The Influence of Ahmad Al-Ghazzāli on Ramon LLull (The Manifestation of Love in Islamic and Christian Mysticism)

This paper attempts to study the influence of Islamic mystical love as reflected in Sawāneh-al-Oshshāq (Aphorisms in Love) by the 11/12th century Sufi author، Ahmad Al-Ghazzāli on Christian mystical love as reflected in The Book of the Lover and the Beloved، a famous treatise on love in the Middle Ages، by the 13th century Catalan priest and writer، Ramon Llull. Llull in one of his works points out that، in the manner of the prayers by mystic Moslems، he intends to produce a similar work but he does not clarify the main inspiring source (s) of his. The author of the present study believes that the similarities between Llull and Al-Ghazzāli is beyond fortuity and concludes that in all probability the latter has been the main semi-acknowledged influence on the genesis and development of the former and that Llull''s work has been a free translation of Sawāneh with some smattering of Christianity. The paper aims to study the similarities and differences in mystical love، as a platform to unite human beings، in the Islamic and Christian faiths.