Product Overview
About The Book
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (450/1058–505/1111)—master jurist, mystic, philosopher, and theologian—is one of the most famous scholars in the history of Islam. After becoming an eminent professor in Baghdad at a young age, al-Ghazali was beset by a deep spiritual crisis which propelled him to abandon his career and to instead take up the life of an itinerant mystic. It was during this period that he authored his most celebrated summa of Islam, the Revival of the Religious Sciences.
Al-Ghazali sought, through the Revival, to breathe life into the religious knowledges which, by his age, had become moribund due to peoples’ concern with status, fame, and comfort instead of true spiritual understanding. The forty chapters of the book are organized into four major parts: Acts of Worship, Norms of Daily Life, Qualities Leading to Perdition, and Qualities Leading to Salvation. Through his work, al-Ghazali constructs a framework by which the reader first understands the relationship between God and man, and then learns how to lead an exemplary life in this world in preparation for the journey to the afterlife.
‘If people had no concern for any of the works authored by scholars save the Revival, it would suffice them.’ Thus did the historian and jurist Taj al-Din al-Subki emphasize the importance of studying the Revival. With its lucid prose and accessible style, the present translation—based upon the abridgement of the Syrian scholar Salih Ahmad al-Shami—makes such study eminently accessible to everyone.
This beautifully crafted cloth edition, featuring gold and black blocking, debossed with a traditional Seljuq motif, preserves the Revival as a timeless companion to be cherished for generations to come.
About The Author
Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali was born in 450 AH (1058 A.D) in the Iranian town of Tus, studied Islamic law and theology at the Seljuq College in Nishapur, and became a distinguished professor at the famous Nizamiyya University in Baghdad.
Despite his glittering success, he was inwardly dissatisfied, so he abandoned his career for the life of hardship, abstinence and devotion to worship. During ten years of wandering, he experienced a spiritual transformation, in which the Truth came to him at last, as something received rather than acquired.
Blessed with an inner certainty, he then applied his outstanding faculties and vast learning to the task of revitalizing the whole Islamic tradition. Through his direct personal contacts, and through his many writings, he showed how every element in that tradition could and should be turned to its true purpose.
Imam al-Ghazzali was fondly referred to as the "Hujjat-ul-lslam", Proof of Islam, he is honored as a scholar and a saint by learned men all over the world and is generally acclaimed as the most influential thinker of the Classical period of Islam.
He passed away in 505 AH (1111 A.D).
About The Translator
Mokrane Guezzou is an author and translator of major Islamic works, including Divine Reality and Creation:
- The Gnosis of a Late Sufi Master by Muhammad al-Hafiz al-Tijani (Cercle de Lumière, France, forthcoming);
- The Onlooker’s Delight: The Biography of Shaykh Abd al-Qadir Jilani by Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani (HSBT Publications, 2016);
- The Fragrant Scent: On the Knowledge of Motivating Thoughts and Other Such Gems by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-‘Aydarus (Islamic Texts Society, 2015);
- Red Sulphur by ‘Abd Allah al-‘Aydarus (Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2015);
- A Treasury of Hadith: A Commentary on Nawawi’s Selection of Prophetic Traditions by Ibn Daqiq al-‘Id (Kube Publishing, 2014);
- The Adab of the True Seeker by Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Buzaydi (Serenity Productions, 2013);
- Shaykh Muḥammad al-Hāshimī: His Life and Works (Viator Books, 2009);
- The Great Commentaries of the Holy Qur’an Series, Volumes II [Tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās] and III [al-Wāḥidī’s Asbāb al-Nuzūl] (Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought and Fons Vitae, 2008).
