KIMIĀ-YE SAʿĀDAT (Alchemy of happiness), a composition (taṣnif) of Abu Ḥāmed Moḥammad Ḡazāli (q.v.; 450-505/1058-1111), a scholar of the Shafiʿite school of law and a prominent Persian thinker of medieval Islam. The Kimiā-ye saʿādat was written during Ḡazāli’s Khorasan period, after his return from his wanderings to his native Ṭus (see ḠAZĀLI i. BIOGRAPHY), and completed between 495-99/1102-6. The Kimiā-ye sa ʿādat was one of Ḡazāli’s works composed in Persian during the period of the Saljuq sultanate, when Persian was the official language of its vast empire and was gradually becoming a lingua franca for Muslim scholars.

Literary historical context . Chronologically, the Kimiā-ye sa ʿādat is the fourth in a series of the pioneering systematic works that were written in Persian in various genres by Sufi authorities. The first three are as follows: Šarḥ al-Taʿarrof le-maḏhab ahl al-taṣawwof (Commentary on “Acquaintance with the doctrine of the Sufis”) compiled by Esmāʿil al-Mostamli Boḵāri (d. 434/1043), in the genre of Persian commentary on an Arabic book of Abu Bakr Kalābāḏi (q.v.; d. between 380/990 and 385/995); Kašf al-maḥjub le-arbāb al-qolub (Unveiling the hidden at the lords of hearts; see KAŠF AL-MAḤJUB of Hojviri), treating systematically different Sufi doctrines and practices, and completed by the Ḥanafite Sufi Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAli b. ʿOṯmān Hojviri (q.v.; d. between 465/1072 and 469/1077) in about 450/1058; and the Ṭabaqāt al-ṣufiya (Grades of the Sufis), compiled in Persian in the genre of hagiographical anthology by the Ḥanbalite Sufi ʿAbd-Allāh Anṣāri (q.v.; 396-481/1006-89), who was inspired by an Arabic anthology of the Shafiʿite Sufi Abu ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Solami (q.v.; 325-412/937-1021) to create his own book with the same title, which, in fact, complements the work of his predecessor.

In addition to the Kimiā-ye saʿādat, and with the use of it, there are a few other minor Persian works composed by Ḡazāli without any doubts about his authorship (see ḠAZĀLI iv. MINOR PERSIAN WORKS).

The first is the Zād-e āḵerat (Provisions for the journey to the hereafter), a manual for the target audience of a “group of ordinary people” (qawmi az ʿawāmm) and presumably non-Arabic disciples of Ḡazāli’s own circle at Ṭus. By his own admission in a letter addressed to Aḥmad b. Neẓām-al-Molk (q.v; d. 544/1149-50), the vizier of Sultan Moḥammad Tapar b. Malekšāh ( r. 498-511/1105-18), their number by the end of Ḡazāli’s life was about 150 (Makāteb, p. 44; Khismatulin, 2017, pp. 216, 545). Being the most extensive text written in Persian after the Kimiā-ye saʿādat, the manual gives an opportunity to see Ḡazāli’s role as a translator and editor of his Bedāyat al-hedāya (The Beginning of guidance to the straight path), an Arabic handbook written by him earlier for the madrasa (q.v; EDUCATION iv. THE MEDIEVAL MADRASA) students. Having the latter as a model, Ḡazāli nevertheless made noticeable additions (taken from the Kimiā-ye saʿādat) and changes to the Zād-e āḵerat’s structure and content which led to the appearance of this new title.

Another authentic work of Ḡazāli is the so-called “first part” of the Naṣiḥat al-moluk (Counsel for kings), addressed to the Saljuqid ruler of Khorasan Aḥmad b. Malekšāh Sanjar (q.v.; r. 490-552/1097-1157). The text was written after an official reception at his court in 503/1109 and upon his request. Ḡazāli was summoned to Sanjar because of the intrigues of his opponents and their criticism of his student’s compilation in Arabic, al-Manḵul men taʿliqat al-oṣul (The sifted notes on the fundamentals), in addition to his refusal to continue teaching at the Neẓāmiya of Nishapur. After the reception, Ḡazāli had, apparently, a private audience with Sanjar, during which he quoted a verse from the Qur’an 14:24: “Have you not seen how Allāh sets forth a parable of a beautiful phrase (being) like a beautiful tree, whose roots are firm and whose branches are in Heaven.” The genuine text of the Naṣiḥat al-moluk, which is actually an official epistle with a short explanatory note on al-Manḵul added on its frontispiece (Makāteb, pp. 11-12; Khismatulin, 2017, pp. 116-7, 484) and the title given to it later, discloses the verse image of the “beautiful tree” (šajara ṭayyeba) consisting of ten roots and ten branches (Crone, pp. 167-91; Purjavādi, pp. 413-24; Khismatulin, 2015, pp. 118-27; idem, 2017, pp. 89-114).

Apart from these texts, there are also more than thirty Persian-language letters by Ḡazāli. Intermittently covering about the last fifteen years of his life, they were addressed to different people and were collected by an unnamed descendant of Ḡazāli in a medieval collection of his correspondence entitled the Fażāʾel al-anām men rasāʾel Ḥojjat al-Eslām (The Virtues of people [drawn] from the epistles of the Proof of Islam). The Fażāʾel was first published by al-Ṣamad al-Sayyed al-Aḥmad as a lithographic edition in 1310/1892 and based on a manuscript copy of the collection consisting of 38 letters. Later, the collection was published in two independent editions by ʿAbbās Eqbāl Āštiāni (q.v.; Makāteb, 1954) and ʿAli Moʾayyad Ṯābeti (Fażāʾel, 1954). Afterwards, the text was first translated into Arabic by Nur-al-Din Āl ʿAli and published under the same title with useful comments (Fażāʾel, 1972); this text was later translated into some European languages as well.

Additionally, a few short verdicts ( fatwā [q.v.]) on various subjects and a rather short treatise known as the Ḥamāqat-e ahl-e ebāḥat (Foolishness of the free-thinkers) (Purjavādi, pp. 146-210) came down to us from the authentic Persian-language oeuvre of Ḡazāli. The majority of other Persian texts, ascribed to him with the use of his fame and authority, especially in the genre of Mirrors for Princes, are either deliberate forgeries fabricated with different purposes or compilations falsely attributed to him (Khismatulin, 2019, p. 324).

The most famous among them is Ay farzand (O Child!). This is undoubtedly a literary forgery fabricated in Persian one or two generations after Ḡazāli’s death. The sources used for the forgery consist of two genuine letters by Ḡazāli (number 4, in part, and number 33, totally); both appear in the Fażāʾel al-anām (Makāteb, pp. 13-23, 83-85; Khismatulin, 2017, pp. 185-96, 257-60). Another source is a letter known as ʿAyniya and written by Moḥammad’s younger brother Majd-al-Din Aḥmad Ḡazāli (q.v.; d. 520/1126) to his famous disciple ʿAyn-al-Qożāt Hamadāni (q.v.; 492-526/1098-1131); the letter was published in the Majmu ʿa-ye āṯār-e fārsi-e Aḥmad-e Ḡazāli (Collection of the Persian writings of Aḥmad Ḡazāli) (Majmu ʿa, pp. 191-238). The other is ʿAyn-al-Qożāt’s own letter, published in the Nāmahā-ye ʿAyn-al-Qożāt Hamadāni (Letters by ʿAyn-al-Qożāt Hamadāni) (Nāmahā, II, p.103, no 73). These sources clearly indicate combination of two different approaches to Sufism done by an unknown forger—the intellectual and esoteric of Moḥammad Ḡazāli’s and the ecstatic and practical of Aḥmad Ḡazāli’s—with a particular emphasis on the latter (Khismatulin, 2017, pp. 266-326).

Later, Ay farzand was translated into Arabic and became famous as Ayyohā al-walad, the Arabic equivalent of the Persian title. The earliest manuscripts with the Arabic translation date from the second half of the 16th and most of the others from the 17th century (Scherer, p. 27). The earliest known secondary translation from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish was done in 983/1575 (Ülken, p. 61). In modern times, the text was translated from Arabic into many European languages and published innumerable times in Turkey as Eyyühe’l-Veled or Ey Oğul (Günaydin, pp. 70-73).

A less famous Pand-nāma (Book of counsel) also written in the genre of advice literature is a very late compilatory letter of an unknown author formally addressed to some ruler and falsely attributed to Ḡazāli, obviously because it consists of many fragments borrowed mostly from various parts of the Kimiā-ye sa ʿādat (Purjavādi, pp. 425-49; Khismatulin, 2017, pp. 339-54).

Manuscripts . The statistics from the world’s manuscript repositories show that the Kimiā-ye saʿādat significantly surpasses all the works listed above in popularity. Apart from many copies with some fragments of the book, any major manuscript collection contains at least two or three complete copies of it. For example, there are two copies in the British Library (Rieu, I, pp. 36-38); three copies in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg (Persidskie i tadzhikskie rukopisi, I, p. 463); nine copies in the collection of the India Office (Ethé, I, pp. 976-78); eleven copies in the National Library of Egypt (Fehres, II, pp. 75-79); and twenty-five copies in the Abu Rayhan Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Sobranie, III, pp. 94-98; IX, 395-406).

The oldest copies known are represented by fragments held in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (the complete second pillar (rokn), paleographically dated 1120-50 [B 4612]) and in the National Library of Egypt (the third and fourth pillars dated 576/1180; Fehres, II, p. 79, no. 1869). A complete manuscript of the Kimiā, dated 605/1208, is kept at the Malek National Library in Tehran (Afšār and Danešpažuh, IV, p. 691, no. 4273).

Leaving aside the numerous 19th century lithographs and modern printed editions, the dates of transcription provided by the main manuscript catalogues for the Kimiā-ye saʿādat copies and taken together indicate a constant demand for this book throughout the centuries (Khismatulin, 1998, pp. 205-7; Sāket, 2019, p. 453). This demand had arisen on the Persian intellectual market during the 12th century and has continued to the present time. In other words, the Kimiā-ye saʿādat has confidently stood the test of time.

Textual studies . Until recently, due to the lack of a complete translation of the Kimiā-ye saʿādat into any European language, many scholars mistakenly considered this work to be Ḡazāli’s abridged version of his Arabic magnum opus the Eḥyāʾ ʿolūm al-din (The Revival of the religious sciences; see ḠAZĀLI ii.). This view seems to have first arisen at the end of the 19th century in the description of one of the earliest complete copies of the Kimiā-ye saʿādat, held at the British Museum and dated 672/1274 (Rieu, I, p. 37, Add. 25,026). Since then, this view has made its way from one catalogue to another (e.g. Ethé, I, p. 976; Sobranie, III, p. 97; etc.), appearing also in some contemporary research studies.

Indeed, the Kimiā-ye saʿādat’s structure is outwardly similar to that of the Eḥyāʾ ʿolūm al-din. Both were written in the form of taṣnif (Khismatulin, 2020, pp. 475-87), and both share the common illustrative and evidentiary base consisting of: (a) quotations from the Qur’an (if any); (b) the pertinent sayings (ḥ ad iṯs, see HADITH) of the Prophet Moḥammad (and pre-Islamic prophets), his companions and followers; (c) statements of Sufi authorities; (d) allegorical stories and vivid images from everyday life; (e) conclusions of Ḡazāli.

However, these books have quite different target readership. It was the target readership that determined how Ḡazāli saw the content of his books, how simple or complicated language he used, and what illustrative and evidentiary base he resorted to. Having vast experience of teaching at different levels and communicating with people of various education backgrounds and mentality, Ḡazāli always conducted a dialogue with the target reader in a common language, taking into account the reader’s knowledge and often quoting a famous maxim which is sometimes considered a Prophetic saying: “Speak to men according to their mind’s capacity” (Makāteb, p. 14; Eḥyāʾ, I, pp. 54, 92; Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, p. 88). In all of this, the Eḥyāʾ ʿolūm al-din and the Kimiā-ye saʿādat are different from each other.

The intended audience for the Eḥyāʾ included the highest-ranking Islamic scholars, Ḡazāli’s colleagues, and serious opponents. In contrast to the Eḥyāʾ, the Kimiā’s target readership represents people who did not have a full command of Arabic and did not belong to academia at all. The author himself describes it as follows: “Our book is intended for ordinary people (ʿ awamm-e ḵ alq), who have begged for [comprehension of] this matter in Persian. And the speech cannot go beyond the limit of their understanding” (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, p. 9). As in the case of the Zād-e āḵerat, “ordinary people” does not mean here people with low social status. Any careless person, who has a nonchalant attitude towards religion and is satisfied with blind conformity (taql i d) in religious duties, can be ranked among “ordinary people,” in contrast to the “elite” (ḵāṣṣ ) and the “elite of the elite” (ḵāṣṣ al- ḵ aw āṣṣ)—the people of inner vision and true perception. This tripartite division of believers is defined by Ḡazāli himself in his letters (Makāteb, pp. 13-16, no 4; p. 27, no 5; pp. 42-43, no 13; Brown, pp. 89-113). With so specific a target readership in mind, Ḡazāli substantially simplified the content of the Kimiā in comparison with that of the Eḥyāʾ. However, simplification steps were taken by him in several directions and naturally resulted in the appearance of a new text and a title in another language. These steps were as follows:

1. Recomposing material. Taking into account the inexperienced Muslim laity, very often the text needed to be rearranged and reworked. An illustrative example is the four “heads” or “tops” of Islamic religion (ʿ onw ā n-e mosalm ā n i). They are located after a foreword to the book which is completely different from the foreword to the Eḥyāʾ. These four ʿ onw ā ns are: “On self-knowledge”; “On the knowledge of the Most High”; “On the mystical knowledge of the world”; “On the mystical knowledge of the Hereafter.” They are absent from the Eḥyāʾ, but the ideas discussed in them are scattered throughout it. The text selected for the ʿ onw ā ns is, as a rule, a combination of short quotations from the Qur’an, allegorical stories and vivid examples from everyday life, which are emotionally colored and simple for the reader’s imagination, thus having a stronger effect on him. In addition to these ʿ onw ā ns, there are some other places with significant revisions undertaken by the author.

2. Renaming designations for headings and subheadings. The ʿ onw ā ns are followed by four main chapters which are eponymous in both texts: “On religious duties (ʿebādāt)”; “On social customs (ʿādāt), or behaviors (moʿāmalāt)”; “On the mortal vices (mohlekāt)”; “On the virtues leading to salvation (monjiyāt).” However, if each of these chapters is named “quarter” (robʿ) in the Eḥyāʾ, then it is “pillar” (rokn) in the Kimiā. If every quarter in the former is divided into ten “books” (ketāb), then each pillar in the latter contains ten “bases” (aṣl). The same relates to the designations of a number of smaller subheadings. Thus, the whole mental image of the Kimiā can vividly be visualized and memorized by the reader as the four pillars of religion, each built on ten bases and capped with a pillar top.

3. Abridgment. Approximate statistics of characters in the eponymous quarters of the Eḥyāʾ and the pillars of the Kimiā give the following ratios: for the first quarter 1.0: 5.6; for the second 1.0: 2.9; for the third 1.0: 3.2; for the fourth 1.0: 3.8. Hence, compared with the Eḥyāʾ quarters, the content of the Kimiā pillars was abridged by an average of 3.9 times. The abridgment touched upon the independent introductions to nearly all of the forty books of the Eḥyāʾ. Each introduction begins with a glorification of God, goes on to briefly reveal the concepts to be discussed in the main text, and concludes with a glorification of the Prophet. It reveals these concepts in the form of a rhymed prose (sajʿ) representing a multidimensional text. In the Kimiā, a similarly structured text is explicitly found only once at the very beginning of the book (Khismatulin, 2005, pp. 239-51). In addition, the authorial abridgment mainly affected the illustrative and evidentiary base as well as details on some specific issues.

According to medieval Shafiʿite scholars, such as ʿAbd-al-Raḥim ʿErāqi (d. 806/1403) and his disciple Ebn Ḥajar ʿAsqalāni (d. 852/1449), Ḡazāli quoted in the Eḥyāʾ about 4,250 sayings of the Prophet Moḥammad to establish his illustrative and evidentiary base. The figure does not include the statements of religious and Sufi authorities as well as hidden quotations. In the Kimiā, Ḡazāli significantly reduces the number of these sayings on top of giving only the shortest of them in the Arabic original. In all other cases, he proposes semantic Persian translation of them, sometimes combining several independent sayings on a similar topic into one in the same way as it was applied by many other scholars via joining together independent Qur’anic citations related to one topic. Taking this approach, Ḡazāli became one of the first Muslim scholars (if not the first one) to practice translation of the Prophet’s sayings into Persian. Moreover, in view of the low religious status of the intended audience and, apparently, in an effort to avoid overloading the Kimiā with these ;sayings, Ḡazāli sometimes paraphrases them with no indication of their true origins. The same approach was taken by him in the Zād-e āḵerat, whose target audience was his non-Arabic disciples.

In case the curious and concerned reader wants to get more detailed information, Ḡazāli gives references to the titles of his previously written books in Arabic, such as the Eḥyāʾ itself (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, pp. 9, 232, 262, 273, 279, 366, 376; II, pp. 329, 379, 499, 535, 630); the Jawāher al-Qorʾān (Gems of the Qur’an) (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, pp. 9, 275); al-Maqṣad al-asnā fi šarḥ asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥosnā (The highest objective in explaining Allah’s most beautiful names) (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, p. 35); the Meškāt al-anwār wa meṣfāt al-asrār (The niche for lights and filter for secrets) (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, p. 58); and the Bedāyat al-hedāya (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, pp. 262, 271), as well as some books on logic and jurisprudence (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, p. 328). Referring the reader to these books, Ḡazāli frequently notices in the Kimiā that he is not going to repeat the details already discussed by him, but will focus on some other aspects of the related questions, mostly of spiritual nature.

4. Introducing new source material. Sometimes a text appears in the Kimiā that is absent in the Ehyā’. For example, the tenth basis (aṣl), entitled “On how to possess the subjects and manage governance” of the Kimiā’s second pillar, has no analogues in the Eḥyāʾ (Hillenbrand, 2004, pp. 593-601). About ten years before composing the Kimiā, the same material was used by Ḡazāli in the Fażāʾeḥ al-Bāṭeniya wa fażāʾel al-Mostaẓheriya (The Infamies of the Batenites and the virtues of the Mostazherites), a rather small Arabic-language essay addressed to the 28th ʿAbbasid caliph, al-Mostaẓher (487-512/1094-1118), who was only 16 years old at that time. Ḡazāli wrote this essay in the Baghdad period, prior to his spiritual crisis that led to his departure from Baghdad in 488/1095.

The final (tenth) chapter of the Fażāʾeḥ, after a slight reduction in the illustrative and evidentiary base (from 84 to 64 ḥ ad iṯs), in its new arrangement and translation into Persian, formed the tenth basis of the second pillar of the Kimiā years later. From there, the content again, in a revised order, migrated to the authentic, first part of the Naṣiḥat al-moluk compiled for Sanjar in 503/1109. Thus, neither in the Fażāʾeḥ, nor in the Kimiā, nor in the genuine part of the Naṣiḥat, was anything fundamentally new added to the illustrative and evidentiary base from non-Islamic sources as was done in the inauthentic part of the Naṣiḥat. The latter had already been attached to the genuine text, intentionally or involuntarily, by the beginning of the 13th century, when it had first been translated into Arabic.

Stated differently, in 1094, before his spiritual crisis, Ḡazāli advised the teenage caliph the same things about government that he also advised the unsophisticated Muslim believers of the Kimiā in the period between 1102 and 1106 and the young Sanjar in 1109. Therefore, it is absolutely groundless to say that Ḡazāli’s views on state administration in the pre-crisis Baghdad period were qad i m (“old”), while in the post-crisis Khorasan period they became jad i d (“new”). This is not confirmed by anything: “There is a considerable degree of consistency in al-Ghazali’s view on government” (Hillenbrand, 1988, p. 92). Very often, the authenticity of many texts that are falsely attributed to Ḡazāli, or are outright forgeries, is justified only by Ḡazāli’s post-crisis revision views without providing stronger arguments (Khismatulin, 2015, pp. 118-27; 2017, pp. 89-114).

To sum up, the Kimiā-ye saʿādat is neither a Persian translation nor an abridgment of a particular Arabic work of Ḡazāli’s. This book presents an independent “summation rather than merely a summary of al-Ghazali’s thought” (Hillenbrand, 2013, p. 66), expressed by him in his native language and in a manner accessible to a general Persian-speaking audience. Thus, the audience could grasp many complex philosophical, theological, and Sufi questions treated by Ḡazāli in his many other works written in Arabic.

Impact on Sufism . The main purpose set by Ḡazāli in the Kimiā, is to show the straight path from the “lowest of the low” to the “highest of the high,” that is, the genuine Sufism within the framework of the Islamic religious law and as the highest point of Islamic religion. With this purpose in mind, Ḡazāli tries to motivate the reader to analyze impalpable variations in his spiritual impulses and to change behaviors in terms of their sincerity towards religion and obligatory acts of worship. Such analysis is expected to result in a transmutation of the reader’s soul and lead him to eternal happiness. This is one of the crucial reasons why the book has always been popular throughout the centuries, attracting the attention of many believers and ideally suited for educational purposes in Sufism.

Another reason for its popularity is the proposal of a practical way to lead the Sufi life at the advanced stages. By Ḡazāli’s lifetime, this way of life was already widespread in Khorasan and Transoxania (seeMĀ WARĀʾ AL-NAHR) by the adherents of the Malāmatiya movement, with its influential Nishapur school of mystical piety. In his Ehyā’, Ḡazāli discusses its principles of everyday practice, borrowing freely from the Arabic works of his predecessors mostly in Ṭus and Nishapur as well as of those from other religious schools whose works won general acceptance in Sufism (Purjavādi, pp. 213-78; Khismatulin, 2005, p. 259), translating the borrowings into Persian in the Kimiā, and transmitting his own spiritual experience, gained by him in communication with Abu ʿAli Fażl b. Moḥammad Fārmadi Ṭusi (d. 477/1084-85) (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, II, pp. 34, 156)—a prominent Sufi and preacher of his time (Gozashteh and Negahban, pp. 468-9). Names of this Sufi master and his teacher and father-in-law Abu-al-Qāsem ʿAbd-Allāh b.ʿAli Gorgāni/Korrakāni Ṭusi (d. 450/1058 or 469/1077) are mentioned by Ḡazāli with the use of the conventional title of respect Ḵᵛāja (“lord,” “mister”) and applied to the Ḵᵛājagān of Ṭus (Kimiā, ed. Ḵadiv Jam, I, p. 453). Both names are also presented in the chain of spiritual adherence (selsela) of the Ḵᵛājagān-Naqšbandiya Sufi order. This order appeared in 14th century Transoxania and became famous with its own principles of everyday practice formulated in Persian, which are very similar to those described by Ḡazāli in Arabic terms for the Malāmatiya in his Eḥyāʾ and Kimiā (Khismatulin, 1998, pp. 208-15; idem, 2005, pp. 252-62).

Hence, the “official” Ḵᵛājagān-Naqšbandiya Sufi order of Bukhara, which later spread throughout the Muslim world, is in fact a Transoxanian offspring of the Malāmatiya Sufi movement related to the Nishapur and Ṭus Shafiʿite school of law to which Ḡazāli belonged. This is explicitly confirmed by the Ḵᵛājagān-Naqšbandiya “ideologist” and Islamic law scholar (faqih) Moḥammad Pārsā Boḵāri (d. 822/1420) in his Fa ṣl al- ḵeṭ āb (The Final Decision): “Thus, what was mentioned [in the book] about the states of the people of blame (ahl-e malāmat), explains the states of the Ḵᵛājagān family” (Pārsā, p. 699).

Translations . The active process of translating Ḡazāli’s texts, both Arabic and Persian, into other languages began with Ottoman Turkish from the early 16th century onwards. To judge from descriptions in some manuscript catalogues, there were three categories of the Turkish translations of the Kimiā: (a) the first four ʿ onw ā ns only; (b) the full text; (c) the full text with comments on it (tedbir-e eksir) made by different medieval scholars (e.g., Fehres, I, pp. 71-72, 92-93). In the lithographic period, priority was given to the first category as the most popular and commercially profitable for publication. In the 19th century, the first four ʿ onw ā ns were translated several times by a number of translators and lithographed in Istanbul numerous times (Ülken, pp. 60-61, 69, 71-72, 79). This tendency has continued in the 20th century. However, from 1969 onwards, several Turkish translations of the complete text (tam metin) were also published by different translators (Günaydin, pp. 75-76).

In addition to the Ottoman Turkish translations, there are also known at least three different translations into Central Asian Turkic languages, which were preserved in the 19th century manuscripts. Two translations were done in Ḵᵛārazm (CHORASMIA) of the four ʿ onw ā ns only, later lithographed in Tashkent (1904), and of the complete text. One more full translation was undertaken in Khotan (q.v.), obviously into Uyghur (Madraimov, pp. 13-20).

The earliest translation of the complete text into Urdu as Eks i r-e hed ā yat seems to have been made by Faḵr-al-Din Aḥmad and published lithographically by Munshi Nawal Kishor (d. 1895) in 1885. From then onwards, several Urdu translations under the book’s original title were published by different translators.

Early publications of the Kimiā-ye saʿādat in European languages are presented by the secondary translations. They were undertaken neither from the original Persian nor from any of the Kimiā’s complete translations listed above. The text was first translated into English by Henry A. Homes (1873) from an abridged translation into Ottoman Turkish published in Istanbul (1260/1845). Homes noticed in his “Introduction” that “the Turkish edition itself is but a portion of the original work” (p. 11). Both Turkish and English translations contain just the four ʿ onw ā ns of religionsupplemented with a short text (On the love of God) that does not seem to belong to Ḡazāli.

The second English translation done by Claud Field (1910) from an Urdu abridgement is a little bit larger than that of Homes. It consists of the four ʿ onw ā ns, two chapters from the second pillar, and two chapters from the fourth one. However, some of these chapters were substantially abbreviated, obviously by an Urdu translator. In 1991, the translation was revised and significantly annotated by Elton L. Daniel. Nevertheless, it still constitutes a small portion of the Kimiā’s original size and definitely cannot provide an adequate sense of its content.

A less abridged version of the Kimiā, but heavily mixed with comments of an unidentified author, was rendered into English and published in Pakistan in 2001. It is not clear from the publisher’s note which text was used for this rendition, but it seems to have been some Urdu translation of the Kimiā. This might have been one of the reasons why, in 2005, the same publisher printed a two-volume complete English translation by Jay R. Crook (Muhammad Nur).

Hellmut Ritter’s (q.v.; 1892-1971) German translation (1923) contains only the first ʿ onw ā n and one short part from the second pillar of the Kimiā. The rest are passages abridged by Ritter himself and drawn from the Eḥyāʾ (Ritter, p. 3). The second edition of his translation (1989) was later updated with a new foreword by Annemarie Schimmel (q.v.; 1922-2003).

In Russia, the four ʿ onw ā ns of the Kimiā were first translated by Alexey Khismatulin and published with a parallel Persian text in a series of the textbooks for students “Culture and Ideology of the Medieval Muslim Orient” (2001). These ʿ onw ā ns together with the first pillar and the second pillar were then published in two separate volumes (2002, 2007), based on MS B 928 (dated 1495) from the collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg. In 2018, a four-volume complete Russian translation was published, of which the third and fourth pillars were translated by Ismagil Gibadullin.

Editions. Publication of the full Persian text of the Kimiā-ye sa‘ādat began with its numerous lithographic editions in 19th century India (see LITHOGRAPHY ii. IN INDIA) whose publishers met the general needs of the Persian-speaking reader far beyond the country’s borders. The first lithograph of the book seems to have been produced in Calcutta in 1252/1836 (Nowšāhi, I, p. 283), then republished by the famous publisher Munshi Nawal Kishor in Lucknow (1279/1862). His example has been later followed by many Indian publishers (Shcheglova, pp. 38, 52, 87, 114, 121, 126, 227).

In Iran, a lithograph of the Kimiā-ye sa‘ādat seems to have first been published in 1253/1837 (Mošār, II, p. 2703; Sāket, 2019, p. 453); however, this information requires additional verification in terms of both the publication date and completeness of the published text (see LITHOGRAPHY i. IN PERSIA).

After the lithographic period, two Persian editions were printed, thanks to Aḥmad Ārām (1940) and Ḥosayn Ḵadiv Jam (1982). The latter edition is considered by modern scholarship more accurate than the former. However, both editions are uncritical with no indication of the editing principles. That is why contemporary Iranian scholars intend to prepare a critical edition of the text, with variant readings based on the most reliable copies (Sāket et al., pp. 29-55). This may result in a need for revision of the Kimiā’s translations already published to date.