Al-Ghazali on Poverty and Abstinence

The Book of Poverty and Abstinence is the thirty-fourth chapter of The Revival of the Religions Sciences. It falls in the section dealing with the virtues. Ghazali gives definitions of what real poverty and abstinence should be and how the poor should conduct themselves. He goes on to describe poverty that has no virtue and which is based on greed and love of the world. For Ghazali, the virtues of real poverty and abstinence are closely linked with patience, contentment, lack of worldliness, asceticism, trust and surrender to God.

A Selection from the Table of Contents

	The Reality of Poverty and its Different States
	The Excellence of Absolute Poverty
	Poverty’s Excellence over Wealth
	The Reality of Abstinence
	The Excellence of Abstinence
	The Degrees of Abstinence
	The Signs of Abstinence
Appendix: Persons Cited in the Text
Index to Qur’anic Quotations
Bibliography
General Index