Al-Ghazali on the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God: Al-Maqsad Al-Asna Fi Sharh Asma’ Allah Al-Husna (Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din)

DescriptionIn this work, here presented in a complete English edition 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, Ghazali 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.This volume won a British Book Design and Production Award in 1993.Table of ContentsExplaining the Meaning of ‘Name’, ‘Named’, and ‘Act of Naming’.Explanation of Names Close in Meaning to One Another.On the One Name which Has Different Meanings.On Explaining that a Man’s Perfection and Happiness Consist in Being Moulded by the Moral Qualities of God.On Explaining the Meaning of God’s Ninety-nine Names.An Explanation of How these Many Names Resolve to the Essence.An Explanation of How these Attributes Resolve to a Single Essence, according to the School of the Mu’tazilites and the Philosophers.Explaining that the Names of God Are Not Limited to Ninety-nine.Explaining the Benefits of Enumerating Ninety-nine Names Specifically.Are the Names and Attributes Applied to God Based on Divine Instruction, or Permitted on the Basis of Reason?Authors BiographyAbu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali (1058-111), theologian, logician, jurist and mystic, was born and died in 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, Revival of the Religious Sciences, has exercised a profound influence on Muslim intellectual history by exploring the mystical significance of the practices and beliefs of Islamic orthodoxy, earning him the title of Hujjat-al-Islam, the Proof of Islam.David Burrell is Theodore M. Hesburgh professor of Philosophy and theology at the University of the Dame (USA).Nazih Daher is Chairman of the Department of Asian and African Languages at the Foreign Service Institute of the United States Department of State.