The Ninety Nine (99) beautiful names of Allah

We present this translation of al-ghazalis treatise on the ninety nine beautiful names of Allah (swt) as a way of allowing those hitherto unfamiliar with Islamic thought to taste something of the reflective capacities of a man who has continued to be recognised as a philosophical theologian over the centuries. The treatise is based in practice: the custom on the party of Muslims to recite the names of God culled from the Quran in a traditional order usually using a set of 33 Beads (Subha) to assist them in enumerating the names. These names recall the attributes whereby God has made himself in revelation and which also connect human expressions with matters divine. So to recall God as ‘the merciful one’ is to allude to those verse of the Quran where God is so named as well as experiences of mercy we may have had. The connection between our experience and the reality of God’s mercy may be tenuous but the Verbal connection provides a slender threat at least so that reciting these divine names allows us to bring God into our ambit. So that reciting these divine names allows us to being God into our ambit. Ye the fact the names are more than attributes because God uses them of himself in revealing himself to the Prophet saves our recitation from reducing God to our experience.