Al-Ghazali on the Manners Relating to Eating
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Translator
Denys Johnson-Davies
Description
About The Book
Al-Ghazali on the manners relating to eating is the eleventh chapter of the Revival of the Religious Sciences which is widely regarded as the greatest work of the Muslim spirituality. This volume begins the section dealing with man and society, and the norms of daily life. While concentrating on a daily activity, eating, al-Ghazali presents the importance of aligning every aspect of one’s life with religion and spirituality. Referring extensively to the example of the Prophet and to early Muslims, al-Ghazali illustrates how the simple activity of eating can encourage numerous virtues which are themselves necessary for the remainder of the spiritual life.
The section of Al-Ghazali on the manner relating to eating are divided into what a person must uphold when eating alone, how a person must conduct himself when eating in company and the manner of hospitality. Through these sections, al-Ghazali also discusses lawful and unlawful foods and practices, cleanliness, fasting, general health issue, contentment with little and generosity.
About the Contributor(s)
About the author
al-Ghazali: Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (450-505 AH / 1058-1111 CE) was born in Tus, in the Khorasan region of Persia, and is remembered as one of Islam's most influential thinkers. Losing his father young, he studied at Nishapur and was appointed, while still in his thirties, to the prestigious Nizamiyya college in Baghdad. He was Shafiʿi in law and Ashʿari in creed, and his contemporaries honored him as Hujjat al-Islam, the Proof of Islam. At the height of his fame al-Ghazali passed through a profound spiritual crisis, recounted in his autobiography al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance from Error). He abandoned his teaching post, traveled, and devoted years to the inward discipline of the Sufis before returning to instruction with a renewed purpose. His landmark work, Ihyaʾ ʿUlum al-Din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), reconstructs the religious life across four parts, acts of worship, social custom, the vices that ruin the soul, and the virtues that save it. In philosophy he wrote Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), a careful critique of the Hellenistic thinkers of his age. Bridging law, theology, philosophy, and mysticism, al-Ghazali shaped the direction of Sunni thought for centuries, and his books remain widely read and translated. His many works are available here in English translation.
About the translator
Denys Johnson-Davies: Denys Johnson-Davies (1922 to 2017) was a British translator widely regarded as the foremost interpreter of modern Arabic literature into English. He was born in Vancouver, Canada, to an English father, and spent his childhood between Cairo, Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya before settling in Egypt as a young man in the 1940s. Over a career spanning roughly seventy years he produced more than thirty volumes of translated Arabic novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, drawing writers from across the Arab world into English. He was the first to translate the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and the Palestinian thinker Edward Said described him as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time." His memoir, "Memories in Translation: A Life between the Lines of Arabic Literature," recounts these decades. Beyond belles-lettres, Johnson-Davies held a lasting interest in the Islamic tradition. Working with Ezzeddin Ibrahim, he prepared the widely used English renderings of "An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith" and "Forty Hadith Qudsi," presenting these classic collections with facing Arabic text for students and general readers alike. He also translated a portion of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's "Ihyaʾ ʿUlum al-Din" dealing with the manners relating to eating. He lived his final years in Egypt, where he died in May 2017 at the age of ninety-four, leaving a body of work that shaped how the Anglophone world reads Arabic letters.
Specifications
EAN 13 / ISBN
9780946621736
Publisher
Islamic Texts Society
Author
al-Ghazali
Pages
96
Translator
Denys Johnson-Davies
Year Published
2000
Size
W-6 in | H-9.2 in | D-0.5 in
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