Ibn al-Muqaffa'

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Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa
)
For the Egyptian writer, see Severus ibn al-Muqaffa.
Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa
Abbasid Caliphate
Occupation(s)Author and translator

Abū Muhammad ʿAbd Allāh Rūzbih ibn Dādūya (

Persian[1][2][3][4] translator, philosopher, author and thinker who wrote in the Arabic language
.

Biography

Ibn al-Muqaffa, though a resident of

Fars and was born into a family Persian stock.[5][3] His father had been a state official in charge of taxes under the Umayyads, and after being accused and convicted of embezzling some of the money entrusted to him, was punished by the ruler by having his hand crushed, hence the name Muqaffa (shrivelled hand).[citation needed
]

Ibn al-Muqaffa served in sectarian posts under the Umayyad governors of

Abbasids after their overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty. He later returned to Basra and served as a secretary under Isa ibn Ali and Sulayman ibn Ali, the uncles of the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur.[citation needed
]

After their brother

Abdallah ibn Ali made an abortive bid for the throne, they asked Ibn al-Muqaffa to write a letter to the Caliph to not retaliate against his uncle and pardon him. The language of the letter offended al-Mansur, who wished to be rid of Ibn al-Muqaffa. He was executed around 756 or 759 AD by the governor of Basra.[who?][citation needed
]

A defense of dualism and a few lines of prose written in imitation of the Quran have been ascribed to him. Whether authentic or not, and despite his conversion to Islam, these texts contributed to his posthumous reputation as a Zoroastrian heretic.[6][7][8][9]

Literary career

Ibn al-Muqaffa's translation of the

al-Hamadani and al-Saraqusti, who brought literary fiction to Arabic literature by adapting traditionally accepted modes of oral narrative transmission into literary prose."[10] Ibn al-Muqaffa was also an accomplished scholar of Middle Persian
, and was the author of several moral fables.

Works

Translations and adaptations

Isāghūjī: His translation from a Syriac version of Porphyry's Isagoge (Introduction), became the standard introductory logic text in the Arabic and broader Muslim world.

Hebrew, Latin, and Castilian versions. Though there are many Arabic manuscripts of Kalīla wa Dimna, Ibn al-Muqaffa'’s version is not among them, and the oldest dated copy was written almost five centuries after his death. That he aimed at an idiomatic rather than a slavishly literal rendering is generally agreed, and all indications are that he achieved clarity of expression by simplicity of diction and plain syntactical structures. As no medieval Arab critic seems to have impugned his style, it was evidently pleasing and well suited to the taste of his Arab readers.[11]

Ibn al-Muqaffa'’s translation of Kalīla wa Dimna was not a conscious attempt to start a new literary trend; it was clearly just one of several works of old Sasanian court literature which Ibn al-Muqaffa' introduced to an exclusive readership within court circles, its function being to illustrate what should or should not be done by those aiming at political and social success. Kalīla wa Dimna, nonetheless, served as a stimulus to the development of Arabic prose literature and inspired imitators, artists, and poets. A prose Persian translation of the Arabic text was available as early as the 10th century, of which a versified version was made by

Bahramshah
.

Khwaday-Namag: Ibn al-Muqaffa' is thought to have produced an Arabic adaptation of the late Sasanian Khwaday-Namag, a chronicle of pre-Islamic Persian kings, princes, and warriors. A mixture of legend, myth, and fact, it served as a quasi-national history inspired by a vision of kingship as a well-ordered autocracy with a sacred duty to rule and to regulate its subjects’ conduct within a rigid class system. Interspersed with maxims characteristic of andarz literature, the narrative also offered practical advice on civil and military matters. Ibn al-Muqaffa' is known to have modified certain parts of the original and excluded others, possibly to make it intelligible to his Arab Muslim readers. He is thought to have inserted an account of Mazdak, from which later Perso-Arab historians derived much of their knowledge of the Mazdakite movement. Like its Middle Persian original, Ibn al-Muqaffa'’s Arabic version is not extant. The Oyun al-akhbar and the Ketab al-maʿaref of Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) may preserve fragments of it; certainly the Sīar al-ʿAjam, quoted by Ibn Qutayba without ascription, renders the Khwaday-Namag.[11]

Other books:

Biblical
quotations, presumably as a concession to Muslims. Be that as it may, his Sasanian text is still Iranocentric:

...we are the best of Persians, and there is no quality or trait of excellence or nobility which we hold dearer than the fact that we have ever showed humility and lowliness…in the service of kings, and have chosen obedience and loyalty, devotion and fidelity. Through this quality…we came to be the head and neck of all the climes...

Original works

Two preceptive works in Arabic are ascribed to Ibn al-Muqaffa',

Abbasid prose literature. To point contrasts and enforce parallels, full use is made of devices well known to the ancient schools of rhetoric.[11]

The Risala fi-l-Sahaba is a short but remarkably percipient administrative text. In less than 5,000 words, he discusses specific problems facing the new Abbasid regime. The unnamed addressee is identifiable as al-Mansur, who may never have seen it. There is no logical arrangement. After an opening eulogy, purposefully complimentary but devoid of extravagant panegyric, he discusses the army, praising the

Syrians
, the recruitment from among them of a hand-picked caliphal elite, the lifting of ruinous economic sanctions, and fair distribution of foodstuffs in the Syrian military districts. At long last, he comes to the caliph's entourage, which, though introduced in glowing terms, can be perceived as far from ideal. In the past, ministers and secretaries—the approach is tactful—brought the entourage into disrepute: men unworthy of access to the caliph became members to the exclusion of, for instance, scions of the great families of early Islam. The caliph should now remedy the situation by taking account of claims to precedence and singling out for preferment men with special talents and distinguished service records, as well as men of religion and virtue and incorruptible and uncorrupting men of noble lineage. Also, the caliph's kin and princes of his house should be considered. In a section on land-tax (Kharaj) the author focuses on the arbitrary exploitation of cultivators and recommends taxation governed by known rules and registers. After a few lines on Arabia he closes with a proposal for mass education aimed at achieving uniformity of orthodox belief through a body of paid professional instructors. This would make for stability, and trouble-makers would not go unobserved. The Resāla ends with an expression of pious hopes and prayers for the caliph and his people. Stylistically, the work markedly differs from the Ādāb in certain important respects, the reason for which may be the subject-matter.

Of the various works attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Ibn al-Muqaffa', there are two of which we have only fragments quoted in hostile sources. One, posing a problem of authenticity, may be described as a

Manichaean apologia.[11] The other is the Moarazat al-Quran, which sees not as anti-Islamic, but rather as an exercise designed to show that in the author's time something stylistically comparable to the Quran could be composed. Other compositions and occasional pieces attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa' are the Yatima tania a short, sententious epistle on good and bad rulers and subjects ; may be authentic, though the long resāla entitled Yatimat al-soltan and the collection of aphorisms labeled Hekam certainly are not. A doxology is almost certainly spurious, though a series of passages and sentences that follow it may have come from the lost Yatima fi’l-rasael.[11]

Legacy and commemoration

The Bosnian poet

ARBOS – Company for Music and Theatre in Vienna[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ Latham 1982–2021. "Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ was of noble Persian stock and bore the name Rōzbeh/Rūzbeh before his comparatively late conversion to Islam from Mani-chaeism."
  2. ^ Daryaee 2012, pp. 235–236. "An early example is found in the writings of Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. ca. 757), a Persian convert employed as a translator and scholar at the Abbasid court."
  3. ^ a b Brown 2009, p. 129. "Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, the son of a Persian tax collector who had been tortured for mishandling tax revenues (hence the nickname “al-Muqaffaʿ,” the cripple), was happy to oblige."
  4. ^ Lewis, Lambton & Holt 1986, p. 664. "Bashshar, (d. 167/783) a Persian, heralded the advent of 'Abbasid poetry, just as it was another Persian, Ibn al-Muqaffa', who opened the history of 'Abbasid prose."
  5. ^ Mallette 2021, p. 156. "The redaction of these Indian elements had been accomplished in the sixth century in Middle Persian with the addition of further chapters, and this version was then translated into Arabic and redacted by the already mentioned Persian-born secretary Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ shortly before his death in 757."
  6. ^ Said Amir Arjomand, "`Abd Allah Ibn al-Muqaffa` and the `Abbasid Revolution," Iranian Studies, 27:33 (1994).
  7. ISBN 9780415966900
    .
  8. ISBN 9781136605215
    .
  9. JSTOR 23659418
    .
  10. hdl:1794/8225{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link
    )
  11. ^ a b c d e Latham, J. Derek. "EBN AL-MOQAFFAʿ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH RŌZBEH". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 2012-01-28.
  12. ISBN 3-85129-141-7
    .

Sources
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