Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 4: The Book of Prayer

The Book of Prayer is Book 4 of al-Ghazālī’s Revival of the Religious Sciences, and the longest book of the First Quarter.

Five times a day the body stands, bows and prostrates. This book asks where you were while it did so. Al-Ghazālī gives the prayer twice: first the outward form, from the takbīr to the salām, in the order a jurist would teach it; then the inward form — presence of heart, understanding, reverence, awe, hope and shame — without which the movements are, he says, a body without a soul.

He treats the congregation and the call to prayer, the duties of the imam and of those who follow, Friday and its manners, the supererogatory prayers, and the questions every worshipper eventually asks. Book 3 cleaned the body. Book 4 is what the cleaning was for.

This English is taken from the classical Arabic of the Iḥyāʾ, not rebuilt from an older translation. It can be read straight through, or studied beside the original.

You already know how to pray. Read this and find out what you have been missing.