Al-Ghazali on Condemnation of Pride and Self Admiration (Kitab Dhamm al-kibr wa'l-'ujb)/ Book XXIX of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya' (c)ulum al-dln).

• Author: Ingalls, Matthew B.

Al-Ghazali on Condemnation of Pride and Self Admiration (Kitab Dhamm al-kibr wa'l-'ujb)/ Book XXIX of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya' (c)ulum al-dln). Translated by MOHAMMED RUSTOM. Cambridge: THE ISLAMIC TEXTS SOCIETY, 2018. Pp. xxxvi + 190. [pounds sterling]17.99 (paper).

This book is essential reading for every human being who was not raised by wolves or born on a desert island. In it Abu Hamid al-GhazalT (d. 505/1111) provides a detailed theory of pride, selfadmiration, the connections between them, and their remedies. Although some nonbelievers may find the author's theological paradigm to be off-putting, there is much in his book that remains relatable and valuable to all who have encountered arrogance, conceitedness, and self-righteousness in their dealings with others or noticed these qualities in their own behavior.

The volume represents Mohammed Rustom's translation of book 29 of the forty books of Ihya ulum al-din; it is the penultimate book of the ten that comprise the Ihya"s quarter on "moral vices." Rustom relied for his translation on the 2011 Dar al-Minhaj (Jeddah) Arabic edition of the Ihya', which contains the takhrij of al-Hafiz al- (c)IraqT as it was published in 1998 by Dar al-Wa (c)T (Aleppo). The translator and his research assistant Ramzi Taleb have independently sourced all sayings (ahddith, athar, etc.) in the book that they were able to trace. Translations of the Quran are taken from HarperOne's 2015 The Study Quran; this is a relatively new convention that fellow Islamicists may wish to follow in the future.

Having performed spot checks on a few passages in the original Arabic text, I am impressed with Rustom's translation methodology which--following the model of William Chittick and Michael Marmura--concerns itself with consistency in the translation of technical terms and aims to provide a unique English translation for each Arabic term. Kibr, for example, is translated as "pride," jabbar is an "arrogant one" (when applied to humans), (c)ujb is "self-admiration," while Hzza is "conceit." Once Rustom adopts a particular translation for a technical term or other important noun (ism) in the Arabic text, he applies this translation with every appearance of the Arabic term seemingly without exception. To smooth over clunky sentences, Rustom reserves the majority of his footnotes for literal translations of Arabic words and phrases that he has rendered into idiomatic English in the main body of the text. The end result thus balances well between precision, coherence, and fidelity to the original Arabic. The translator's acknowledgements section also reveals that he was motivated to...