Ahmad al-Ghazali, Remembrance, and the Metaphysics of Love JOSEPH E. B. LUMBARD For Alexis “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.” Acknowledgments This book derives from a doctoral dissertation submitted to Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies. I am deeply indebted to my dissertation advisor, Gerhard Bowering, who first suggested this topic and saw the project through to completion. I must also thank Seyyed Hossein Nasr, under whom I completed an MA thesis on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and who first introduced me to the fields of Islamic Studies and Sufi Studies. Beatrice Gruendler served as a meticulous reader for the dissertation and provided the overall structure that I have maintained in the final book. As a reader for the dissertation, William Chittick provided many excellent suggestions. His thorough critique of the revised manuscript many years later was invaluable. Neither the dissertation nor thi...