The Book of Aphorisms: Being a translation of Kitab al-Hikam

May Allah reward the author and translator and cover designer and everyone involved in delivering this masterpiece to us. Thank you. This book is like spending some private time with Allah.

Thanks

This is a translation of the immensely famous book 'Al-Hikam' by Ibn Ata'illah Al-Iskandari.Shaykh Ibn Ata'illah was born in Egypt towards the middle of the thirteenth century. He was a renowned Maliki jurist and a famous author. Hikam is probably his most famous work. This is a collection of around 260 spiritual sayings, each containing profound meaning related to Tawhid (oneness of God), ethics, imaan, supplications, hope etc. Sayings are derived from Qur'an and sunnah. This is a must read for people seeking spiritual development.You can read some of the hikam here:[...]l

Apparently the original author of these "Wisdoms" was a Druze spiritualist, a religious line that survives today, however Islam has, for all practical purposes, quashed the heretical teachings of this religious philosophy. The original writings of this book have been thoroughly mangled with the supplemental Islamic explanations and annotations, which undermine and even controvert the original meanings. If you read it simply skip over the later Islamic interpretations, and just look to the source material -- you will be better off if you do.The most valuable information that I got out of reading this book has to do with understanding the path of a spiritual person, who is challenged with acquiring and then subsequently loosing material possessions as part of the spiritual development process. I wish I had read and understood all this before I went through it myself, but it was nice to hear, understand, and put what happened to me into context, albeit in retrospect. It is nice to have in your arsenal pouch of tools too if you serve in a function of guiding the spiritual life of others as well.Beyond that there are quite a number of lesser gems which can be gathered through this wisdom as well, such as some of the explanations of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. If you want to understand Revelation better, it is like some of the missing parts of the story are located here. This of course I am verbalizing from a Christian perspective, which would be completely different from an Islamic perspective.