Abstract

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's letters provide a terse and sometimes contradictory description of a controversy that erupted after he returned to teaching in Nishapur in 499/1106. This account refers to an unnamed Maghribi Māliki who played a role in the controversy by denouncing al-Ghazālī to men of the state at the urging of the latter's Nishapuri enemies. This article proposes an identity for the Maghribi: a Sicilian religious scholar named Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad Ibn Abī al-Faraj al-Māzarī, known as al-Dhakī (d. 510/1116). An examination of seven of his biographies corroborates some charges against al-Ghazālī mentioned in the letters, gives a year for the controversy, and reveals some of the strategies used by al-Ghazālī's enemies to try to cause his downfall. An appendix considers and dismisses the possibility that a surviving critique of Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn entitled al-Kashf wa-l-anbāʾ ʿan kitāb al- Iḥyāʾ was authored by the same al-Māzarī.