ABSTRACT
This paper explores the economic thought of Abu Hamid Ibn al-Ghazali, an eleventh-century Arab scholar, “acclaimed as the greatest…certainly one of the greatest” (Watt 1953, vii), and “by general consent, the most important thinker of medieval Islam” (Bagley, xv). Ghazali’s scholarship extended to many diverse fields of learning. His writings, as those of European Scholastics and others of his era, emphasized the “holistic” intellectual approach.2 While there have been other studies on his works (see, for example, McKane; Quasam; Watt), to the best of our knowledge, none has investigated his contributions to economics, especially on the basis of a detailed scrutiny of his original Arabic-language writings. The present paper attempts to fill that void.
