Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

The most authoritative jurist-theologian of his age, who at the height of his fame suffered a breakdown — his tongue literally would not lecture — left Baghdad, and spent years as a wandering Sufi before writing the Revival of the Religious Sciences. His achievement was to carry mysticism into the heart of orthodoxy so completely that after him no one could call the path illegitimate. His central image is the one this door is named for: the heart as a mirror, rusted over by the world, polished by remembrance until it reflects the divine. Luria's teachers in Safed knew the image well; the polishing they called tikkun ha-middot, the repair of the traits.