Seerah Ibn Miskawayh — Abu 'Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ya'qub ibn Miskawayh (940-1030 CE): The Philosopher, Historian, and Ethicist Whose Tahdhib al-Akhlaq (Refinement of Character — the Most Systematic Ethics Treatise in Classical Islamic Philosophy, Drawing on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Plato's Republic) and Tajarib al-Umam (Experiences of Nations — a Universal History) Made Him the Most Systematic Ethical Thinker of the Buyid Golden Age, and His Connection to Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi

Seerah Ibn Miskawayh (سِيرَةُ ابنِ مِسكَوَيه; full name: Abu 'Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ya'qub ibn Miskawayh; born approximately 329 AH / 940 CE in Isfahan or Ray; died 421 AH / 1030 CE in Isfahan; his career: worked as a librarian and secretary in Buyid court circles in Ray and Isfahan; his patrons included the great Buyid vizier Ibn al-'Amid and the philosopher-vizier Ibn 'Abbad [al-Sahib ibn 'Abbad]; he was a contemporary and interlocutor of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi [the famous exchange in al-Hawamil wal-Shawamil was between Miskawayh and al-Tawhidi]; his background was possibly Zoroastrian before converting to Islam; major works: [1] Tahdhib al-Akhlaq wa-Tathir al-A'raq [تَهذِيبُ الأَخلَاقِ وَتَطهِيرُ الأَعرَاق — Refinement of Character and Purification of Dispositions]: the most systematic ethics treatise in classical Islamic philosophy; 6 books; draws heavily on: [a] Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics [available in Arabic translation]; [b] Plato's Republic [on the tripartite soul]; [c] Galen's medical ethics; [d] Sufi introspection; [e] Quranic and hadith values; major themes: [i] the soul's three faculties [rational/irascible/appetitive — the Platonic tripartite soul]; [ii] virtue as the mean between excess and deficiency [the Aristotelian mean]; [iii] the virtues systematically treated: justice, wisdom, courage, temperance, and the minor virtues; [iv] friendship [sadaqa] as the culmination of social ethics [Aristotelian influence]; [v] happiness [sa'ada] as the goal of the ethical life; [vi] the soul's immortality and its rational nature; the Tahdhib is simultaneously philosophical [drawing on Greek ethics], Islamic [drawing on Quran/Sunnah], and Sufi [drawing on inner-cultivation tradition]; it was enormously influential: al-Ghazali used it; Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's 13th-century Akhlaq-i Nasiri [in Persian] is substantially based on it; [2] Tajarib al-Umam [تَجَارِبُ الأُمَم — Experiences of Nations]: a universal history from the Persian kings through Miskawayh's own era [until approximately 980 CE]; the most important historical work of the Buyid period; notable for: [a] the first-person account of events Miskawayh witnessed at the Buyid court; [b] its rational-empirical approach to historical causation [less interested in divine intervention, more in human decision-making]; [c] its incorporation of Persian historical traditions; [d] the account of the Buyid amir Adud al-Dawla [r. 949-983] under whom Miskawayh served; the Miskawayh-Tawhidi exchange: in al-Hawamil wal-Shawamil [Questions and Wide-Ranging Answers], Miskawayh and al-Tawhidi engaged in a philosophical exchange; al-Tawhidi posed philosophical questions; Miskawayh answered; the exchange reveals both the intellectual proximity and the personal tension between the two; al-Tawhidi in al-Akhlaq wal-Siyar gives a somewhat unflattering portrait of Miskawayh; Miskawayh and Ismaili thought: Miskawayh was not Ismaili; his ethics is primarily Aristotelian-Platonic-Islamic; but his concern with the soul's rational perfection, his use of Neoplatonic emanation in the Tahdhib's later books, and his role in the Buyid intellectual milieu [which also produced figures like Nasir Khusraw, who passed through it] places him in close proximity to the Ismaili philosophical tradition; the Ikhwan al-Safa' [Brethren of Purity] whose encyclopaedia has Ismaili connections are rough contemporaries and share many concerns with Miskawayh) is Islamic philosophy's greatest systematic ethicist.