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“Naive imagination is like a dark glass that prevent the shining lights entering the heart, but when is ripe enough become a clear glass that points those lights.” (Ghazali, the Niche of Lights, P.73) Iranian philosopher and educator, Abu Hamid Ghazali (1058-1111 A.D.) is the author of more than seventy books and essays on philosophy, education, mysticism, ethics, jurisprudence and dialectical theology. Throughout his works, one can easily observe that among the tools of acquiring knowledge (i.e., the senses, the imagination, and the intellect), imagination has become subject of special attention due to its capacity in recalling, analyzing, and synthesizing pre-acquired images, concepts and meanings and creating new and noble ones. Because of his unequivocal attention to imagination, instead of intellect, and the great impact imaginative thinking has had on Islamic philosophy of his times, some critics have maintained that “Islam has turned against science in twelfth century.” This article consists of two parts. The first part deals about Ghazali’s perspective the place of imaginative faculty among the other faculties; the external faculties (i.e. the senses), the internal faculties (i.e. common-sense, imagery, memory, estimation), and the intellect and hence; it is observed that the faculty of imagination itself is a part of the internal faculties and links the external faculties with the intellect as well as comprehensive and continuous interaction with other internal faculties. Upon defining imagination, tasks and types associated with it, its priority and superiority over the intellect, the relationship between (1) the internal senses and the imagination and (2) the imagination and the intellect are addressed. In the second part, the authors follow the practical implications of such imaginative thought in Ghazali’s teaching approach. To do so, and because of the comparative analysis pursued in the article (i.e., comparing Ghazali with contemporary western educational thinker Kieran Egan) about children’s education, we concentrated on the “mythic understanding” that Egan has proposed for these ages and then, contrasted it with Ghazali’s works. The results show that as Egan, but not in such a complete and detailed form, Ghazali considered the elements of play, story, binary opposites, rhyme, rhythm, images, gossip, mystery, and metaphor in his approach. But there are no clear and sufficient evidence for other elements (i.e., joke and humor) in Ghazali’s teaching approach.

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A deep understanding of literary texts strongly depends on understanding the factors that contributed to their creation. One of these factors is how an author is inspired by the intellectual poetics of other literary figures. The present study seeks to use a functional linguistic framework to investigate the influence of Shahriar’s language and mind on Hooshang Ebtehaj’s ghazals and closely analyze the latter’s tendency towards Shahriar’s poetic style. These influences can be divided into three types: imitative (based on repetition), combined (based on repetition and intra-process change), and interpretative (based on repetition and extra-process change). Our findings suggest that Ebtehaj tends towards change and creativity instead of mere imitation. The factors contributing to Ebtehaj’s inspiration from Shahriar’s poetics include his love of Shahriar and his works, the popularity of Shahriar’s works, and the role of audience as well as the historical context.

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The story of Aziz and Ghazal (1914), written by Seyed Ashraf al-Din Hosseini Gilani, known as Nasim-Shomal, is a  not well known romance in which is narrated the love story of two Aleppo lovers from two hostile families. The content similarity of  this story with Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare's play encouraged us to review and analyze the similarities and differences between the two works by considering the adaptation theories as well as the analysis of common style and context in translations and adaptations of Qajar era. The descriptive-analytical study of this story and the many content and structural similarities between the two works assumed that Aziz and Ghazal have been a free adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy, but since there is no evidence that Seyed AShraf al-Din was fluent in English, it seems that he  has achieved translations of Romeo and Juliet, then he has created Romeo and Juliet for satisfaction of Iranian readers by using the style of adaptive translations of his time such as adding poetry to prose, using proverbs and sometimes slang catchphrase and socio-cultural discourse.
 

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A deep understanding of literary texts strongly depends on understanding the factors that contributed to their creation. One of these factors is how an author is inspired by the intellectual poetics of other literary figures. The present study seeks to use a functional linguistic framework to investigate the influence of Shahriar’s language and mind on Hooshang Ebtehaj’s ghazals and closely analyze the latter’s tendency towards Shahriar’s poetic style. These influences can be divided into three types: imitative (based on repetition), combined (based on repetition and intra-process change), and interpretative (based on repetition and extra-process change). Our findings suggest that Ebtehaj tends towards change and creativity instead of mere imitation. The factors contributing to Ebtehaj’s inspiration from Shahriar’s poetics include his love of Shahriar and his works, the popularity of Shahriar’s works, and the role of audience as well as the historical context.
 

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Feelings of spiritual hollowness and fading away spirituality are characteristics of the present century. Also, the emergence of false spiritual schools has led to the collapse of spiritual life. Since the innate needs of man can be met only with true spirituality and obedience to the commands and prohibitions of the God almighty.  And by obeying those commands and prohibitions, spirituality takes root in human beings and the thirst of human nature will be quenched by the refreshing spirituality hence, taking care of spiritual life is one of the essential anthropological necessities of human beings. The purpose of this research is to analyze Imam Mohammad Ghazali's views on "spiritual life" and the study of the components of this life from his perspective. To achieve this goal, there is need to examine and explain the verses of Holy Qur'an and refer to the interpretations on the one hand and explaining Ghazali's approach in the books Al-Ehya Ulom al-din and Kimiya-e- Saadat. This is done by a descriptive method and the analysis Al-Ghazali's views in the form of documents. The result of research is aimed at: promoting the knowledge of God and institutionalizing duties of worship and creating motivation for the growth of genuine religious spirituality. Among the feasible successes is the allegiance to the prophetic tradition, repentance and return to glorious God, cultivating virtues and repelling vices and fighting vile desires.

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Attention to child and childhood has existed throughout history as pre-sociological paradigms. The present study tries to retrospectively examine Ghazali’s views on child and childhood, and measure the importance he gave to this issue. Al-Ghazali is one of the well-known thinkers of the fifth century AH, whose views on education and divine-human thought have greatly influenced the future. This study is conducted using the documentary method. The studied documents included primary and secondary sources. The results show that Ghazali, while paying attention to child and childhood, considers the nature of children to be pure and innocent. These children are understood under the banner of two institutions of family and "high school" (school), both of which are responsible for raising and educating children. The child has characteristics such as weakness of intellect, imitation and imperfection, which are placed in the process of socialization on the one hand by adults with the power of education and discipline. Al-Ghazali considers the beginning of childhood from the time of sperm formation to the end of puberty for girls and the age of sixteen for boys, from which they can enter into married life, in other words, the world of adulthood. The findings led the researcher to conclude that al-Ghazali, despite his use of the concept of "child," focused on children-boys rather than children-girls.