Core Topics: The Heart's Diseases and Their Remedies

The Ri'ayah is perhaps the most systematic treatment of the heart's diseases to come from the early Islamic spiritual tradition, anticipating in considerable depth the more extensive treatments that al-Ghazali would provide two centuries later in the Ihya. Al-Muhasibi identifies a comprehensive set of spiritual diseases and provides both careful diagnoses and specific prescriptions.

Pride (kibr) receives extended treatment because al-Muhasibi regarded it as the root of so many other spiritual diseases. He analyzes how pride manifests differently depending on the person's social position, intellectual attainments, and religious standing. The pride of the scholar — who may feel contempt for those less learned than himself — is different in its external expression from the pride of the wealthy man or the physically attractive person, but all share the same root: an inflated self-evaluation that places the self above others in one's own esteem. Al-Muhasibi's cure for pride is sustained reflection on one's dependence on Allah for every good, combined with deliberate acts of service and humility.

Ostentation (riya) is treated with even greater depth. Al-Muhasibi's analysis is notable for its identification of subtle forms of riya that are much more difficult to detect and correct than obvious performance for an audience. He describes how a person can begin an act of worship sincerely and then feel pleased when someone notices; how the manner of performing an act of worship can subtly change when one knows one is being observed; and how the desire for praise can operate so quietly that the person experiencing it does not recognize it as ostentation at all.

Envy (hasad) receives a precise analysis that distinguishes it from related states like ghitta (a wish for others' blessings to be removed) and ghibta (a wish to have what another has without wishing it taken away). Only the first is the sinful form of envy; the second and third have different moral valences. This kind of careful conceptual distinction is characteristic of al-Muhasibi's approach and makes his analysis more useful than cruder treatments that lump together distinguishable phenomena.

The remedies al-Muhasibi prescribes for these diseases consistently combine specific acts of worship — fasting, prayer, night vigil, Quran recitation — with specific cognitive practices and behavioral changes tailored to the particular disease being addressed.