ABSTRACT
Averroes’ attitude towards al-Ghazālī has always been a central issue for scholars studying the Arabic tradition of this philosopher. Up until quite recently the common opinion on this subject held that Averroes was to a considerable degree hostile towards al-Ghazālī and his works. The origins of this view lie in Averroes’ Tahāfut al-tahāfut which was directed against al-Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa. Marcus Joseph Müller’s discovery of further works containing a number of critical comments directed against alGhazālī in 1859, i.e. the al-maqāl and al-Kashf manāhij supported this view. This opinion was further strengthened by an interpretation of the incompatibility of philosophy and religious law in Islam which saw in al-Ghazālī a vigorous champion of the latter and a destroyer of philosophy. As early as 1844 Salomon Munk wrote that al-Ghazālī ‘struck a blow against philosophy after which it never recovered in the Orient.’1 In his prominent book on Averroes and his European followers Ernest Renan continued this approach in 1852 and called al-Ghazālī ‘an enemy of philosophy’ (Renan 1852, 133, 135f). Renan drew the dark picture of a ‘war’ against philosophy which was waged in all countries of the Islamic world in the 12th century. He considered Averroes and the Andalusian philosophers of his century in the crosshair of a persecution by the Almohads, which he believed was a theological movement, inspired directly by alGhazālī’s attacks on philosophy (Ibid., 22, 24).
