The younger brother of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, has long been recognized as an important figure in the history of Sufism, at least in the Persian-language scholarship. Until the publication of Lumbard's monograph, however, Aḥmad's life and works have not been at the centre of a monograph in Western scholarship. Lumbard's book, a revised version of his doctoral dissertation of 2003, is the first attempt to fill this gap. In doing so, Lumbard follows in the footsteps of his two Iranian predecessors, Nasrollah Pourjavady and Aḥmad Mujāhid, who both edited the extant works of Aḥmad and wrote about him – mostly, however, in Persian. Lumbard's book is divided in two parts: the first focuses on Aḥmad's life, the sources of his biography, and the authenticity of the works attributed to him. The second discusses the main aspects of his teachings, both practical and theoretical, with an emphasis on his doctrine of love. In examining the authenticity of the books attributed to Aḥmad, Lumbard mostly draws on the criteria put forward by Pourjavady and Mujāhid, namely Aḥmad's peculiar literary style and the absence of philosophical concepts and vocabulary in his authenticated works. Whereas the style can justifiably distinguish an authentic work from a spurious one, the author's use of philosophical concepts and jargon is a different matter. Since, according to Lumbard, Aḥmad did not have recourse to philosophical jargon in his already authenticated works, most of which are in Persian, he discards as inauthentic all the works with a philosophical-driven language that are attributed to Aḥmad in the manuscript tradition. These are mostly written in Arabic. This argument, however, does an injustice to al-Dhakhīra fī ʿilm al-baṣīra, whose unicum (MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Petermann I 587) has in its incipit the name of Aḥmad. Its content is very much in line with what we find in the oeuvre of ʿAyn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadānī, Aḥmad's most famous disciple. Thus, al-Dhakhīra calls into question the validity of the presence/absence of philosophical vocabulary, as a functional criterion to identify Aḥmad's genuine works.
In the second part of the book, Lumbard identifies two prominent themes in Aḥmad's thought: his sympathy for Satan and the centrality of love. The bulk of the second part is the analysis of Aḥmad's doctrine of love, as presented in his masterpiece Sawāniḥ al-ʿushshāq. Lumbard's main thesis is that Aḥmad “makes a revolutionary move in Sufi thought by placing love at the center of metaphysics” (p. 112). For Aḥmad not only does the Sufi path hinge on love but also all of creation, because he identifies love with the “Divine essence” (p. 113). Even though Lumbard indicates the importance of such a statement for understanding Aḥmad's conception of theology, he does not investigate it because he assumes that the ontological implication of the identification of God's essence with love was not at the centre of Sawāniḥ. Instead Lumbard focuses on the influence of this move on the shaping of the various stages of Sufism. As a result of this methodological preference, the rest of the book unfolds in a descriptive way. The question that should have been asked and answered is why Aḥmad made such a move and in what terms this move was a reaction to the theological discussions that were shaping the intellectual milieu in which he was active. Saying that God's essence is love, for instance, would not be a trivial point against the backdrop of the Ashʿarite doctrine of the divine essence and attributes. If Aḥmad favoured Ashʿarism, as Lumbard contends (p. 60), how did he reconcile his assumption about love as the divine essence with the tenets of Ashʿarite theology? Because the impact of this doctrine on the modality of cosmogony and the eternity of the world would be huge. When Lumbard, for instance, depicts “the descent of the spirit” (p. 167) and refers to a famous saying according to which the “spirit is not subject to the word Be!”, he could have addressed the thorny question of spirit's eternity. Sufi manuals before and after Aḥmad contain rigorous discussions about this disturbing implication. Aḥmad's insistence on the origination (ḥudūth) of the spirit hence acquires its own controversial meaning, which would have become clear if this question had been contextualized within those debates.
If the book had been revised before the publication, some minor mistakes could have been avoided. On p. 81 for example, Lumbard cites a passage of Majālis where Aḥmad would have said: “If you believe, then accept the outer holy law (ash-sharʿ aẓ-ẓāhir al-muqaddas)”, whereas in both prints of Mujāhid's edition there is: “then accept the pure holy law” “al-sharʿ al-muṭahhar al-muqaddas” (p. 20, Majālis, ed. A. Mojahed, Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, first edition 1998, second edition 2010). Lumbard also equates the words “ʿirfān” and “maʿrifa”; it would be preferable if he did not. Given that Aḥmad never used the word “ʿirfān” in this technical sense, this is projecting into Aḥmad's terminology a shift that happened centuries later. Even though chapter 2 depicts a very useful picture of the time and life of Aḥmad, there are some minor historical errors which could have been avoided. ʿAlī ar-Riḍā is said to be “the seventh Shiite Imām” (p. 51), but in fact he is considered to be the eighth Imām of the Twelver Shiites. While talking about the political situation of Khurāsān, Lumbard depicts the “several waves of Turkic tribes, such as the Sāmānids” (p. 52) who reigned over the region, but the Sāmānids claimed to be the descendants of the Sāsānid warrior hero Bahrām Chūbīn and did not claim to be Turks (see “Sāmānids”, EI2). The date of birth given for ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, on the basis of which Lumbard tentatively situates the encounter between him and Aḥmad, is wrong. It is 490/1097 and not 492/1099 (given by Lumbard on p. 73). Despite revisionary efforts there are still some gaps in the bibliography. There is for example no mention of the edited version of al-Tajrīd fī kalimat al-tawḥīd, published by Mujāhid in 2005 (Lumbard used the Bibliothèque nationale de France manuscripts of this book in his dissertation and consequently in his monograph).
The big merit of this monograph is to make known to Western academia the life and oeuvre of Aḥmad. The fifth chapter, on love, contains a very clear explanation of Aḥmad's idea of love and can be used in teaching the theory of love in Sufism. A more comprehensive view of the different aspects of Aḥmad's intellectual profile could have resulted in a deeper understanding of the importance of this person in the history of Sufism. Nonetheless, this monograph stands out as the first step towards rehabilitating the legacy of Aḥmad and bringing him out of the shadow of his famous brother.
