Muqaffa, Abu Muhammad Abdallah Ibn Al-

Muqaffa, Abu Muhammad Abdallah Ibn Al- 

(Persian name before conversion to Islam, Rozbih ibn Dadoe). Born 720 (?); died 759 in Basra. Arab writer and translator. Persian by origin. Muqaffa lived in Basra and served as a secretary to the governors. He was executed as an opponent of Arab domination in Iran and as heretic (zindiq). He was the author of the didactic works The Only Pearl, Instructions on Small Things, and Instructions on Large Things. He translated from Middle Persian into Arabic the collection of didactic tales Kalila and Dimna and the Book of Kings, one of the sources of Ferdowsi’s Shah-nameh.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Kalila i Dimna. Moscow, 1957. (Translated from Arabic by I. lu. Krachkovskii and I. P. Kuz’min, with a foreword by E. E. Berth’s.)

REFERENCES

al-Fakhuri, H. Istoriia arabskoi literatury, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1959–61.
Oestrup, J. Issledovanie o 1001 nochi, ee sostave, vozniknovenii i razvitii. Moscow, 1904. (Translated from Danish.)