Revival of the Religious Sciences

After becoming an eminent professor at the Niẓāmiyyah seminary in Baghdad, al-Ghazālī was beset by a deep spiritual crisis which forced him to abandon his career and withdraw from public life. It is in this period of retreat, meditation and soul-searching, which lasted ten years, that he wrote his major work, Revival of the Religious Sciences. In this book, he sought to breathe life into the religious knowledge which were, by his time, mostly sought to gain status, fame and worldly comfort. In it, he also draws a blueprint by means of which one first understands the relationship between one and Allah, and then learns how to live an exemplary life in this world in preparation for the afterlife. With its lucid prose and accessible style, the present translation – based on the abridgement of the Syrian scholar Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad al-Shāmī – makes such work eminently accessible to everyone