Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ

According to our sources,¹ the Persian Ibn al-Muqaffaʿwas murdered at the age of thirty-six in 757 or 758² started his career under the Umayyads, and his expertise in Sāsānian political know-how, combined with his eloquence in Arabic, allowed him to rise to the highest sphere of the political elite. He belonged to the kuttāb (pl. for kātib), scribes or secretaries, who served the military elite, up to the rulers, as advisers and administrators.³ After the downfall of the Umayyads, he advised, as secretary, members of the new ruling dynasty, and lost his life in a power struggle within the ʿAbbāsid family.

In tandem with his political career, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ played a key role in translating Middle Persian political advice texts (andarz) into Arabic adab transmitting both their form and content into Islamic civilization. Furthermore, he also applied late antique theories that are present in these texts to pertinent political agendas of his time, as manifested in both of his surviving political epistles. In the written version of this talk, three adab works and the two political epistles attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ will be discussed. Today, I’ll only present a shortened version of the section on Kalīla wa-Dimna.⁴

Kalīla wa-Dimna

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ authored the Arabic version of the quintessential book of advice for princes and courtiers, Kalīla wa-Dimna, which is a prime example for the conflation between philosophy and advice literature. The Arabic versions are presented in the literary form of a narrative dialogue between a king and a philosopher that frames each chapter after the introductory ones.⁵ Strikingly, in the Arabic versions, the wise man advising the ruler is consistently termed faylasūf, philosopher, using the Arabicised Greek word, probably introduced by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, as it is not included in the old Syriac text, which is considered to be a translation of the Middle Persian version independent from that of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.⁶ In the old Syriac version, the advisor of the frame story is always mentioned by name.⁷

The consistent use of the term faylasūf throughout the text of Kalīla wa-Dimna demonstrates that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ presented this most prominent text of advice literature as a book of philosophy enveloped into entertaining examples. This is corroborated by the guidance given in the entire preface under Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s name.

It was noticed already by Ignác Goldziher – a magnificent Hungarian compatriot of Professor Nagy and myself – that the self-designation of the “philosophically-inclined”⁸ authors of the collection of texts known as the epistles of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity) derives probably from the introduction of a chapter of Kalīla wa-Dimna: the “Chapter of the Ring Dove.”⁹ We can add that the choice of their name was not the only instance when the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ referred to Kalīla wa-Dimna as a source of inspiration. Their epistle titled The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn clearly follows the precedent set by Kalīla wa-Dimna.¹⁰ The collection translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ established the model of embedding philosophy in fables and also includes a chapter reporting about a trial featuring animals at the royal court of a lion.

This is the “Chapter of the Investigation of Dimna’s Conduct,” which was interpolated into the text probably by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.¹¹ It ends with the death of the supremely intelligent but completely immoral jackal, Dimna. Before him, his brother, Kalīla also dies. He is resurrected, however, in the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s epistle to be the spokesperson of one group of the animals, namely the carnivores. He is sent by the lion, the predators’ king, and represent them in the animals’ trial against men castigating the much more predatory nature of humans.¹² According to Johann Christoph Bürgel, this choice of Kalīla by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ presents “an interesting allusion to the older text, by which the Brethren, I think very consciously, place their text in that tradition of – almost heretic – rationalism.”¹³

Doubts about the compatibility of Kalīla wa-Dimna with Islam were also raised by Muslim authors. This is due partly to the Persian kuttāb’s quest for authority, claiming the superiority of their cultural tradition including Kalīla wa-Dimna.¹⁴

In addition to being an emblem of Persian prestige, the fact that Kalīla wa-Dimnatouches ultimate questions of philosophy and religion was another core factor that made the text suspicious. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ is described in classical sources as the author of a Muʿāraḍat al-Qurʾān, that is of a text imitating the Qurʾān, taking up the challenge of inimitability launched by the Qurʾān. Fragments of such a text attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ still survive in a refutation against them. In another refutation against “the damned zindīq Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ”, we also find the fragments of another text attributed to him launching a rationalist, philosophical criticism of the Qurʾān, Islam and monotheism in general.¹⁵

The argumentation of this latter text has been long linked to one of the most important sceptical texts¹⁶ that was widely read in the Islamic world, the intellectual autobiography of Burzawayh/Burzōy, the physician who authored the Middle Persian version of Kalīla wa-Dimna.¹⁷ This autobiography became one of the introductory chapters of the book. It exhibits Burzawayh/Burzōy’s quest for a meaningful life, resulting in deep religious scepticism and transreligious morality.

It is noteworthy that the profoundly philosophical (in the most general sense of the word) and religious (sceptical and trans-religious), ethical and existential preoccupations of Burzawayh/Burzōy were translated because they were included in a collection that primarily aimed at offering political advice. Kalīla wa-Dimna was translated from an old imperial language (Middle Persian) to a new one (Arabic) in an effort to satisfy need of the new imperial elites for imperial political literature. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ lived before the book producing boom that was facilitated by the introduction of paper. Around the time of the ʿAbbāsid (or rather Hāshimite) revolution, the primary interest of the members of the political elite, who ruled the Islamic empire and were able to sponsor the translation and production of books, lied in established and applicable imperial literature advising them about the practice and theory of power including its ideological (and rhetorical) support.¹⁸ Kalīla wa-Dimna teaches philosophy—politics, rhetoric and ethic—in application, packed into the literary framework of fables and tales, which provides both amusement for its audience and a shield for its authors.    The text does not only advise rulers, but also those in their entourage who provide advice to them. Furthermore, writing in a time of religious, ethnical and social tensions, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ may well have used “Aesopian language” intended to be understood by some readers and to be hidden from others.¹⁹

Conclusions

The Arabic adab works of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ are a continuation of the Greek paideiathrough the Middle Persian andarz. They present practical philosophy; ethics and politics; advice for the elites. Forms and content derived from ancient Greek philosophy (as mediated by late antique sources) appeared in Islamic political advice literature before interest in philosophy as a system of theoretical worldview emerged in Islamic civilization. The political—and religious—utility of Greek rhetoric, as well as the benefits of Greek science, had been recognized already by the elites of late antiquity, who blended them with the heritage of other civilizations. Translations of late antique political advice literature into Arabic and the creation of Islamic political literature had an instrumental role in the initiation of the translation of Greek philosophical works into Arabic, leading to the creation of what is commonly designated as “Islamic philosophy.”

The first extant translations into Arabic belong to political advice literature. These texts included already important components of Greek philosophy, namely rhetorical and logical devices as well as political and ethical ideas and patterns (such as the relationship between the ruler and the philosopher-advisor). All these elements provided powerful ammunition in political struggles.

Authors of advice literature were among the first to appropriate Greek rhetorical devices, logic and theories, and adapt them into Islamic frameworks. Meanwhile, they integrated into their works the ideas they deemed relevant for their times and concerns, reshaping them accordingly. Their fields of interest include the entire realm of power: good, mediocre and bad government, rulers, and courtiers (advisers), as well as the relationships between the ruler and his adviser, the ruler and the elite, between members of this elite, and between the ruler, the elite and the common subjects. They deal with individual traits of character and the know-how (adab) required in different roles, as well as with institutions and social strata. Their views express political and ethical ideals and reflect social realities. Producing or commissioning advice literature presented a subtle means for negotiations for power, authority and resources, and for claiming or consolidating status. While often regarded, or disregarded, as tiresomely platitudinous, works of Islamic advice literature offer rich and exciting material for intellectual and social history.

Notes

1. This paper was presented as a talk in a panel organised by Neguin Yavari with Niloo Fotouhi and chaired by Olga M. Davidson at the 56^th annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in Denver on the 3^rd of December 2022. I am grateful to them for publishing it here. It is based on parts on a forthcoming paper, which is a roughly ten times longer: István T. Kristó-Nagy, “Philosophy for Politics: Ancient Greek philosophy echoed in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s writings,” in Inscribing Knowledge and Power in Muslim Societies: A Diachronic Study, ed. by Kazuo Morimoto and Sajjad Rizvi (Gerlach Press, Berlin and London, forthcoming).↑
2. For these dates, see István T. Kristó-Nagy, La pensée d’Ibn al-Muqaffaʽ : Un «agent double» dans le monde persan et arabe (Versailles: Éditions de Paris, 2013), 57 and 62, or idem, “Marriage after Rape: The Ambiguous Relationship between Arab Lords and Iranian Intellectuals as Reflected in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Oeuvre,” in Tradition and Reception in Arabic Literature: Essays Dedicated to Andras Hamori, ed. by Margaret Larkin and Jocelyn Sharlet (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019), 164. This talk is based on a forthcoming paper titled: Philosophy for Politics: Ancient Greek Philosophy Echoed in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Writings*. The talk includes roughly one 10th of the paper, namely parts of the section on Kalīla wa-Dimnaand of the conclusion.↑
3. István T. Kristó-Nagy, “Conflict and Cooperation between Arab Rulers and Persian Administrators in the Formative Period of Islamdom, c. 600–c. 950 ce,” in Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, ed. by Peter Crooks and Timothy Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 54–80.↑
4. See above, n. 1.↑
5. The Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsf (The Book of Bilawhar and Būdhāsf), another important early text of advice literature, also features tales and dialogues, but it uses the term nāsiq, hermit, rather than philosopher, faylasūf. See Daniel Gimaret, ed., Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būḏāsf (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1972), 10, 33 etc. and idem, transl., Le livre de Bilawhar et Būḏāsf selon la version arabe ismaélienne (Geneva and Paris: Droz, 1971). The figure of the advising wise hermit is also prominent in Kalīla wa-Dimna, for instance in the chapter The Hermit and His Guest, which was interpolated into the text by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ. On this chapter see István T. Kristó-Nagy, “The Crow Who Aped the Partridge: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Aesopian Language in a Fable of Kalīla wa-Dimna,” in L’Adab toujours recommencé: Origines, transmission et métamorphoses, ed. by Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Francesca Bellino and Luca Patrizi (Leiden and Boston: Brill, forthcoming).↑
6. See above, 7, n. 30.↑
7. The expression “the head of the philosophers” in the translation by Schulthess, 1, occurs in the section missing from the Syriac text and reconstructed on the basis of Cheikho, 53 (رأس الفلاسفة), see Schulthess, 171, n. 1. It also appears (in the form رأس فلاسفته “the head of his [the king’s] philosophers”) in ʿAzzām, 49.↑
8. See Matthew L. Keegan, “‘Elsewhere Lies Its Meaning’: The Vagaries of Kalīla and Dimna’s Reception,” Poetica 52 (2021): 33.↑
9. ʿAzzām, 127, l. 2; Cheikho 125, l. 4. Keegan, “‘Elsewhere Lies Its Meaning’,” 31. The first to notice this link was Ignác Goldziher. See Carmela Baffioni, “Ikhwân al-Safâ’,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Zalta, available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ikhwan-al-safa/(accessed 14 September 2022).↑
10. Lenn Goodman, “Introduction”, in The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn: A Translation from the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, transl. by Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012), 10.↑
11. On this chapter and the concerning studies, see Kristó-Nagy, “Wild Lions and Wise Jackals,” 169–72.↑
12. Goodman and McGregor, transl., The Case of the Animals versus Man, 156–62 and 259–68.↑
13. Johann Christoph Bürgel, “Language on Trial, Religion at Stake? Trial Scenes in Some Classical Arabic Texts and the Hermeneutic Problems Involved,” in Myths, Historical Archetypes and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature: Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach: Proceedings of the International Symposium in Beirut, June 25th–June 30th, 1996, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth et al. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999), 198. See also the insightful note 163 in Goodman and McGregor, transl., The Case of the Animals versus Man, 156–8.↑
14. See Kristó-Nagy, “Conflict and Cooperation.”↑
15. For editions, translations and studies of these two anti-Islamic texts attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, see al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm, al-Radd ʿalā al-zindīq al-laʿīn Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, in La lotta tra l’Islam e il Manicheismo: Un libro di Ibn al-Muqaffa῾ contro il Corano confutato da al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm, ed. and transl. by Michelangelo Guidi (Roma: R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1927); Josef van Ess, “Some Fragments of the Muʿāraḍat al-QurʾānAttributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ,” in Studia Arabica et Islamica: Festschrift for Iḥsān ʿAbbās, ed. by Wadād al-Qāḍī (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1981), 151–63; idem, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 6 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991–97), 5: 104–8; Dominique Urvoy, “Autour d’Ibn al-Muqaffa‘,” in idem, Les penseurs libres dans l’Islam classique : L’interrogation sur la religion chez les penseurs arabes indépendants (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), 29–66; idem, “La démystification de la religion dans les textes attribués à Ibn al-Muqaffa‘,” in Atheismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. by Friedrich Niewöhner and Olaf Pluta (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1999), 85–94. See also Kristó-Nagy, La pensée d’Ibn al-Muqaffaʽ, 287–340 (for the analysis) and 438–60 (for the texts and their French translation), as well as István T. Kristó-Nagy, “A Violent, Irrational and Unjust God: Antique and Medieval Criticism of Jehovah and Allāh,” in La morale au crible des religions, ed. by Marie-Thérèse Urvoy (Versailles: Éditions de Paris, 2013), 143–64.↑
16. Paul L. Heck shows the influence of scepticism, stemming partly from Greek thought, on the littérateurs, theologians and philosophers in the Islamic world, and the reactions it generated in Islamic thought. See Paul L. Heck, Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014).↑
17. ʿAzzām, 27–43; Cheikho, 30–44; Shaykhū, 35–50; Jallad, 66–77. See also Kristó-Nagy, La pensée d’Ibn al-Muqaffaʽ, 113–25. The name برزویه found in the Arabic text is vocalised and transliterated in various ways: Burzawayh, Burzuwayh, Barzuwayh, Barzawayh, Burzūyah, Barzūyah and so on. Its re-constructed Pahlavi form is transcribed Burzōē, Burzōy or Borzūya. The historicity and the memory (within the collection itself) of Burzōy’s figure and mission is the main topic of de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India. See also Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Borzūya,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_7095 (accessed 03 January 2023); and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla wa-Dimna, ed. by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām, 2^nd revised ed. (Algiers: al-Sharika al-waṭaniyya li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ and Beirut: Dār al-shurūq, 1973), 19, with n. 4 (the text of the note is on p. 320).↑
18. See Kristó-Nagy, “Conflict and Cooperation.”↑
19. On Aesopian language by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, see Kristó-Nagy, “The Crow Who Aped the Partridge.”↑