Is Rawdat al-Talibin wa Umdat al-Salikin a book by Imam Ghazali?

I don’t think so at least not the book that we have in print. For example it quotes an author abu Najib al-Suhrawardi who died in 560 and was born in 490. Imam Ghazali died in 505. While they may have met but I don’t think that Ghazali would have quoted him. In fact Abu Najib was a student of Imam Ghazali’s brother Ahmad.

Further there are sections that are out of the Ihya’ the section on the heart is verbatim from the book on the Marvels of the heart.

There are works that take from Imam Ghazali’s writing and make another book out of them. However the compliers of these books end up inserting quotes from the works of others as well. They may have been at one point someone’s notes that were sold by booksellers as works of Ghazali.

Author: m h