in any trace of transmitted knowledge—he interpreted it according to the misguided Sabian astrologers’ interpretation. He made the Messenger’s Ascension an ascent through thought to the celestial spheres, and identified the prophets he saw with the heavenly bodies: Adam was the moon, Idrīs was the sun, and the four rivers were the four elements. He also held that the Messenger had come to know absolute necessary existence. He then extolled this interpretation, treating it as secret knowledge that must be kept beyond the understanding of believers and their scholars. Indeed, some who had held him in high esteem were utterly astonished when they saw it. One of his partisan defenders continued to deny it until they showed him a copy in the handwriting of a well-known scholar familiar with his circumstances. He had included it in his book entitled “al-Matālib al-ʿĀliya” (The Lofty Pursuits), in which he collected the principal views of the philosophers and speculative theologians.

You also find Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī—who surpassed those men in his knowledge of jurisprudence, Sufism, speculative theology, legal theory, and other fields, as well as in asceticism, worship, sincerity of intention, and mastery of the Islamic sciences—referring in “al-Arbaʿīn” (The Forty) and similar works to his book “al-Madnūn bihi ʿalā Ghayr Ahlihi” (That Which Is Withheld from Those Unqualified for It). If you seek out that book, believing it to contain the secrets of reality and the ultimate objects of inquiry, you will find precisely the teachings of the philosophizing Sabians, with their wording and arrangement altered. Anyone unfamiliar with the true nature of people’s doctrines and those of the various religious communities will believe that this is the secret shared by the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and Abū Bakr, and that it is what is disclosed to those who attain unveiling and apprehend realities through a divine light. For Abū Hāmid frequently refers in his books to that divine light and to what he believes