orn A.D. 1058. He was considered chiefly as
a lawyer and a mystic, but here he will be noticed chiefly as a
philosopher and the author of 'The Ruin of Philosophers,' noticed at
length by Haji Khalfa in his 'Encyclopaedical Dictionary,' under No.
3764. But Ghazali's most celebrated work is 'The Resuscitation of
Religious Sciences,' which is so permeated by the genius of Islam
that, according to the general opinion of scholars, the Muhammadan
religion, if it were to perish, might again be restored from this work
alone. Orthodox fanatics, nevertheless, attacked his works as being
schismatic, and they were even burnt in the Mugrib. He was born at Tus
(the modern Mashad), in Khurasan, and passed his life partly there,
also at Naisapur, Baghdad, Damascus, Egypt, and finally returned to
Tus, where he died A.D. 1111. His works are very numerous, and all of
them are instructive.

Ibn Bajah (known to Europeans under the name of Avempace) was a
philosoper and a poet of considerable celebrity, and a native of
Saragossa, in Spain. He was attacked by some people for his religious
opinions, and represented as an infidel and an atheist, professing the
doctrines held by the ancient sages and philosophers. Ibn Khallikan
defends Ibn Bajah, and says that these statements were much
exaggerated, but adds: 'God, however, knows best what his principles
were,' Abul Hassan Ali al-Imam, of Granada, was of opinion that Ibn
Bajah was the greatest Arab philosopher after Al-Farabi, and places
him higher than Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali. He left numerous logical,
grammatical and political works, and died at Fez in A.D. 1138.

Averroes, whose full and correct name is Abul Walid Muhammad bin
Rashid, was a celebrated Arab scholar, born at Cordova A.D. 1126, and
the author of many writings. He taught in his native town philosophy
and medicine, two sciences which appeared for a long time to be
inseparable, and the vulgar considered those professing them to be of
almost supernatural attainments. The period of Averroes is that of the
decadence of Arab dominion in Spain, a period when this great nation
also lost the taste for sciences which it had brought to Europe.
Considering the prodigious number of works composed by Averroes, who
filled at the same time the offices of Imam and Kadi, his entire life
must have been one of labour and meditation. He is the author of an
Arabic version of Aristotle, but it is not the first which existed in
that language, as some