Persian secretary and master of Arabic prose to whom an early Arabic compendium of logic, covering the Isagoge, the Categories, On Interpretation and the Prior Analytics, is attributed.
Life
Rūzbih, the future ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, was born in Jūr (Fīrūzābād) in Fārs, probably in 106/724 or 102/720, the son of a Zoroastrian tax official, Dādawayh, whose hand had been crippled under torture, hence the nickname al-Muqaffaʿ. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he grew up in Basra, learned pure Arabic from the Āl al-Ahtam and the Bedouin around the city, and frequented the circles of its scholars and men of letters. He served as secretary to Umayyad and then Abbasid governors, among them ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī, under whose influence he became a Muslim and took the name ʿAbd Allāh. He was killed at Basra, according to the preferred view in 142/759, in circumstances that the sources explain in different ways.
He is remembered as one of the founders of Arabic literary prose, the translator of Kalīla wa-Dimna and of works on Persian history and statecraft, and the author of al-Adab al-kabīr and al-Adab al-ṣaghīr. The TDV notes that the caliph al-Manṣūr asked him to translate into Arabic Greek classics that had already been translated into Persian.
For logic he stands at the very beginning of the Arabic tradition. A short compendium, Kitāb al-Manṭiq, is ascribed to him: according to the TDV it renders into Arabic, with summaries and explanations, Pahlavi translations of Aristotle’s Categories, On Interpretation and Analytics and of Porphyry’s Isagoge, and some sources, among them Ibn al-Nadīm and Ibn al-Qifṭī, call him the first to translate Greek logic into Arabic. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it as a translation of a treatise that probably reached him from the Syriac by way of the Pahlavi, probably from a late antique introduction to philosophy: it ‘gestures towards the Eisagoge’, then covers the Categories, On Interpretation and the introductory parts of the Prior Analytics on assertoric syllogisms, a range that corresponds to the ‘Old Logic’ of the Latin West. Some manuscripts ascribe it instead to his son Muḥammad, who is reported to have translated works of Aristotle for Yaḥyā al-Barmakī. It was edited by Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh with Ibn Bihrīz’s Ḥudūd al-manṭiq (Tehran 1978).
Uncertain or disputed
- Authorship of the logic compendium: the father (Ibn al-Nadīm, Ibn al-Qifṭī, the SEP) or his son Muḥammad (some manuscripts, as the TDV notes); the site’s article on the transmission of the Isagoge also reports scholars who reject both attributions or see the work as a paraphrase rather than a translation.
- Date of death: 142/759 is the TDV’s preferred date; the SEP gives ‘executed 756’ and the site’s article 139/756; the TDV also records 143/760 and 145/762.
- Year of birth: 106/724 or 102/720, both only probable (TDV).
Works
- Kitāb al-Manṭiq (al-Manṭiq li-Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ) كِتَابُ المَنْطِقِCompendium of the Isagoge, Categories, On Interpretation and the beginning of the Prior Analytics, from Pahlavi (TDV; SEP). Attribution to the father or to his son Muḥammad is disputed. Ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh, with Ibn Bihrīz’s Ḥudūd al-manṭiq (Tehran 1978).ترجمہ
- Kalīla wa-Dimna كَلِيلَةُ وَدِمْنَةُArabic version of the Pahlavi translation of the Pañcatantra; his best-known work (TDV).ترجمہ
- al-Adab al-kabīr الأَدَبُ الكَبِيرُOn the conduct of rulers and courtiers (TDV).تصنیف
Reception
The SEP takes his compendium as the example of Arabic logic before the ‘Aristotelian turn’, when translators moved from Syriac and Persian digests to the Greek texts themselves; within a few decades the caliph al-Mahdī commissioned translations of the Topics and Sophistical Refutations.
Its opening on the Isagoge makes it the earliest Arabic contact with Porphyry’s book (see ‘How the Isagoge travelled’).
Sources (3)