Al-Ghazali on Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment

Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby

This is the first complete English translation of the Book of Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment, the thirty-sixth chapter of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s monumental Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya ulum al-din).

The Book of Love, or Kitab al-mahabba, is of fundamental importance in the history of Islamic thought and in the development of Sufism. Though earlier treatises had been written by Sufi masters on various aspects of the love between God and man, The Book of Love was the first treatise which established not merely the possibility but the necessity of such love. Using proof-texts derived from the Qur’an, the Traditions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and Sufi precept, Ghazali succeeded in marshalling forceful arguments to make his case. These arguments prevailed to such an extent that the later Islamic mystical tradition is imprinted with a central emphasis on divine love.