Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 10: The Mysteries of Regular Divisions

The Mysteries of Regular Divisions is Book 10 of al-Ghazālī’s Revival of the Religious Sciences, and the close of the First Quarter.

Everyone has the same twenty-four hours. This book shows what a Muslim was meant to do with them. Knowledge, belief, purity, prayer, giving, fasting, pilgrimage, recitation, remembrance — the nine books before it — are laid across a single day and a single night: the hour before dawn, the morning, the time between the two evening prayers, the hours most people sleep through.

Al-Ghazālī sets the seven divisions of the day and the five of the night, why the night vigil fails, and how to size a practice to the life you actually have. The First Quarter ends here on purpose. Nine books named the acts. The tenth puts them back into a day.

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 do not need more time. You need a day that has been ordered.