Description :

 

'The Niche of Lights,' or Mishkat al-Anwar, is an accessible and richly rewarding text by one of the most fascinating and important thinkers in the history of Islam. Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali’s philosophical explorations covered nearly the entire spectrum of twelfth-century beliefs. Beginning his career as a skeptic, he ended it as a scholar of mysticism and orthodoxy.

 

 

The Niche of Lights, written near the end of his illustrious career, advances the philosophically important idea that reason can serve as a connection between the devout and God. Imam al-Ghazali argues that abstracting God from the world, as he believed theologians did, was not sufficient for understanding.

 

 

Exploring the boundary between philosophy and theology, The Niche of Lights seeks to understand the role of reality in the perception of the spiritual.



 

 

Table of Contents :

 

 

---Foreword to the Series,
---Foreword,
---Acknowledgments,
---Translator’s Introduction,
---[Author’s Introduction],

 

---The First Chapter
------Clarifying that the real light is God and that the name “light” for everything else is sheer metaphor, without reality,
------A fine point,
------A fine point,
------A fine point,
------A supplement to this fine point,
------A fine point that goes back to the reality of light,
------A fine point,
------A fine point,
------A fine point,
------A reality,
------A reality,
------The Reality of realities,
------An allusion,
------Conclusion,
------Some encouragement.

---The Second Chapter,
------Clarifying the similitude of the niche, the lamp, the glass, the tree, the olive, and the fire,
------The first pole: Concerning the mystery and method of using similitudes,
------Conclusion and apology,
------A fine point,
------The second pole: Clarifying the levels of the luminous human spirits; for, through knowing them, you will come to know the similitudes of the Qur’an,
------A clarification of the similitudes of this verse,
------A conclusion.

---The Third Chapter,
------Concerning the meaning of the Prophet’s words: “God has seventy veils of light and darkness; were He to lift them, the august glories of His Face would burn up everyone whose eyesight perceived Him”
------The first kind,
------The second kind,
------The third kind.

 

 

---Notes to the English Text.

 

---Bibliography,
---Index of Qur’anic Verses,
---Index of Hadiths and Sayings,
---Index of Names and Terms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other works of Imam al-Ghazali,
 

Also see Islamic Philosophy,

Also see Islamic Theology.
 

 

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*Dimensions : 23.7 x 15.7cm.