Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 3: The Book of Purification

The Book of Purification is Book 3 of al-Ghazālī’s Revival of the Religious Sciences.

You have made wuḍūʾ ten thousand times. This book asks what you were washing. Al-Ghazālī gives istinjāʾ, wuḍūʾ, ghusl and tayammum with a jurist’s care, then refuses to stop at the skin. Purity has four levels; water reaches only the first. After the body come the senses, the character, and the heart.

He is exact about filth and about leniency. He is equally exact about the moment cleanliness stops serving the prayer and becomes a distraction from it.

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.

Wash as you have always washed. Then read why.