Muḥāsabah
محاسبةDefinition
Self-accounting — the regular, honest examination of one's own spiritual state, actions, and intentions that the early Muslims practised as a form of preventive spiritual medicine. Before Allah calls the believer to account on the Day of Resurrection, the wise believer calls themselves to account daily — examining what was intended, what was done, where the heart wandered, what was neglected. Al-Nawawi includes muhasaba among the essential practices of the gnostics because it is the inner mirror that reveals what needs to be worked on before the patterns are too ingrained to change. The scholars said: account for yourself before you are accounted for, and weigh your deeds before they are weighed.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Nawawī and the scholars of his school.
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