Al-Ghazali — The Alchemy of Happiness

notes

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111 CE) — known in the medieval Latin West as Algazel — was a Persian theologian, philosopher, jurist, and mystic, and the single most influential religious thinker of medieval Islam. He held the chair of Islamic law at the great Nizamiyya of Baghdad, then in 1095, in a spiritual crisis, abandoned his position and undertook eleven years of Sufi ascetic wandering. When he returned to teaching, his experience of the mystical life had been integrated into a comprehensive theological synthesis that permanently reshaped Sunni Islam. His masterwork, the Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din ("The Revival of the Religious Sciences"), runs to 40 books and is one of the longest works of religious philosophy in any language. Toward the end of his life he composed a shorter Persian condensation for a wider audience, the Kimiya-yi Sa'adat ("The Alchemy of Happiness"), from which this text is taken. Al-Ghazali's central project was to demonstrate that the outward practices of Islamic religion (prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage) must be accompanied by the inward discipline of the heart — that the letter without the spirit is dead. His analysis of the four principles of the soul (beastly, wolfish, devilish, angelic), his teaching on the heart as a mirror that must be polished by remembrance of God (dhikr), and his defence of music (sama') as a legitimate spiritual practice for those prepared for it, all remain foundational for Sufi thought. Translation: Claud Field, "The Alchemy of Happiness by Al Ghazzali," London: John Murray, 1910. Public domain. Presented here as selected passages.

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