Kalila wa Dimna
composition: secureauthorship: secure
An Indian fable collection is turned into Arabic prose of such quality that it becomes both a model of the language and the version from which the stories reach Europe.
- a translation that became a stylistic model in its own right
- political counsel made sayable by putting it in animals' mouths
- the node from which the collection reaches Hebrew, Latin and Europe
- an added preface instructing the reader how to read
Working from the lost Middle Persian rendering, Ibn al-Muqaffa produced an Arabic text that was immediately treated as a masterpiece of prose style as well as a book of counsel. The animal fables carry advice on the conduct of rulers and courtiers that would be dangerous stated directly, and his own added preface reflects on how a reader should take such a book. Every later European version, through Hebrew, Latin, Castilian and beyond, descends from this Arabic. Ibn al-Muqaffa was executed in his thirties.
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