Ibn al-Muqaffa'
c. 724–759
Biography
Ibn al-Muqaffa' (c. 724–759) was a Persian writer who worked in Arabic and is credited with bringing literary prose narrative into the language. He was born outside Islam into a Persian family, grew up speaking Middle Persian, and converted later in life; Arabic was his second language. He worked as a secretary for Umayyad governors and later for members of the Abbasid family. He was executed in Basra in the late 750s on a charge of heresy, after a letter he wrote for two of the caliph's uncles gave offence to al-Mansur.
His other writings include two treatises known as al-Adab al-kabir and al-Adab al-saghir (usually rendered as the Greater and Lesser Adab). They discuss the relation between ruler and ruled, and the cultivation of the self. His reputation, however, rests on his Arabic version of a collection of animal fables, Kalila wa Dimna, which he made from a Middle Persian text.
On this site the book credited to him is Kalila wa Dimna (Kalila and Dimna), his Arabic version of the fables. In these stories jackals and other beasts discuss friendship, rule and deceit. The tales have Indian roots and reached Arabic through Persian, and Ibn al-Muqaffa' gave the Arabic text its own introduction and some additions. It became the base for later translations into Persian, Syriac, Greek and other languages, so reading it is a way into both the fables and the earliest stage of Arabic literary prose.
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Books
كليلة ودمنة
by ابن المقفع
The Indian king Dabshalim asks the philosopher Bidpai for a parable of two friends set against each other by a liar, and the answer, the tale of the lion, the bull and the two jackals Kalila and Dimna, opens a cascade of animal fables nested one inside another. Ibn al-Muqaffa's…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.