AL-GHAZALI ON THE NINETY-NINE BEAUTIFUL NAMES OF GOD

In this work, here presented in a complete English translation for the first time, the problem of knowing God is confronted in an original and stimulating way. Taking up the Prophet s teaching that Ninety- nine Beautiful Names are truly predicated of God, the author explores the meaning and resonance of each of these divine names, and reveals the functions they perform both in the cosmos and in the soul of the spiritual adept. Although some of the book is rigorously analytical (the first chapter on predication is of direct relevance to present day philosophical controversies), the author never fails to attract the reader with his profound mystical and ethical insights, which, conveyed in his sincere and straightforward idiom, have made of this book one of the perennial classics of muslim thought, popular among Muslims to this day. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), theologian, logician, jurist and mystic, was born and died at the town of Tüs in Central Asia, but spent much of his life lecturing at Baghdad, or leading the life of a wandering dervish. Because of his success in revealing the compatibility of the outward forms of religion with the inner experiences of the Sufi tradition, he is commonly regarded as the renower of the fifth Muslim century, and the most influential thinker of medieval Islam.