Al-Ghazali - The Bane of the Philosophers

Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Ghazali, better known as Imam Al-Ghazali for short or Algazel in the West, was a Medieval Persian philosopher who pioneered a form of philosophical skepticism that would work to shift the Medieval world away from Neoplatonic metaphysics drastically.

Predating Rene Descartes by over 500 years, Al-Ghazali formalized a method of radical skepticism that would work to question the philosophical consensus of the time. In particular, Al-Ghazali would challenge many of the ideas of thinkers before him, notably Ibn Sina, Al Farabi, Aristotle, and Plato - and he would do so in a fashion that was internally consistent with the philosopher's own methodology. This would be articulated in his landmark text "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" or "Tahafut al-falasifa".

Eventually, Al-Ghazali would grow disillusioned with the academic world and find solace in becoming a wandering mystic, meandering from city to city within the Abbasid and Seljuk empires. It was from these experiences that Al-Ghazali would write his seminal guide to spiritual life, "Ihya Ulum al-Din," or "Revival of the Religious Sciences."