Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī died at Ṭūs in Khurāsān on Monday 14 Jumādā al-Ākhirah 505, aged about fifty-five. The trajectory his autobiography made famous — star professor of the Baghdad Niẓāmiyyah; the crisis of 488 in which he lost the ability to lecture; the decade of retreat in Damascus, Jerusalem and the Ḥijāz; the return to teaching in Nīshāpūr — ended quietly at home, his brother reporting that he washed, shrouded himself, and lay down.
The Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, written in the retreat years, became perhaps the most read book of Islamic ethics ever composed; his Tahāfut set the terms of the philosophy debate for centuries. The title the tradition settled on him — Ḥujjat al-Islām, the Proof of Islam — measures the standing.
The Monday and the date are uniformly carried.