The heart

so at the beginning of the affair bodily works oppose him and base occupations crowd in upon him, and he is at the night prayer while with his heart he passes the evening in talk with the elegant, and at the day's office of devotion while with his mind he gambles with the tradesmen — so that you see him devoutly withdrawn in the mosque with his body, while with his heart he is standing in the market.

Some of the scholars said that the spirit in a human being is a small part which, when it was breathed into him, settled in his heart.

So the soul is that which commands, the spirit is as it were the reproaching soul, and the heart is the soul at peace.

Neither vouchsafed to the sphere, nor attained by the angel — that which lies in the secret of the black core of the heart of the sons of Adam, and is from Him.

' But my excuse in this is that access to the secrets of hearts is granted to none but the Knower of all hidden things;

'If the Throne and all it contains, a thousand times over, were in a corner of the gnostic's heart, it would not fill it' — or however he put it.

) Know that when a man sits in solitude and the passing thoughts come one after another upon his heart, he may come to be as though he heard within his heart and his brain faint sounds and faint letters, as though a speaker were speaking with him and an addresser addressing him.

and the heart is in the midst of these instruments like a king and these are his troops rendering to him, or like a burnished mirror with these tools about it, so that they appear in it and it sees them, and they strike within it and it finds them.

And al-Ghazzāl said in al-Iḥyāʼ, in the exposition of the satan's mastery over the heart by insinuation, after laying down a preamble, the like of this: