ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī (d. 736/1336) was one of the most remarkable, and prolific, Sufi shaykhs of Ilkhanid Iran, but his life and his works – in Arabic and Persian and often distinctly personal in tone – still remain insufficiently studied. The new book by Giovanni Maria Martini is a significant contribution to scholarship on this figure, coming nearly a quarter-century after the extensive study of Simnānī's life and thought by Jamal J. Elias, The Throne-Carrier of God (Albany, 1995); Martini's book builds on Elias’ work, correcting and expanding it in places, but remaining in dialogue with it throughout.

The book consists of an introduction, seven chapters, and an appendix (in which Martini supplements the “catalogue” of Simnānī's literary output provided by Elias). After the short introduction, which situates Simnānī in terms of Sufi initiation and teaching and surveys the state of scholarship on him, the long first chapter is devoted to a careful reconstruction of Simnānī's biography, adding considerable detail and clarification through a mostly judicious weighing of Simnānī's multiple, and often quite different, accounts of his life. One of the particular merits of Martini's study lies in his attention to the historical contextualization of Simnānī's career, and to the material and social components of a Sufi life in addition to the spiritual and intellectual side that is more typically foregrounded. Martini does an excellent job, for instance, of identifying clues, in Simnānī's writings, to ongoing tensions with the Mongol elite, and to his desire, never realized, to leave Ilkhanid territory for good. His argument that Simnānī's foundation of a second khānaqāh complex, Ṣūfiyābād, outside Simnān, amounted to a symbolic hijra that partly compensated for his inability actually to emigrate from his infidel-ruled homeland may go beyond what Simnānī's own words can support, but his discussion of the establishment of this complex (pp. 61–8), with his skilful weaving together of the visionary and hydrological aspects of the site's discovery, is one of the book's highlights.

Following the biographical section, the remaining chapters are all centred around two of Simnānī's works, above all his Arabic al-Wārid al-shārid al-ṭārid shubhat al-mārid, presented here in text edition (the book's fourth chapter) and in translation (chapter 7). This work was completed in 699/1300, and is known to survive in four manuscript copies, of which three were available for use in preparing the edition, all preserved in Istanbul (where all were likely produced, two in 1063/1653 and one in 1120/1708); Martini's third chapter presents a detailed discussion of the manuscripts, their copyists, and the editor's methods. There is a certain unevenness in the sorts of issues addressed by Martini in his notes to the text and translation, with some belaboured at length and others left virtually without comment, but the presentation of this work is itself a major contribution.

Soon after completing al-Wārid, Simnānī himself produced a Persian “translation” of it, entitling it Zayn al-muʿtaqad li-zayn al-muʿtaqid, which Martini also edits here (chapter 6); it is preserved in four copies (two in Tehran, and one each in London and Konya), all produced well before the copies of the Arabic text (the earliest in 868/1463, the latest in 933/1527). Codicological and textological discussions for this work appear in chapter 5.

Martini's second chapter is an extended discussion of the relationship between the two works, and more generally of patterns evident in Simnānī's choice of Arabic or Persian in composing his works, and in the structuring of several of his works. He argues that Simnānī used Arabic for more general or abstract doctrinal presentations and for “public” works intended for an international audience, while he used Persian for more practically oriented works aimed at a “private” audience, above all specific members of his local Sufi circle; as Martini notes, nearly all of Simnānī's Persian works bear a specific dedication to someone (usually a disciple), a feature found in none of his Arabic works. Martini's arguments are mostly convincing, though some of his discussions about Simnānī's motives and decisions may underplay the impact upon his oeuvre of later “editors” and copyists; a chronological sequencing of his works and their arguments and presentations, for instance, might be as illuminating as a linguistic division or structural analysis. In any case, this second chapter includes an insightful and eloquent discussion (pp. 138–41) linking Martini's considerations of Simnānī's linguistic choices with the intended “ritual” use of his texts in conveying divine grace into the hearts of his readers. The chapter concludes with a long “tabular” synopsis of the contents of the Arabic al-Wārid and the Persian Zayn al-muʿtaqad (pp. 155–78), which underscores his earlier observation that the Persian version is in fact not a translation, but a substantial reworking, of the content and thrust of the Arabic work, intended for a different audience; this conclusion leaves it uncertain why an English translation of the Persian work was not included alongside that of the Arabic “original”.

Overall, Martini's work is an impressive study based on painstaking scholarship and solid analysis and argumentation; one need not agree with all his conclusions to appreciate the substantial advance it marks in Simnānī studies. It is thus all the more regrettable that a good copyeditor was not enlisted to help render the author's important insights into idiomatic and clearly readable English; the writing is often convoluted (even outside the translation of al-Wārid, clearly a difficult text), but there are also numerous cases of incomplete sentences, missing punctuation, improper use of the definite article, and problematical word choice.

Finally, though it is hardly a serious lapse, Martini, like nearly all earlier students of Simnānī's life and literary legacy, appears to have missed one of the earliest references to both, in what survives of the biographical dictionary of Ibn al-Fuwaṭī (d. 723/1323), whose entry on Simnānī notes his connection with his master Isfarāyinī and his abandonment of association with kings, and gives a list of his writings that includes the earliest “external” mention of the work that is the centrepiece of Martini's study (Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, Majmaʿ al-ādāb fī muʿjam al-alqāb, ed. Muḥammad al-Kāẓim (Tehran, 1415/1374/1995), vol. 2, pp. 282–3, No. 1472).