feet as a learner, both at Nishapur and Bagdad, and we may imagine that he had a part also in the general mourning at the death of the Imam, the manuscript of whose masterpiece, _Nihayat al-Matlab_ (Finality of Inquiry), is still preserved in Cairo in the Sultania Library. At Nishapur, Al-Ghazali was one of the favourite pupils of this Imam, and here his studies were of the broadest, embracing theology, dialectics, philosophy and logic. He was a teacher as well as a student, for we are told that he would “read to his fellow students and teach them, until in a short time he became infirm and weak.” Under the double task his health failed, but he did not give up his studies. The Imam once said of him, and two other notable pupils: “Al-Ghazali is a sea to drown in, Al-Kiya is a tearing lion, and Al-Khawafi is a burning fire.” Another saying of his about the same three was: “Whenever they contend together, the proof belongs to Al-Khawafi, the warlike attacks to Al-Ghazali, and clearness to Al-Kiya.” To this time of his life belongs the remark also, made by some one unnamed, “The youth Al-Ghazali showed externally a vain-glorious disposition, but underneath there was something that when it did appear showed graceful expression and delicate allusion, soundness of attention, and strength of character.” “I cannot ascertain,” says Macdonald in speaking of this period of Al-Ghazali’s life, “whether while he was still at Nishapur he touched those depths of scepticism of which he speaks in the _Munqidh_. They must certainly have been reached some time before the year A. H. 484, and must have been the outcome of a long drift of development; but probably so long as he was under the influence of the Imam-al-Haramain, a devout Sufi, he would be held more or less fast to the old faith.” Of these struggles of his soul in an age of doubt and how he found relief the next chapter will tell us. III Teaching, Conversion, and Retirement “Al-Ghazali is one of the deepest thinkers, greatest theologians and profoundest moralists of Islam. In all Muhamadan lands he is celebrated both as an apologist of orthodoxy and a warm advocate of Sufi mysticism. Intimately acquainted with all the learning of his time, he was not only one of the numerous Oriental philosophers who traverse every sphere of intellectual activity, but one of those rarer minds whose originality is not crushed by their learning. He was imbued with a sacred enthusiasm for the triumph of his faith, and his whole life was dedicated to one purpose, the defense of Islam.” —_“Mystics and Saints of Islam,” Claud Field._ III TEACHING, CONVERSION, AND RETIREMENT With the death of the Imam in A. H. 478 a great change came into the life of Al-Ghazali. He left Nishapur to seek his fortune and it brought him to the camp court of the great Vizier Nizam Al-Mulk. Here Al-Ghazali sought advancement and the honours of learning.