abides, sometimes its abiding is long, and sometimes short.” Such is the teaching of Al-Ghazali in regard to the true life of devotion and such we may believe was his own practice at Damascus and Jerusalem during the years that followed his life of exile—the endless repetition of God’s great names and “prayer without ceasing” in the Moslem sense. One wonders what part of the day remained for the literary work and teaching in which we know he was also engaged.[41] An interesting story is told of his life at Jerusalem in these words: “There came together the Imams Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali and Ismail Al-Kakimi and Ibrahim Ash-Shibaki and Abu-l-Hasan Al-Basri, and a large number of foreign elders, in the Cradle of ʾIsa (upon him be peace!) in Jerusalem, and he (Al-Ghazali, apparently) recited these two lines: “‘May I be thy ransom! were it not for love thou wouldst have ransomed me, but by the magic of two eye-pupils thou hast taken me captive. I came to thee when my breast was straitened through love, and if thou hadst known how was my longing, thou wouldst have come to me.’ Then Abu-l-Hasan Al-Basri constrained himself to an ecstasy which affected those that were present, and eyes wept and garments were rent and Mohammed Al-Kazaruni died in the midst of the assembly in ecstasy.” In Jerusalem he is said to have written his _Risalat Al-Qudsiya_; and the date of his visit there must have been shortly before A. H. 492, for in that year Jerusalem was captured by the Crusaders.[42] It was natural for one of Al-Ghazali’s temperament to desire to pay homage also at the tomb of Abraham, whom Moslems delight to call the “Friend of God.” The religion of Islam is continually called the religion of Abraham in the Koran. Tradition locates the so-called Machpelah Cave in the eastern part of the present-day Hebron, on the edge of the valley, and the mosque which now stands there is supposed to enclose the grave. Hebron is about seventeen miles southwest of Jerusalem. Before the twelfth century the Cave of Machpelah began to attract visitors and pilgrims. “Benjamin of Tudela relates: ‘At Hebron there is a large place of worship called “St. Abraham,” which was previously a Jewish synagogue. The natives erected there six sepulchres, which they tell foreigners are those of the Patriarchs and their wives, demanding money as a condition of seeing them. If a Jew gives an additional fee to the keeper of the cave, an iron door which dates from the time of our forefathers opens, and the visitor descends with a lighted candle. He crosses two empty caves, and in the third sees six tombs, on which the names of the three Patriarchs and their wives are inscribed in Hebrew characters. The cave is filled with barrels containing bones of people, which are taken there as to a sacred place. At the end of the field of the Machpelah stands Abraham’s house with a spring in front of it.’”[43]