Hidden LanternA Note on the Text
This edition presents al-Ghazali’s Mishkāt al-Anwār, The Niche for Lights, in W. H. T. Gairdner’s historical English translation, first published in 1924. The text follows the Sh. Muhammad Ashraf reprint carrying a 1952 reprint notice, including Gairdner’s Introduction and notes.
The translator’s language, period spellings and transliterations are retained. Line-end word divisions caused by the original setting have been joined, and the layout has been adapted for print and reflowable reading. The translator’s notes are placed at the end of each main section and numbered consecutively within that section.
Bracketed page references refer to the Cairo Arabic text. Other historical page references retain the source edition’s pagination and do not correspond to the page numbers of this edition. Publisher advertisements and blank leaves from the reprint are omitted.
From the original contents:
[Ghazzālī’s sections and titles have been supplemented. The page-references enclosed within square brackets in the Introduction, Translation, and foot-notes are references to the pages of the Arabic text,1 the numbers of which will be found in the text of the Translation, enclosed in square brackets.]
- 1. Cairo A. H. 1922: Maṭba‘at aṣ Ṣidq. ↩