Imam Ghazali's Book of Counsels
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Description
About The Book
Abu Ḥamid al-Ghazali, in his Book of Counsels, compiles powerful spiritual lessons and reminders, weaving hadith into direct speech and presenting it to the reader.
This is a book that is intended to stir the heart to submission and mindfulness of Allah. This translation has sought to retain the literary aspects of this collection while also applying an attentive engagement with the hadith employed within.
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 editor
Shoaib Shah: Shoaib Shah is a British translator, editor, and author who has devoted his career to making classical Islamic scholarship accessible to contemporary English readers. He graduated from the seminary Jameʿah Uloomul Qurʾan and later earned a Master of Arts from the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. He went on to teach at his alma mater for roughly eighteen years, lecturing especially on the Qurʾanic sciences and tafsir. For around seventeen years he has worked editorially with Turath Publishing, contributing as translator, editor, or author to a long list of titles across the Islamic sciences. His translations include Ibn Jamaʿa al-Kinani's Etiquette of the Learner (an abridgement of the Tadhkirat al-Samiʿ wa al-Mutakallim), the treatise on the virtues and rulings of Salat al-Tasbih, and Life of the Grave, on the states of the deceased until the Resurrection. He served as editor on Softening the Heart, a rendering of Ibn al-Mubarak's Kitab al-Zuhd wa al-Raqaʾiq, and on Imam al-Ghazali's Book of Counsels, among many others. He has also produced devotional compilations such as Our Lord: Forty Rabbana, and authored short works on the life and character of the Prophet, including A Day in the Life of the Beloved. His output reflects a steady commitment to careful, readable renderings of the tradition.
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