“I searched for a goal that all people agree is good and all people pursue, and I found only one: driving away worry.”

Ibn Hazm (384–456 AH / 994–1064 CE) of Cordoba, jurist and theologian, sets out this search early in his short book on healing the soul. He then follows the roads people take to that one goal — wealth to escape the worry of poverty, fame to escape the worry of being looked down on, and so on — and finds that only one actually arrives: “turning to Allah by working for the Hereafter.” Everything else, he concludes, is error and foolishness.