In your plan: Week 17, Thu, 11 Feb 2027.
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Overview
The Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Dalal) is a short spiritual autobiography by the Persian scholar Al-Ghazali, written near the end of his life, around 1108. It describes how a celebrated professor in Baghdad fell into radical doubt and a crisis of health and purpose, left his post, and found a new certainty through the discipline of the Sufis. It remains one of the most readable accounts of burnout, doubt and recovery in the Islamic tradition.
Context
Al-Ghazali was born in 1058 in Tus, in Persia, and rose under the Seljuk state. In 1091 he was appointed to the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad, then one of the leading posts in the Muslim world. He taught law and theology, and wrote against the Ismaili movement and against the philosophers. In 1095 he left Baghdad, and he died in Tus in 1111.
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Curator's notes
- Why it matters
- A professor's burnout, radical doubt and spiritual recovery. Psychology of the heart, discipline of the self.
- Use in training and coaching
- Burnout and meaning crisis in successful people; self-discipline
- Connects to
- Augustine; Descartes' doubt; Rumi
- What to read
- Deliverance (about 50 pages)
- Text (date)
- Al-Ghazali, The Deliverance from Error; Revival of the Religious Sciences (c. 1100)
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