It is in his life, and more especially in his writings, that I believe we can see Islam at its best. In trying to escape the dead weight of Tradition and the formalism of its requirements, Moslems are more and more finding relief in the way of the mystic. Of all those who have found a deeper spiritual meaning in the teachings of the Koran and even in the multitudinous and puerile detail of the Moslem ritual, none can equal Al-Ghazali. “He was,” says Jamal-ud-Din, “the pivot of existence and the common pool of refreshing waters for all, the soul of the purest part of the people of the Faith, and the road for obtaining the satisfaction of the Merciful.... He became the unique one of his own day and for all time among the Moslem learned.” “Al-Ghazali,” said another writer, nearly contemporary, “is an _imam_ by whose name breasts are dilated and souls revived, in whose literary productions the ink horn exults and the paper quivers with joy, and at the hearing of whose message voices are hushed and heads are bowed.” A celebrated saint, Ahmed As-Sayyed Al-Yamani Az-Zabîdi, also a contemporary of Al-Ghazali, said, “When I was sitting one day, lo, I perceived the gates of heaven opened, and a company of blessed angels descended, having with them a green robe and a precious steed. They stood by a certain grave and brought forth its tenant and clothed him in the green robe and set him on the steed and ascended with him from heaven to heaven, till he passed the seven heavens and rent after them sixty veils, and I know not whither at last he reached. Then I asked about him, and was answered, ‘This is the Imam Al-Ghazali.’ That was after his death; may God Most High have mercy on him!” Another story is related of him as follows: “In our time there was a man in Egypt who disliked Al-Ghazali and abused him and slandered him. And he saw the Prophet (God bless him and give him peace!) in a dream; Abu Bakr and ʾOmar (may God be well pleased with both of them!) were at his side, and Al-Ghazali was sitting before him, saying, ‘O Apostle of God, this man speaks against me!’ Thereupon the Prophet said, ‘Bring the whips!’ So the man was beaten on account of Al-Ghazali. Then the man arose from sleep, and the marks of the whips remained on his back, and he was wont to weep and tell the story.” And should this praise seem oriental and extravagant, we add the words of Professor Duncan B. Macdonald, who has made a more thorough study of Al-Ghazali’s life and writings than any other student of Islam:—“What rigidity of grasp the hand of Islam would have exercised but for the influence of Al-Ghazali might be hard to tell; he saved it from scholastic decrepitude, opened before the orthodox Moslem the possibility of a life hid in God, was persecuted in his life as a heretic, and now ranks as the greatest doctor of the Moslem Church.”