Imam al-Ghazali

The author’s knowledge and wisdom unfolds over the course of forty books, we here have only forty chapters; in these everything concerning human life from the cradle to the grave is discussed with refreshing brevity and unambiguous lucidity. The book opens with a fundamental discussion of questions of knowledge and faith which makes up its first quarter; its second quarter is devoted to questions of everyday life, such as the proper conduct in marriage and the like; this is followed in the third section by an exceedingly subtle description of the intricacies of the inner workings of the human soul and the ‘miracle of the heart’, and the fourth part delineates the paths to salvation, and reaches its climactic conclusion in the last chapter ‘Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife’. Throughout the book, topics are raised that are of interest not just to the religious-minded, but to mankind in general.