SIGNED 'ALI BIN AHMAD BIN BAKRI AL-BAGHDADI, ABBASID NEAR EAST, DATED SHA'BAN AH 560/JUNE-JULY 1164 AD

It is difficult to overstate the importance of al-Ghazali (ca.1058-1111) to the development of Islamic thought. After studying under the distinguished jurist al-Juwayni in Khorasan, at the young age of thirty-three he was appointed as head of the prestigious Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad by the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk. After only four years at the institution, a spiritual crisis shook him to his core and he spent the rest of his life as an ascetic. It was during his time as an ascetic that he wrote Ihya al-'Ulum al-Din ('The Revival of the Religious Sciences'), a revolutionary four-part guide covering all aspects of a devout Muslim life that would become one of the most widely copied Islamic texts in history. Each of the four parts covers a distinct aspect, such as worship or daily practice, subdivided into ten sections, for a total of forty books (kutub).

This unusually early copy of one part of the first quarter of the Ihya, concerned with acts of worship (rub' al-'ibadat), was copied only forty-three years after the death of al-Ghazali. Another volume from the same manuscript, also from the first quarter and possibly sequential to the present volume, was sold at Sotheby's London, 26 April 2017, lot 34. That volume contained the final three books of the first quarter, concerned with Qur'anic recitation, invocations and supplications, and the arrangement of litanies and divisions of the night vigil.