Iḥyāʾ (Revival of the Religious Sciences), al-Arbaʿīn (The Forty Principles), al-Qisṭās (The Balance), and Maḥakk al-Naẓar (The Touchstone of Inquiry).

He then trained his soul and strove against it, drove out the devil of conceit, and put on the garb of the devout. After some years he returned to his homeland, steadfast upon the Sunnah, jealous of his time, and wholly absorbed in knowledge.

When Fakhr al-Mulk became vizier, Abū Ḥāmid attended upon him. The vizier implored him not to let his breaths pass unfruitfully and persisted with the shaykh until he agreed to come to Nīshābūr, where he taught at its Niẓāmiyya school.

ʿAbd al-Ghāfir relates this and far more in al-Siyāq, until he says:

“I visited him repeatedly, and, given the forwardness (1) I had once known in him, his habit of looking upon people with an eye of contempt—out of pride and self-importance—and his reliance on the ample gifts of fluency, intellect, and a quest for ascendancy that Allah had granted him, I never imagined that he had become the very opposite and been purified of those blemishes. I took him to be wrapped in the cloak of affectation, feigning the state he had attained; yet, after testing and probing, I realized the matter was other than supposed and that the man had awakened after delirium.

“Over several nights he recounted to us the stages of his journey from the moment the path of devotion was unveiled to him, how the spiritual state overwhelmed him after his deep immersion in the sciences and his dominance over all with his speech, the aptitude with which Allah had singled him out for mastering every branch of learning, and his prowess in research and dialectics—until he wearied of preoccupation with barren theoretical sciences, reflected upon the ultimate end and what remains for the Hereafter. He thereupon sought the company of Shaykh Abū ʿAlī al-Farmadhī (2), from whom he received the opening of the path and carried out what he instructed him of