Ibn Miskawayh

Ibn Miskawayh was a philosopher, ethicist, and historian who served the Buyids, the Iranian dynasty then ruling much of Iraq and western Iran. He is best known for the Tahdhib al-akhlaq ("The Refinement of Character"), widely regarded as the first systematic treatise on philosophical ethics in Arabic. In it he reworks Greek virtue theory — especially the Aristotelian idea that each virtue is a "mean" (a balanced midpoint between two extremes) — together with Platonic and Neoplatonic elements, into a program of moral self-cultivation compatible with Islam. His birth date is uncertain; he is usually placed at Rayy (near modern Tehran) around 320 AH / 932 CE, though some accounts suggest a date closer to 940. He spent his career as a chancery official, secretary, and librarian. Reports name service to the vizier al-Muhallabi at Baghdad, then to the vizier Ibn al-Amid and his son, and later to the ruler Adud al-Dawla, in whose service he is described chiefly as keeper of the library, with some financial duties also reported. His own madhhab is not firmly documented: contemporaries call him simply a Muslim, and he is variously filed as Sunni or Shia by later writers, so his branch is best treated as undetermined. The name "Miskawayh" is of Persian origin; a tradition reported by the geographer Yaqut holds that an ancestor had converted from Zoroastrianism, the pre-Islamic religion of Iran. He also wrote a major universal history, Tajarib al-umam ("The Experiences of the Nations"). By the account Encyclopaedia Iranica calls most reliable he died, very old, on 9 Safar 421 / 16 February 1030 at Isfahan; a minority report (followed by Britannica) names Rayy.