The Life of Hearts

At Uhud, wounded in the face, the Prophet caught his own blood and flung it upward, and not one drop came back to earth, lest punishment fall upon the world. Urged to curse his enemies, he prayed instead, “O God, guide my people, for they do not know.” This is The Life of Hearts: the life of the Prophet Muhammad as the traditions of his household, the Ahl al-Bayt, remember it.

Its author, Muhammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (1627–1699), was Shaykh al-Islam of Safavid Isfahān. This adaptation of the second volume of his Hayāt al-Qulūb draws on James L. Merrick’s translation of 1850 and Syed Athar Husain S. H. Rizvi’s complete translation, from which much that Merrick omitted is restored.

It runs from the light of Muhammad before creation to Ghadīr Khumm and his last morning. Through wonder and hardship walks a man who knew love, grief, exile, betrayal, sacrifice and forgiveness, yet was so wholly turned towards God, so attuned to the Highest Will, that the world itself answered him.

Al-Majlisī called it The Life of Hearts, not the life of minds. May it open your heart to the Life of all Hearts, who changed our world forever.