Al-Ghazali on Invocations and Supplications

Al-Ghazali on Invocations and Supplications is a translation of the ninth chapter of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din). This chapter falls in the sections dealing with the requirement of religion. The present volume is probably the most widely read compendium of such material, popular not only for its comprehensiveness and beauty, but also for the analytical approach of its author, who explores the psychological and spiritual effects of prayer and the celebration of God’s name.

This new fourth edition includes the invocations and supplications in Arabic for those readers who would like to use them in their prayers and 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.

Kojiro Nakamura recently retired from the University of Tokyo, where he was the Head of the Islamic Studies Department.