Every tradition of sacred learning eventually turns its attention inward, and this is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf's contribution to that turning. *Purification of the Heart* is his translation and commentary on Imam al-Mawlud's poem *Matharat al-Qulub*, a work that treats the heart as the true origin of human suffering and, rightly tended, the seat of its cure.

Across roughly twenty-five diseases of the heart — miserliness, envy, hatred, arrogance among them — Shaykh Hamza Yusuf walks through the signs, symptoms, and prescribed remedies laid out in the original poem, offering practical means toward real spiritual transformation rather than abstract theorizing. Readers have described the language as demanding, the kind of book that rewards more than one sitting and repays the effort with deeper understanding each time.

This Sandala edition runs 220 pages and is also available in an iBooks digital edition, useful for readers who want it close at hand for the slower, returning kind of reading this subject asks for. For anyone drawn to the classical concern with the "Greater Jihad" — the struggle against the self — this is a fitting place to begin, and one worth keeping within reach long after the first reading.