Читальный зал

The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya ulum al-din)

Al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazali's major work and one of the most widely read in Islam: a complete guide to religious life in four "quarters" of ten books each. The first two deal with worship and customs (prayer, fasting, eating, marriage, trade, friendship, music); the last two with the science of the heart: the vices that destroy the soul (anger, avarice, ostentation, pride) and the virtues that save it (repentance, patience, trust, the love of God). Its thesis is that the scholars of his time had reduced religion to law and polemic, and that its inner life must be restored. It draws on Abu Talib al-Makki and al-Qushayri but reorganises their material into a system of its own.