The book is a comprehensive encyclopaedia for all of a Muslim's religious affairs, including beliefs, acts of worship, dealings and character, as well as for individual and societal welfare. Al-Ghazālī's style is that of one who practices what he knows, one who is determined to rise from the dry, ordinary manner of teaching to one which encourages action.
Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī is a towering figure in Islam. His enormous influence can be summarized, in the words of Annemarie Schimmel, as the one who "teaches... only to help man to live a life in accordance with the sacred law, not by clinging exclusively to its letter, but by an understanding of its deeper meaning ... so that he is ready for the meeting with his Lord at any moment." His greatest work Ihyā' 'Ūlūm al-Dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), comprising forty books divided into four quarters of ten books each, has helped generations towards this end until today.