Where to Begin gathers Books 1 to 3 of al-Ghazālī’s Revival of the Religious Sciences.

People start the Iḥyāʾ in the middle and wonder why it does not hold. It was built to be entered here. Book 1 asks what knowledge is for, and what it does to the one who seeks it for show. Book 2 states the creed of the People of the Sunnah and asks whether you could defend it — and whether it has reached the heart. Book 3 takes the first act of the body, purification, and refuses to stop at the skin.

Knowledge, then belief, then the washing that precedes every prayer. Nothing later in the forty books stands without these three.

This English is taken from the classical Arabic of the Iḥyāʾ, not rebuilt from an older translation. Each book ends with a key point, a note on practice, and questions for reflection.

Three books. The ground. Stand on it first.