The Kitāb al-hawāmil wa-l-šawāmil is a collection of 175 questions that the philosopher-litterateur Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 414/1023) addresses to the philosopher and historian Abū ʿAlī Miskawayh (d. 421/1030), accompanied by the latter's answers. The peculiar collective nature of the work – responding to the literary form of masā’il wa-aǧwiba – and the wide range of themes covered – reflecting the variety of al-Tawḥīdī's interests – make it an exceptional portrait of the “dialogic spirit of the intellectual culture” (p. xiv) that flourished at the Buyid court in the fourth/tenth century.

Two fundamental merits of this publication are immediately evident. It constitutes the first critical revision of the editio princeps published in 1951 by Aḥmad Amīn and Sayyid Aḥmad Ṣaqr. Based on a new examination of the codex unicus (MS Aya Sofya 2476) the two editors, Bilal Orfali and Maurice Pomerant, propose both conjectures to the transmitted text and various corrections to the previous edition. In addition, the work's first full-length English translation, by Sophia Vasalou and James E. Montgomery, is printed on the page facing the Arabic text, this being the second complete translation in a Western language, after the Italian version published in 2017 by Lidia Bettini.

In her introduction (pp. xi–xxxi) Vasalou offers an overview of the main exegetical issues concerning the œuvre as a whole, retracing the history of studies. The constant reference to examples taken from the Arabic text lends structure to and reinforces her arguments. A concise presentation of the two thinkers’ biographies and works and of the historical–cultural context is followed by a review of the main hypotheses for dating the work. While admitting that the exchange belongs to the early stages of both thinkers’ careers, the author refrains from setting precise chronological limits. The chronological question, as rightly underlined (p. xv), is not an end in itself, but constitutes a preliminary investigation into the understanding of the spirit that animated the erudite exchange and consequently into the nature and purpose of the work itself. The remaining pages of the introduction mainly focus on these aspects. First, the content, style and expressive peculiarities of both al-Tawḥīdī's questions and Miskawayh's answers are analysed in the light of the intellectual and psychological profile of both.

Vasalou then emphasizes Miskawayh's dual role as author and editor of the redaction of the correspondence as it has been preserved. The preface and other internal elements suggest that Miskawayh received al-Tawḥīdī's questions all at once, accompanied by an introductory letter not included in the work. In answering, he would have recorded the questions formulated by al-Tawḥīdī in a more or less literal way, which we thus read in mediated form. Moreover, in some instances, Miskawayh shows a literary awareness that surpasses the boundaries of one-to-one correspondence and seems implicitly to address an audience of learned readers. The last formal aspect discussed by Vasalou concerns the labels that introduce a good part of the questions and indicate their subject. While there are no elements that support the attribution to al-Tawḥīdī, it is plausible that these are later additions by a copyist or part of Miskawayh's editorial intervention. In support of the latter hypothesis, Vasalou notes that labels represent a cataloguing tool consistent with the systematic approach that Miskawayh exhibits throughout this work and which meets the needs of a potential readership. She convincingly adds that many of the labels do not coincide so much with the theme addressed in the question as with the arguments introduced by Miskawayh in his answer.

The section “Note on the text” (pp. xxxiii–xxxviii) offers a brief description of the manuscript and its history, the list of principles adopted in establishing the critical edition and a presentation of the English translation. The latter paragraph contains some fundamental methodological considerations concerning the translation task.

Beyond the obvious textual difficulties due to a tradition consisting of a single incomplete testimony, a work with such heterogeneous contents and multiple authorship poses specific challenges. One initial difficulty lies in finding a compromise between the preservation of an internal coherence in the lexical choices and the rendering of oscillations in meaning of certain terms due both to the polysemy of the word itself and to the interpretive nuances given by the two authors (see the concrete example of quwwa, pp. xxvii–xxviii). Similarly, the English translation is required to reflect the stylistic peculiarities of each author, as in §§ 4.1–4.14, where al-Tawḥīdī's rhetorical phrasing contrasts visibly with Miskawayh's more synthetic and technical prose.

Finally, the authors call attention to the metalinguistic issue involved in rendering a set of questions and answers that deal with matters of Arabic grammar and lexicography. In such cases the challenge lies in providing a translation that, while remaining faithful to the original text, could still be read independently from it and be accessible even to a general reader. An illustrative example is §§ 34.2–17, in which Miskawayh explains the basic meaning of some technical terms of philosophy and religion. The English translation reproduces the arguments of the thinker – based on morphological and semantic considerations internal to the Arabic language – with philological precision. Transliteration is extremely rare and is limited only to instances where it is essential to highlight derivation patterns, within the same Arabic root, between two or more words. Where the discussion becomes more technical, as in the definition of tamkīn “enabling” (p. 155), the translators offer an alternative version in note (nr. 37) that is more conservative and adherent to the original. The apparatus of succinct and punctual notes does in fact provide key information for understanding the text and guides the reading in view of further investigation without weighing down the translation.

In conclusion, this publication not only offers a new critical reference edition of the Arabic text, but also, through an elegant and fluent English translation, makes this unique work accessible to an audience of non-specialists.