Al-ghazali on the Remembrance of Death & the Afterlife

This is the first English translation of a key section of al-Ghazali’s Revival of the Religious Sciences, (Ihya’ Ulum al-Din), widely regarded as the greatest work of Muslim spirituality. Its theme is of universal interest: death, and the life to come. After expounding his Sufi philosophy of death, and showing the importance of the contemplation of human morality to the mystical way of self-purification, al-Ghazali's takes his readers through the stages of the future life: the vision of the Angels of the Grave, the Resurrection, the Intercession of the Prophets, and finally, the torments of Hell, the delights of Paradise, andfor the electthe beatific vision of God’s Countenance. In this new edition, the Islamic Texts Society has included a translation of Imam Ghazali’s own Introduction to the Revival of the Religious Sciences which gives the reasons that caused him to write the work, the structure of the whole of the Revival and places each of the chapters in the context of the others.

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (10581111), theologian, logician, jurist and mystic, was born and died at the town of Tus in Central Asia, but spent much of his life lecturing at Baghdad or leading the life of a wandering dervish. His most celebrated work, of which this is the culminating 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’. T. J. Winter is Shaykh Zayed lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.