Al Ghazali On The Manners Relating To Eating

Book 11 of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, published by The Islamic Texts Society

Al-Ghazali on the Manners Relating to Eating is the eleventh chapter of The Revival of the Religious Sciences which is widely regarded as the greatest work of Muslim spirituality. This volume begins the section dealing with man and society, and the norms of daily life.

While concentrating on a daily activity, eating, al-Ghazali presents the importance of aligning every aspect of one’s life with religion and spirituality. Referring extensively to the example of the Prophet and to that of the early Sufis, al-Ghazali illustrates how the simple activity of eating can encourage numerous virtues which are themselves necessary for the remainder of the spiritual life.

The sections of Al-Ghazali on the Manners Relating to Eating are divided into what a person must uphold when eating alone, how a person must conduct himself when eating in company and the manners of hospitality. Through these sections, al-Ghazali also discusses lawful and unlawful foods and practices, cleanliness, fasting, general health issues, and the blessings of contentment with little and generosity.

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.

About The Author

Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali was born in 450 AH (1058 A.D) in the Iranian town of Tus, studied Islamic law and theology at the Seljuq College in Nishapur, and became a distinguished professor at the famous Nizamiyya University in Baghdad.

Despite his glittering success, he was inwardly dissatisfied, so he abandoned his career for the life of hardship, abstinence and devotion to worship. During ten years of wandering, he experienced a spiritual transformation, in which the Truth came to him at last, as something received rather than acquired.

Blessed with an inner certainty, he then applied his outstanding faculties and vast learning to the task of revitalizing the whole Islamic tradition. Through his direct personal contacts, and through his many writings, he showed how every element in that tradition could and should be turned to its true purpose.

Imam al-Ghazzali was fondly referred to as the "Hujjat-ul-lslam", Proof of Islam, he is honored as a scholar and a saint by learned men all over the world and is generally acclaimed as the most influential thinker of the Classical period of Islam.

He passed away in 505 AH (1111 A.D).

About The Translator

Denys Johnson-Davies is an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.

Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is a co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999.

Born in 1922 in Vancouver, Canada to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge and has lectured translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", a valued at about $300,000. 

Series: Al-Ghazali The Revival Of The Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulum Al-Din) Book 11
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Fons Vitae
Language: English
Author: Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali
ISBN: 978-1911141037
Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.0 x 0.5 inches