ABSTRACT
Al-Ghazali, living during the height of Seljuq power, wrote extensively on the rational sciences and argued that the application of logic in jurisprudence was similar to its use in philosophy and would be equally useful in theology. Al-Ghazali was a young student when the Seljuq Turks drove the Shi'i Buwayhids out of Baghdad in 1055. Al-Ghazali's position marks a radical departure from the reasoned arguments of his Turko–Iranian coreligionist of a generation earlier, al-Biruni, whose defense of science can be taken as emblematic of all Muslim natural philosophers. One interpretation for the decline of science and philosophy in Muslim society is that unsettled political, economic and religious conditions led to a rise in interest in the occult pseudosciences, a trend fueled by fear and insecurity at the expense of real science. Economic decline resulting from debased coinage, ravaged agriculture, interrupted trade and recurrent deadly plagues.
