"Let us
rather wait till daylight, for Al-Fudail is on the road, and will stop
us." Al-Fudail then turned his heart to God, and assured them that they
had nothing to fear. For the rest of his life he lived as an ascetic,
and ranked among the greatest saints. One of his recorded sayings is,
"If the world with all it contains were offered to me, even on the
condition of my not being taken to account for it, I would shun it as
you would shun a carrion, lest it should defile your clothes."

Another striking "conversion" is that of Ibrahim Ben Adham, Prince of
Khorassan. He was passionately addicted to the chase, and one day when
so employed heard a voice behind him exclaiming, "O Ibrahim, thou wast
not born for this." At first he took it for a delusion of Satan, but on
hearing the same words pronounced more loudly exclaimed, "It is the Lord
who speaks; His servant will obey." Immediately he desisted from his
amusement, and, changing clothes with an attendant, bade adieu to
Khorassan, took the road towards Syria, and from thenceforth devoted
himself entirely to a life of piety and labour.

A third example is that of Ghazzali himself, who, in his work _The
Deliverance from Error_, has left one of the very few specimens of
Eastern religious autobiography, and one bearing a certain resemblance
to Newman's _Apologia_. He was professor of theology at the University
of Bagdad in the eleventh century. In his autobiography he says:
"Reflecting upon my situation, I found myself bound to this world by a
thousand ties; temptations assailed me on all sides. I then examined my
actions. The best were those relating to instruction and education; and
even there I saw myself given up to unimportant sciences, all useless in
another world. Reflecting on the aim of my teaching, I found it was not
pure in the sight of the Lord. I saw that all my efforts were directed
towards the acquisition of glory to myself." After this, as he was one
day about to lecture, his tongue refused utterance; he was dumb. He
looked upon this as a visitation from God, and was deeply afflicted at
it. He became seriously ill, and the physicians said his recovery was
hopeless unless he could shake off his depression. "Then," he continues,
"feeling my helplessness, I had recourse to God, as one who has no other
recourse in his distress. He compassionated me as He compassionates the
unhappy who invoke Him. My heart no longer made any resistance, but
willingly renounced t