Night and Horses and the Desert

by Robert Irwin

  It is fitting that Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘should be famous for what is an adaptation from another language, for he held that originality was unattainable and undesirable. A wise man rearranges choice bits of wisdom; he does not invent them. Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘believed that all human knowledge had been covered in the works of previous generations. Oddly, given Kalila wa-Dimna’s classic status, there is no definitive text and some versions include more stories and other material than others.

  When the former story was finished, King Dabschelim commanded Bidpai to relate the history of the man the success of whose pursuit in the fulfilment of his wishes is immediately followed by the loss of what he had obtained. The philosopher replied that the acquisition of a desired good is often attended with less difficulty than the means of preserving it, and whoever cannot secure the possession of what he has got into his power may be compared to the tortoise in the following fable:

  It is told of a certain king of the monkeys, whose name was Mahir, that, being very old and infirm through age, he was attacked by a young competitor for his crown and was overcome and obliged to take flight; so he retired to the riverside, and discovered a fig-tree, and climbed up into it, and determined to make it his home; and as he was one day eating of the fruit, a fig fell down, and the noise which it occasioned by falling into the water delighted him so much that he never ate without repeating the experiment; and a tortoise who was below, as often as a fig fell down, devoured it; and receiving during some days a regular supply, considered it as an attention towards him on the part of the monkey. Therefore he desired to become acquainted with him, and in a short time they grew so intimate that they often conversed familiarly together. Now it happened that the tortoise stayed a long time away from his wife, who grew impatient at his absence and complained of it to one of her neighbours, saying, ‘I fear something has happened unexpectedly to my husband.’ Her friend replied that if her husband was on the riverside he would probably have made acquaintance with the monkey and have been hospitably entertained by him.

  Then after some days the tortoise returned to his home, and found his wife in a bad state of health and apparently suffering very much, and he could not conceal the uneasiness which the sight of her occasioned; and expressing aloud his distress, he was interrupted by her friend, who said to him, ‘Your wife is very dangerously ill, and the physicians have prescribed for her the heart of a monkey.’ The tortoise replied, This is no easy matter, for living as we do in the water how can we possibly procure the heart of a monkey? However, I will consult my friend about it.’ And he went to the shore of the river, and the monkey asked in terms of great affection what had detained him so long; and he answered, ‘The reluctance which I felt to repeat my visits was owing to my being at a loss how to make you any suitable return for the kindness you have shown me; but I beg of you to add to the obligations under which you have laid me, by coming and passing some days with me; and as I live upon an island, which moreover abounds in fruit, I will take you upon my back and swim over the water with you.’ The monkey accepted the invitation, and came down from the tree and got upon the back of the tortoise, who, as he was swimming along with him, began to reflect on the crime which he harboured in his breast, and from shame and remorse hung down his head. ‘What is the occasion,’ said the monkey, ‘of the sudden fit of sadness which is come upon you?’ ‘It occurs to me,’ answered the tortoise, ‘that my wife is very ill and that I shall not therefore have it in my power to do the honours of my house in the manner I could wish.’ ‘The intimations,’ replied the monkey, ‘which your friendly behaviour has conveyed to me of your kind intentions, will supply the place of all unnecessary parade and ostentation.’ Then the tortoise felt more at ease and continued his course, but on a sudden he stopped a second time; upon which the monkey, who was at a loss to account for this hesitation of the tortoise, began to suspect that something more was intended by it than he was able to discover; but as suddenly repressing every thought that was injurious to the sincerity of his friend, he said to himself, ‘I cannot believe that his heart has changed, that his sentiments towards me have undergone an alteration, and that he intends to do me any mischief, however frequent such appearances may be in the world; and it is the voice of experience which directs the sensible man to look narrowly into the souls of those with whom he is connected by ties of affinity or friendship, by attending closely to everything that passes without them; for a wink of the eye, an expression which falls from the tongue, and even the motions of the body are all evidences of what is going on in the heart; and wise men have laid it down as a rule that when anyone doubts the sincerity of his friend, he should, by unremittingly observing every part of his conduct, guard against the possibility of being deceived by him; for if his suspicions are founded, he is repaid for the violence which they may have offered to his feelings, by the safety which they have procured him; and if they have been entertained without good grounds, he may at least congratulate himself on the measure of foresight which he possesses, which in no instance can be otherwise than serviceable to him.’

  After having indulged himself in these reflections, he said to the tortoise, ‘Why do you stop a second time and appear as if you were anxiously debating some question with yourself?’ ‘I am tormented,’ answered the tortoise, ‘by the idea that you will find my house in disorder owing to the illness of my wife.’ ‘Do not,’ said the monkey, ‘be uneasy on this account, for your anxiety will be of no use to you, but rather look out for some medicine and food which may be of service to your wife; for a person possessed of riches cannot employ them in a better manner than either in works of charity during a time of want or in the service of women.’ ‘Your observation,’ answered the tortoise, ‘is just, but the physician has declared that nothing will cure her except the heart of a monkey.’ Then the monkey reasoned with himself thus: ‘Fool that I am! Immoderate desires, which are not suited to my age, threaten me with destruction, and I now discover too late how true it is that the contented man passes his life in peace and security, while the covetous and ambitious live in trouble and difficulty; and I have occasion at this moment for all the resources of my understanding, to devise a means of escaping from the snare into which I have fallen.’ Then he said to the tortoise, ‘Why did you not inform me of this sooner, and I would have brought my heart with me; for it is the practice of the monkeys, when anyone goes out on a visit to a friend, to leave his heart at home, or in the custody of his family, that he may be able to look at the wife of him who has received him under his roof and be at the same time without his heart.’ ‘Where is your heart now?’ said the tortoise. ‘I have left it in the tree,’ answered the monkey, ‘and if you will return with me thither I will bring it away.’ The proposal was accepted, and the tortoise swam back with the monkey, who, as soon as he was near enough, sprang upon the shore and immediately climbed up into the tree; and when the tortoise had waited for him some time, he grew impatient and called out to him to take his heart and come down, and not detain him any longer. ‘What,’ said the monkey, ‘do you think I am like the ass of whom the jackal declared that he had neither heart nor ears?’ ‘How was this?’ the tortoise asked.

  ‘It is told,’ said the monkey, ‘that a lion in a forest was waited upon by a jackal who lived upon the food which he left; and it happened that the lion was attacked by a violent disease which brought on such a state of weakness that he was unable to hunt his prey; upon which the jackal asked him the reason of the change which he observed in his manner and appearance and was told that it was owing to the illness with which he was afflicted and for which there was no remedy except the heart and the ears of an ass. The jackal replied that there would be no difficulty in procuring them, for that he was acquainted with an ass who was in the service of a fuller and was employed in carrying his clothes; and he immediately set out and went to the ass, and as soon as he saw him he addressed him and told him how distressed he was to find him so thin and emaciated, which the ass accounted for by saying that
his master gave him scarcely anything to eat. Jackal: “Why do you remain any longer with him and submit to this treatment?” Ass: “What can I do or whither can I go? Wherever I am, it is my fate to be ill-used and starved.” Jackal: “If you will follow me I will conduct you to a place uninhabited by men, who you say are your foes, and abounding in food, and where you will find a female ass whose equal in beauty and fatness was never seen and who is desirous of a male companion.” “Let us not lose a moment in going to her,” said the ass, “and I beg of you to show me the way.” Then the jackal led him to where the lion was, but entered alone into the forest to inform the lion of the spot where the ass was waiting; and the lion went out and immediately made an attempt to rush upon him but was unable through weakness; upon which the ass, being frightened, ran away.

  ‘Then the jackal observed to the lion that he did not suppose he was so weak as to be unable to master the ass. “Bring him to me a second time,” said the lion, “and I promise you he shall not escape again.” So the jackal went to the ass and said, “What was the reason of your sudden fright? A she ass, owing to the violence of her passion, gave you, to be sure, rather rude demonstrations of her affection, but you have only to remain quiet and undismayed and she will become gentle and submissive.” As soon as the ass heard her name mentioned his desire became uncontrollable, and he brayed through impatience and suffered himself to be conducted again to the lion; and the jackal preceded him as before and told the lion where he was, and cautioned him to be well upon his guard, for that if he escaped a second time he would never return. The eagerness of the lion not to be disappointed a second time of his prey was very great, and he went to the spot where the ass was, and no sooner saw him than, without leaving him time to prepare for his defence, he rushed upon him and killed him; then recollecting that the physicians had forbidden his flesh to be eaten before it had been washed and purified, he desired the jackal to take care that everything which was necessary was done and said that he would shortly come back and eat the heart and ears and leave him the rest.

  ‘Now as soon as the lion was gone the jackal ate the heart and ears of the ass, hoping by this stratagem to deter the lion from eating any part of the remainder of the animal and that he should thereby have the whole for himself. Then the lion returned and asked for the heart and ears of the ass, and the jackal said to him, “Do you think if he had had a heart and ears he would ever have suffered himself to be brought back after he had once escaped from destruction?”

  ‘Now do not imagine,’ said the monkey in continuation to the tortoise, ‘that I am going to be guilty of the same folly as the ass in this fable. You have been endeavouring to deceive me by trick and contrivance, and I have therefore been obliged to practise, and with complete success, the same means in my defence, thereby showing that knowledge and talents can make good the error of a too easy and thoughtless compliance.’ ‘You are right,’ said the tortoise, ‘and an honest man will confess his crime; and if he has committed a fault he does not refuse instruction, that he may profit by the lesson which has been taught him if on any future occasion he should be entangled in difficulties, like the man who, when he has made a false step and fallen, supports himself on the ground against which he has stumbled, to raise himself again upon his feet.’

  Wyndham Knatchbull, Kalila and Dimna: or

  The Fables of Bidpai (London, 1819)

  Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘not only translated and adapted works from Persian; he was also an author in his own right. His Kitab Adab al-Kabir, ‘The Grand Book of Conduct’, dealt with similar themes to those in Kalila wa-Dimna: wise polity, friendship, warning against flattery, magnanimity and so forth. His Risala al-Sahaba, ‘A Letter on the Entourage’, was a political treatise on the caliph, his ministers, servants and army. The notion of publishing a work of any kind without a formal addressee took time to catch on. The conventional fiction was that the letter one was writing had been requested by a particular correspondent, although the destined readership was usually much wider. Works like the Risala al-Sahaba are difficult to translate, for Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘and his contemporaries were discussing a technical subject, political theory, for which a specialized vocabulary had not yet been developed.

  The circumstances of Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s death (c. 757–9) are somewhat obscure, but he was almost certainly murdered at the behest of a political enemy, possibly in a fire. Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘had played a key role in the development of adab. Adab can be translated into English as ‘belles-lettres’, ‘good manners’, ‘refinement’ or ‘culture’. In modern Arabic, adab can be translated simply as ‘literature’. However, in the early ‘Abbasid period it was at first used to refer to a code of conduct which was primarily social and ethical. Very likely it owed something to pre-Islamic Persian notions of the way a dihqan, or country gentleman, was expected to behave and the subjects of which he was expected to be a master. Then, thanks to the activities of Ibn al-Muqaffa and other bureaucrats and scribes, the notion of adab as a kind of etiquette acquired an increasingly literary connotation. Adab came to be used (in a fairly unsystematic way) to refer to the sort of cultural baggage an ambitious government official, court hanger-on, or scribe might be expected to carry – snatches of history, poetry, examples of eloquent rhetoric, jokes, improving anecdotes, and so forth. In time adab effectively came to refer to secular culture. To be an adib, a master of adab, one had to be the possessor of a broad culture.

  Jahiz, who was a master of adab himself, presented a cynical portrait of the typical scribe who was steeped in adab and who had studied a select body of approved literary texts. This absurd and servile fellow with his inkstand gives himself airs as if he were a master. He ‘knows by heart the more spectacular clichés by way of rhetoric’ and he actually prefers Aristotle to the Qur’an. Abu Uthman ‘Amr ibn Bahr al-jAHIZ (c. 776–868/9) was the leading literary and intellectual figure of his age, who in the course of his long life covered most of contemporary human knowledge in his writings. He was born in Basra and spent most of his life there. Basra’s heyday was in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, when it was one of the leading centres both of commerce and intellectual life in the caliphate. Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘also came from Basra, and so did the leading poets Bashshar ibn Burd and Abu Nuwas. Jahiz was of humble origins and according to some sources his grandfather was a negro porter. However, if this is true then his purported defence of the blacks, in an essay entitled The Boast of the Blacks against the Whites’, has a curious flavour, as many of the arguments in favour of black superiority have a parodie feel. For example, in arguing for the naturalness of black as a colour, he remarks, This exists in all things. Thus we see that locusts and worms on plants are green, and we see that the louse is black on a young man’s head, white if his hair whitens, red if it is dyed.’

  More generally, throughout Jahiz’s writings it is hard to know when he is being sarcastic. As we shall see, the essay in which he pretends to praise singing concubines is actually an attack on them. Much of his writing consists of tour de force demonstrations of the art of rhetoric rather than expressions of deeply felt conviction. He was always prepared to argue both sides of a case: for example, he wrote one treatise in praise of wine and another against it. Jahiz was the master of munazara, that is the literary genre of the struggle for precedence, in which competing people, animals or objects put forth their respective merits. Thus he wrote a treatise on the respective merits of the back and the belly, another on the superiority of speech to silence, yet another in which boys and girls competed in boasting of their superior qualities, a dispute between summer and winter, and a debate between sheep-farmers and goat-farmers. The debate concerning the respective merits of contraposed persons or things was a kind of literary game which had originated in pre-Islamic Persia and which was taken up in Arabic literature in the ninth century.

  Like many Basran intellectuals, Jahiz was a Mu’tazilite. Mu’tazilism was a theological movement whose adherents believed that the caliph had theocratic powers
, including the authority to interpret and add to the Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet. Mu’tazilites believed that the Qur’an was created by God, while their opponents held that it was co-eternal with God. The Mu’tazilites were rationalists who tended towards scepticism and they were strongly influenced in their rationalism by Greek philosophy. Mu’tazilism was briefly the orthodoxy of the court in the early ninth century, but in the long run a more fundamentalist view prevailed.

  Jahiz was the master of witty, learned, limpid prose. A few critics thought that his prose was too limpid, criticizing it for its lack of ornamentation. His essays, though well organized within paragraph-length units, tended to digress from topic to topic as he indulged his penchant for afterthoughts. He was a prolific essayist and wrote on such diverse topics as rhetoric, Mu’tazilism, cripples, mispronunciation, lizards, the caliphate, robbers, the culture of bureaucrats, book-collecting, the attributes of God, schoolmasters, Christianity, mules, Turks, pedlars’ slang, types of singers, capital cities and jokes. He used the belles-lettres essay to entertain as well as instruct; as a later writer, Mas’udi, put it, ‘when the author fears that he is boring or is tiring his audience, he skilfully passes from the serious to the entertaining, and leaves the grave tomes of science for the lively ones of amusing stories.’