The heart as the pivot of the whole person.
Narrated by al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr (النعمان بن بشير)
أَلاَ وَإِنَّ فِي الْجَسَدِ مُضْغَةً إِذَا صَلَحَتْ صَلَحَ الْجَسَدُ كُلُّهُ، وَإِذَا فَسَدَتْ فَسَدَ الْجَسَدُ كُلُّهُ، أَلاَ وَهِيَ الْقَلْبُ
"In the body there is a piece of flesh — if it is sound, the whole body is sound; if it is corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. It is the heart."
The entire classical literature on the inner life — al-Ghazali's Iḥyāʾ, Ibn al-Qayyim's Madārij — begins at this hadith. The heart, the scholars said, is not a metaphor. It is the actual seat of the self. All the work of tazkiyah is work on the heart.
Passages that draw on this hadith
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"a black, overturned heart, which is the heart of a disbeliever, a sealed heart bound upon its seal, which is the heart of a hypocrite, and a heart layered with faith and hypocrisy. Explanation of the heart in relation to knowledge. Know that the seat of knowledge is the heart,"
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"so that the two go together. The first transfers the remembrance from his tongue to his heart; the second transfers it from his heart to his tongue without his heart ever being empty of it. Rather he first grows still until he senses the speaker stirring within him, and when he senses that, his heart speaks; then the speech of the heart passes over into remembrance upon the tongue; then he is so absorbed in it that he finds every part of him remembering."
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"And in the domain of volitions and resolves, that you occupy yourself with willing what it profits you to will, and with casting off the will for what it harms you to will. Among those who truly know, longing for treachery and occupying the thought and the heart with it is more harmful to the heart than the treachery itself — especially when the heart is emptied of it after it has been committed — for longing for it keeps the heart busy with it,"
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"For among people there is one whose heart is living, alert, and whose original nature is intact; so when he reflects with his heart and ranges with his thought, his heart and his intellect guide him to the soundness of the Qur'an and that it is the truth, and his heart bears witness to what the Qur'an announces. Thus the Qur'an's arrival upon his heart is light upon the light of his innate nature. This is the description of those of whom it was said:"
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"The one who has such a heart brings his heart together with the meanings of the Qur'an and finds them as though they had been inscribed within him, so that he reads them by heart. And among people there is one whose readiness is not complete, whose heart is not fully alert, whose life is not perfect; such a one needs a witness to distinguish for him between truth and falsehood, for the life of his heart, its light,"
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"A heart that is sealed, which is the heart of the disbeliever. An overturned heart, which is the heart of the hypocrite. And a heart that is supplied by two materials, material of faith and material of hypocrisy,"
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"frail with disease. When one's heart is needed to fight off an enemy, it proves worthless. A person wages battle and charges courageously with their heart. The limbs are merely followers of the heart. If the heart's ruler lacks the strength for defense, what hope remains for"
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"and if it is diverted in thought from anything else and there is remembrance in the heart of what it is involved with, presence of heart has been achieved. Understanding the meaning of the speech is beyond the presence of heart; the heart may be present with the words but not with their meaning."