This chapter analyzes the core elements of Ghazālī’s practical ethics, using The Alchemy of Happiness, a guidebook for Muslims wishing to live a good life in this world (dunyā) while striving toward salvation through faith (dīn). Ghazālī prescribed a pragmatic attitude toward fiqh prioritizing everyday practice and recognized dīn and dunyā as two interconnected but distinct spheres, which he joined through a broadly conceived Islamic ethics. Ghazālī criticized the Sufi tendency to decry all knowledge. In The Alchemy of Happiness, he understood that people held distinct responsibilities, and in turn embedded “responsibility” in the diverse economic and political institutions essential to the functioning of the Abbasid Empire. Ghazālī conceived of the “heart” (dil) as a selective intelligence permitting differentiation among ethical alternatives. His view did not prescribe utilitarian obedience to divine command. For Ghazālī, everyday human need, interaction, and conviviality provided reason to appreciate God’s work. Obedience is not the primary source of correct religious conduct, then, but a disposition of kindness in everyday life.

This chapter discusses Ghazali’s Writings in Persian and reception in Iran. Typical Ghazālī studies center his Arabic output. Yet one major work, The Alchemy of Happiness, was written originally in Persian. Ghazālī participated in a Khurasani cultural tradition. Zarrinkoub argues that Ghazālī’s mystical understanding of Islam, against prevailing literalism, influenced Islamicate civilization and culture. Zarrinkoub highlights the contribution of Persian-speaking philosophers, theologians, and scholars to the mystical and theological development of Sunni Islam. Although Iran is conventionally framed as the epicenter of Shi‘ism, Iran only became a majority Shi‘a country with the Safavid Empire in 1501. Through Persian resources we see a cosmopolitan Islam thriving where the Abbasid Empire intersected with multiple cultural revolutions, and where mysticism and established power clashed and reconciled in Ghazālī’s Sufi encounter. Ghazālī’s flight from the madrasa was a flight from orthodoxy in Islamic education, in his renunciation of the educational system. Ghazālī’s Sufism was partly a critique of the dogmatic understanding of Islam common among the ‘ulama.’