Al-Ghazali letter to Sultan Sanjar Seljuki
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~840 words · 4 passages
Cite this work
- APAAl-Ghazali. (n.d.). Al-Ghazali letter to Sultan Sanjar Seljuki. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/al-ghazali-letter-to-sultan-sanjar-seljuki
- MLAAl-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali letter to Sultan Sanjar Seljuki. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/al-ghazali-letter-to-sultan-sanjar-seljuki.
- ChicagoAl-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali letter to Sultan Sanjar Seljuki. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/al-ghazali-letter-to-sultan-sanjar-seljuki.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
A letter to Sultan Sanjar, the most powerful Seljuk of his day.
Context and history
The situation is extraordinary: a man who has renounced honours and his chair writes to the sovereign about justice and the ruler's responsibility before God. It belongs to the 'mirrors for princes' tradition, but written by someone who no longer had anything to gain. It comes from the Fada'il al-anam, the collection of al-Ghazali's Persian correspondence, and appears in the catalogue as a separate piece. **It is none of his major works**: for those, see The Alchemy of Happiness and The Confessions of al-Ghazzali, also here. The original is Persian; this is an English translation.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
You should know that by now I am fifty-three years old. Forty years of my life have been spent in the various peaceful haunts of famous scholars and learned men under whom I studied until I was raised to such a rank that people began to know me and understand the change in my ideas. For twenty years I lived in the rein of your royal father who did all that he could to make both Isfahan and Baghdad the most flourishing cities of the world. On several occasions I served, on behalf of your father, as ambassador to the court of the Abbasid Caliph Muktadar Billah and did all that was possible to remove certain misconceptions between the Seljuk empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. I authored seventy books. For several years I lived and preached in Mecca and Jerusalem, and when I visited the tomb of Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, in Jerusalem and offered Al Fatihah, at this mazar, I solemnly pledged that: #I shall neither attend the court of a king, nor receive anything of the nature of emolument from the governments in any shape or form whatsoever, since such circumstances would lesson the worth of any service to the people. #I will not entangle myself in anything that provokes religious controversy. For the last twelve years I have been solemnly faithful to the pledge I made at the tomb of Hadrat Abraham. Now I have received an urgent message from your Majesty asking me to attend your court. In compliance with your orders, therefore, I have journeyed to Mashhad Rada, en route to the capital, but as an after-thought and in view of the aforesaid religious pledge to which I have bound myself, I have made up my mind to cancel the proposed visit. I beseech your Majesty to consider the right I have in fulfilling a religious pledge and that I may not suffer just because of my honesty. If I may undertake to counsel, I think you would do well to refrain from forcing me to attend your court, nor would you like it in me if I attended in violation of the pledge.…