A Short Creed
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~3,370 words · 16 passages
Cite this work
- APAAl-Ghazali. (n.d.). A Short Creed. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/a-short-creed
- MLAAl-Ghazali. A Short Creed. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/a-short-creed.
- ChicagoAl-Ghazali. A Short Creed. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/a-short-creed.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
A short creed: the articles of Sunni Muslim faith, summarised by al-Ghazali for the non-theologian.
Context and history
This is the 'aqida genre, the profession of faith explained. It shows al-Ghazali as teacher rather than polemicist: here he does not argue with the philosophers, he instructs. A short text; for the major work see The Alchemy of Happiness and The Confessions, both in the catalogue.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
We witness that He is living, powerful, commanding, conquering; inadequacy and weakness befall Him not; slumber seizes Him not, nor sleep. Passing away does not happen to Him, nor death. He is Lord of the Worlds, the Visible and the Invisible, that of Force and that of Might; He possesses Rule and Conquest and Creation and Command; the heavens are rolled in His right hand and the created things are overcome in His grasp; He is separate in creating and inventing; He is one in bringing into existence and innovating; He created the creation and their works and decreed their sustenance and their terms of life; not a decreed thing escapes His grasp and the mutations of things are not distant from His power; the things which He hath decreed cannot be reckoned and the things which He knoweth have no end. We witness that He knoweth all the things that can be known, comprehending that which happeneth from the bounds of the earths unto the topmost heavens; no grain in the earth or the heavens is distant from His knowledge. Yea, He knows the creeping of the black ant upon the rugged rock in a dark night, and He perceives the movement of the mote in the midst of the air; He knows the secret and the concealed and has knowledge of the suggestions of the minds and the movements of the thoughts and the concealed things of the inmost parts, by a knowledge which is prior from eternity; He has not ceased to be describable by it, from the ages of the ages, not by a knowledge which renews itself and arises in His essence by arrival and removal.
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