Miskawayh (936–c.1030), Persian courtierstatesman, historian, physician, and advocate of Greek and other ancient learning in Islam. His On the Refinement of Character (tr. Constantine Zurayk, 1968) has been called ‘the most influential work on philosophical ethics’ in Islam. It transmutes Koranic command ethics into an Aristotelian virtue ethics whose goal is the disciplining (ta’dib, cf. the Greek paideia) of our natural irascibility, allowing our deeper unity to be expressed in love and fellowship. Miskawayh’s system was copied widely – crucially, in al-Ghazali’s all-but-canonical treatment of virtue ethics – but denatured by al-Ghazali’s substitution of pietistic themes where Miskawayh seemed too secular or humanistic. See also AL- GHAZA ALII. L.E.G.