of life, for it was by breathing His Spirit into Him ( Quran XXXVIII, 72)
that God bestowed man with life and consciousness. The rūḥ is therefore
both beyond the human and the cosmic realities and at the very center of
man's being; the rūḥ is the gate to Divine Transcendence and Immanence.
Islamic spirituality, which in Arabic is called rūḥāniyyah, can therefore be
defined as that aspect of Islam which leads to the transcendent and imma-
nent Divine Reality. The essential nexus between Islamic spirituality and
inwardness is accentuated by another term for spirituality used especially
in Persian, namely, ma'nawiyyat, which connotes literally "meaning" or the
inward, in contrast to ṣūrat or outward form.

All of Islam is, of course, concerned with God and His Will as embodied
in the Sharī'ah, the Divine Law of Islam, obedience to which is sufficient
in order to live a life of balance and happiness in this world and to be saved
at the moment of death. A study devoted to Islamic spirituality, however,
could not be synonymous with one devoted solely to the Sharī'ah. While
taking into account the great significance of the spiritual dimension of
everyday piety and the Sharī'ah, such a study must pay special attention to
those aspects of the Islamic tradition which in the Islamic context itself
would be most concerned with rūḥāniyyah and ma'nawiyyat as defined
above. A study of spirituality, therefore, must turn most of all to the inner
dimension of Islam. It is precisely such a path that we have sought to tread
in these two volumes on Islamic spirituality. Moreover, we have had to take
full consideration of the limits that have been imposed on the subject
because of the very nature of this project that is part of a major encyclo-
pedic history. The space devoted to each religion has been predetermined,
and the language and content must be tailored to the predominantly
Western audience addressed by these volumes.

From the beginning, two volumes were allotted for Islamic spirituality
despite the vast expanses of the Islamic world and the many ethnic,
linguistic, and cultural areas which that world embraces. As a result, we
planned these volumes in such a way as to present what is essential to the
understanding of Islamic spirituality. We attempted to penetrate the specific
areas of the Islamic world sufficiently to present an adequate picture of the
whole, even if details of certain areas, schools, or historical periods are
incomplete.

In order to deal with Islamic spirituality authentically, we sought to avoid
a number of ideas prevalent in the West concerning scholarship in the field
of religion--ideas that are alien to the Islamic point of view. These include

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