Authors: Al-Ghazali, David Buchman (Translator), David Buchman
ISBN-13: 9780842523530, ISBN-10: 0842523537
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Brigham Young University
Date Published: February 1998
Edition: 1st Edition
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. 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.
Foreword to the Series | ||
Foreword | ||
Acknowledgments | ||
Translator's Introduction | ||
Author's Introduction | 1 | |
Clarifying that the real light is God and that the name "light" for everything else is sheer metaphor, without reality | 3 | |
Clarifying the similitude of the niche, the lamp, the glass, the tree, the olive, and the fire | 25 | |
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" | 44 | |
Notes to the English Text | 55 | |
Bibliography | 69 | |
Index of Qur'anic Verses | 73 | |
Index of Hadiths and Sayings | 75 | |
Index of Names and Terms | 77 |