The Book of Knowledge (Parent & Teacher edition) - Al-Ghazali

The Book of Knowledge- Parent & Teacher edition.

In the 40 volumes of his magnum opus, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, al-Ghazali explains the inner transformative meanings in every aspect of Islamic faith and practice. The Fons Vitae Ghazali Series begins with The Book of Knowledge and The Principles of the Creed, each accompanied by an illustrated version for children with accompanying workbooks.

One of the last students that Ghazali agreed to teach before his death was the Spanish Maliki jurist, Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi, considered one of the greatest and most influential scholars of Islam. Of their meetings which began in Jerusalem in 1096CE, Ibn ‘Arabi relates:

He was completely inner-focused on the divine and had left the world behind him. When I entered into his presence, I said, “You are the lost thing I have been looking for all of my life. You are the imam who will guide me.” Our meeting was an epiphany of inward knowledge. I witnessed something from him that is ineffable. He was a man whom if you saw him, you saw a manifest spiritual state. If you knew him, you knew a vast ocean. Each time I questioned him, I was filled with inner joy at the response. I maintained visits at the retreat and placed myself upon his carpet. I benefitted from his seclusion and his spiritual activities.

It was as if he relinquished any other occupations to be with me in order for me to realize my goal...When that light arose upon me, dispelling what had previously enveloped me of darkness and gloom, I said, “This is what I have been seeking in truth! This, by the sacred trust of God, is the goal of every seeker, the destination of every wayfarer.”

He had disciplined his soul with Sufic exercises for around five years prior to our meeting. He was completely engaged in that and had taken solitary retreat as his companion and rejected every group.

— from the Series Introduction by Hamza Yusuf Hanson