About the Author

Abo lamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), theologian, logician, jurist and mystic, was born and died at the town of Tus in Central Asia, but spent much of his life lecturing in Baghdad or leading the life of a wandering dervish. His most celebrated work, The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulum al-Din), of which this is an important section, exercised a profound influence on Muslim intellectual history by exploring the mystical significance of the practices and beliefs of Islamic orthodoxy, and earned him the title of Hujjat al-Islam, the Proof of Islam .