Qalb
Definition
The qalb — spiritual heart — is al-Ghazali's central concept in Islamic psychology: the seat of the human being's relationship with Allah, the organ through which divine knowledge is received, and the battlefield where the forces of guidance and misguidance contend. Al-Ghazali distinguishes the physical heart (the organ in the chest) from the spiritual heart (the subtle divine reality associated with it), insisting that Islamic teaching is primarily concerned with the latter. The state of the qalb — its hardness or softness, its light or darkness, its orientation toward Allah or toward the world — determines the value and the character of every external action the person performs.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
How the scholars use Qalb.
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"of Turkish origin. This sultan hosted and honored me. I then sailed to Muscat, a small town known for its abundant fish called Qalb al-Mas. We then traveled to Marsa al-Qurayyat, properly pronounced with a closed kaf, open ra in the final letter, followed by an alif and a tanwin, a small diacritic symbol. Following that, we journeyed to Marsa Shaba, with the name pronounced with an open sheen and ba, both emphasized, and then to Marsa Kalba, whose name resembles the feminine form of the word dog. We continued to Qalhat, which I previously mentioned. All of these lands fall under the dominion of Hormuz and are"
— Ibn Battuta, Volume Two: From India to the Lands of the West
Appears in
2 books in the library
Hear the term in context.
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