Al-Ghazali on the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God
Author: Imām Al-Ghazali
Translator: David B. Burrell & Nazih Daher
Publisher: Islamic Texts Society
Year of Publication: 1992
Print Length: 216 pages
Genre: Islamic Studies / Quranic Studies; Theology, Ethics and Philosophy, Non-Fiction / Religious Studies; Qur’anic Reflection, Supplication & Prayers
Topic: Allah ﷻ, Islam, Qur’an, Aqidah, Compassion, Forgiveness, Pillars of Islam, Islamic Pillars of Faith
In Al-Ghazali on the Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God, 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 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.
‘…the series as a whole, [is] a significant contribution to our understanding of this key figure in Islamic intellectual thought.’ – Oliver Leaman, BRISMES Bulletin.
This volume won a British Book Design and Production Award in 1993.
Table of Contents
Preface
Aim of the Book
Beginning of the Book
Part One
1. Explaining the meaning of ‘name’, ‘named’ and ‘act of naming’ [17]
2. Explanation of names close in meaning to one another [36]
3. On the one name which has different meanings [39]
4. On explaining that a man’s perfection and happiness consists in being moulded by the moral qualities of God [42]
Part Two
1. On explaining the Meanings of God’s Ninety-Nine Names [63]
2. An explanation of how these many names resolve to the essence with seven attributes, according to the Sunni School [172]
3. An explanation of how all of these attributes resolve to a single essence according to the school of the Mu’tazilites and the philosophers [175]
Part Three
1. Explaining that the names of God are not limited to ninety-nine
2. Explaining the benefits of enumerating ninety-nine names specifically
3. Are the names and attributes applied to God based on divine instruction, or permitted on the basis of reason? [192]
Notes
Index of Divine Names
Index of Persons
Bibliography
General Index
Imām Abu Hamid al-Ghazali is a 11th century Muslim scholar. He was one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, and mystics of Sunni Islam. Al-Ghazālī was born at Ṭūs (near Mashhad in eastern Iran) and was educated there, then in Jorjān, and finally at Nishapur (Neyshābūr), where his teacher was al-Juwaynī, who earned the title of imām al-ḥaramayn (the imam of the two sacred cities of Mecca and Medina). He was active at a time when Sunni theology had just passed through its consolidation and entered a period of intense challenges from Shiite Ismâ’îlite theology and the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy (falsafa). Al-Ghazâlî understood the importance of falsafa and developed a complex response that rejected and condemned some of its teachings, while it also allowed him to accept and apply others. His great work, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn or Ihya Ulumuddin (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), made Sufism (Islamic mysticism) an acceptable part of orthodox Islam.
Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/
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David B. Burrell is a retired Theodore M. Hesburgh Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, USA. In 1980, he served for one year as Rector at the Ecumenical Institute for Advance Theological Studies in Tantur, Israel before teaching at Notre Dame College in Dhaka, Bangladesh until 1982. From 1982-2006, Burrell returned to the University of Notre Dame to teach. From 2006-2012, Burrell taught at the Uganda Martyrs University in Kampala, Uganda, and from 2012-2013 taught at Tangaza College in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2013 he was assigned to live in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he remained until he moved to Holy Cross House, Notre Dame, Ind. for health reasons. He passed away in October 2023 after a short illness.
Source: https://www.southbendtribune.com/obituaries/psbn0585534
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Nazih Daher is Associate Dean, School of Professional and Area Studies, at the Foreign Service Institute of the United States Department of State.
Source: https://its.org.uk/catalogue/al-ghazali-on-the-ninety-nine-beautiful-names-of-god-hardback-copy/
More from Nazih Daher in this library, click here.