The Refinement of Character (Tahdhib al-Akhlaq)

Ibn Miskawayh was a tenth century Muslim philosopher, and the Tahdhib al-Akhlaq, in Constantine K. Zurayk's English translation published by the American University of Beirut, is his own foundational ethical treatise reworking the Aristotelian doctrine of the virtuous mean and the four cardinal virtues within an Islamic account of the soul's perfection. As Ibn Miskawayh's own primary text, in a recognized scholarly translation, it is the correct source for the founding statement of the philosophical akhlaq genre in his own argument. Its limit is that it presents one philosopher's own synthesis, so a claim about how later akhlaq writers modified or departed from his framework needs a source addressing that later tradition.