph's realms, and to produce the enormous aggregate of works." It was this Aryan genius which explains much of the powerful influence of Al-Ghazali upon Moslem thought, and the revival of that influence in our day when Islam is again facing disintegrating forces. At the time of Al-Ghazali, Persian influence was supreme. It pervaded everything. The Arabs had ceased to write. The realms of poetry, theology, and science, were dominated by those of Persian birth. All posts, administrative and legal, were held by men who were not Arabs, and yet the language they used was that of the Koran, and remained the sole literary language of the huge empire of the Caliphs. "All races, Per-
53
