Reading room

The Alchemy of Happiness

Al-Ghazali

A shorter, reorganised Persian version of the *Ihya*. Four opening "headings" (knowledge of self, of God, of the world and of the hereafter) precede four "pillars" corresponding to the quarters of the *Ihya*. Its starting point is that knowledge of self is the key to knowledge of God, and its central image is the heart as a mirror that "alchemical" discipline polishes until it reflects the divine. It is one of the great works of eleventh-century Persian prose.