1Martini’s outstanding skill and erudition are on full display in this hefty tome. He works on late medieval Islamic intellectual history, which is a particularly demanding subject. The field in general has suffered under a dearth of editions and only a rudimentary and provisional understanding of canonical texts and important turning points. This is not because of a lack of literature since vast amounts were produced in this period. Different strategies were proposed to make inroads. Some picked a period, like Khaled El-Rouayheb in his Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century, others took historical and biographical sources as their starting point, like Alexander Knysh in Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, and yet others disregarded historical or regional boundaries and looked at the trajectory of commentary traditions, such as I have done. And then there is the approach to take one person and one person only, and penetrate their writings so deeply that it becomes like a lighthouse that sheds light on a large part of this postclassical period. This is the approach of the author of this work, Giovanni Martini. The Sufi intellectual al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336) is his person of choice.

2Within al-Simnānī’s corpus, the author chose to focus on al-Wārid al-šārid al-ṭārid šubhat al-mārid. This text has received next to no attention in modern scholarship, and Martini makes a convincing case why that ought to change. In a nutshell, he says that al-Simnānī tries to take the reader away from philosophy and in the direction of Sufism. Not only is this a highly original attempt, it is an important witness of the intellectual currents at the turn of the 8th/14th century. It is a little like al-Ġazālī’s al-Munqiḏ min al-ḍalāl but also entirely different. In the process of his critical editing, the author noticed some odd aspects to this text that needed to be addressed. One is that the chapters read like independent treatises, complete with basmalas and a prayer at the end. The other is that al-Simnānī claimed to have translated this work into Persian, but upon inspection Martini noticed there is not a strict one-to-one correspondence between the texts.

3I myself think such difficulties are typical for texts of this period. It is never easy to just pick up a text, edit it and then study and criticize it. Instead, all kinds of odds and ends need to be addressed first, and this is what makes the period so hard to study. Most people falter under this workload, but Martini showed that he was up to the task. Deciding to do things the right way, he also included a critical edition of this Persian translation, entitled Zayn al-muʿtaqad li-zayn al-muʿtaqid. Both editions are expertly executed and should be taken into consideration by anyone investigating the period for discussions on the relation between philosophy and mysticism.

4In the first chapter, the author studies the life of al-Simnānī as it presents itself through autobiographical comments, and infrequently, through historical sources. Al-Simnānī’s life has been studied before, but Martini extracts every last bit of information out of these sources. He states that this account of al-Simnānī’s life is a “bright window overlooking the Ilkhanid World” (p. xxiv). Given the length and level of detail, however, this part of the book will be appreciated best by those who are already familiar with al-Simnānī and want to know something specific about his life. One generalization that is brought up, and which I find fascinating, is how the digging of a well is presented as both a saintly miracle and a result of human technological effort without any contradiction implied (pp. 69–71).

5I consider Chapter Two the most important contribution of Martini. Here he analyzes the problem of having a text that purports to be a translation but is not literally so. The author convincingly shows how al-Simnānī writes in Arabic for a global and public audience, and in Persian for a local and private one. To understand how al-Wārid starts as a philosophical text and ends as a patently Sufi one, Martini introduces the notion of a ‘hybrid text’ (pp. 125–128). He does so in a very modest, careful fashion, in fact sometimes a little over-concerned. Considering a text hybrid, i.e., composed of parts that can be entirely different in style, topic, aim, or otherwise, immediately invites the question which parts we can identify. Instead of becoming frustrated by the seemingly haphazard changes between chapters, considering it as a hybrid text allows us to divide up the text into parts and investigate the relationship between them. The analysis that the author offers of these inter- and intratextual problems is worthwhile for anyone interested in exploring unchartered parts of the literature of this period.

6In the last part of the book, Martini gives an English translation of al-Wārid. He defends this choice by arguing that “translation […] is the designated moment for an in-depth, meditated understanding of the words and meanings to which they refer” (p. 381). He thinks that studying the arguments and ideas of someone “can hardly be separated” from the activity of translating and that this is especially true if so little is known of the author. Trying to explain the doctrinal concepts of al-Simnānī would run the risk of falling short, “given that too little has been done.” We face yet again the careful nature of Martini’s working habits, caring greatly for all the details that the materials contain, unmoved by the ever greater complexity this thrusts on him.

7I would parry with the observation that whoever comes to this book, will surely already know Arabic or Persian and probably both. Is a full translation really necessary? Or would a commentary have been sufficient, even if it would be mostly towards explaining linguistic and not doctrinal issues? I have always thought of translation as something to be done in the last, most developed stage of our studies of someone or something. Only to be done on the most successful classics, as a means for easier access to those outside our field. Martini turns this around and I am afraid I am not entirely convinced (just compare the original of § 3.4 at p. 235 with the translation on p. 422). This is a minor qualm in the broader picture of the very learned book that the Martini has given us.

8I started by saying that a study in postclassical Islamic intellectual history which looks at only one text by one author, is meaningful if it can be like a lighthouse that sheds light on a large part of our subject matter. Otherwise it is merely a tiny blip in this vast ocean of unexplored literature. I think Martini has constructed a mighty structure with this book, a lighthouse which he has erected very high and strong. The light, however, remains to be lit. There is more work to be done. The author made remarks in this regard himself by pointing to the possibility of comparing al-Wārid with other major works like al-ʿUrwa and Čihil Maǧlis. I look forward to more work from Martini, because, with him, al-Simnānī is in good hands.