the dignitaries.

He then sat down to eat, softly humming Zoroastrian chants. Al-Haytham asked, “What is this?” He replied, “I dislike to pass the night without belonging to some faith.”

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was suspected of zandaqa (heresy). He is the man who translated Kalila wa-Dimna into Arabic.

Al-Mahdi said, “I have never found a heretical book whose ultimate source was not Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.”

Al-Mansur grew incensed with him because Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ had drafted a deed for ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAli that read: “Should he ever betray his uncle, his wives are divorced, his slaves emancipated, his mounts devoted to charity, and the people released from their pledge of allegiance to him.”

Al-Mansur thereupon wrote to his governor Sufyan al-Muhallabi, ordering him to kill Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.

For all his vast merit and keen intelligence, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was somewhat reckless; he used to call Sufyan al-Muhallabi “the son of the rapacious woman.”

Sufyan had a furnace built and stoked. He then severed Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s four limbs and threw them, one by one, into the oven while the man looked on.

He lived thirty-six years and was killed in 145 AH—others say sometime after 140.

His father’s name was Dādawayh. He had been in charge of Fars’s land tax for al-Hajjaj; he embezzled the revenue, so al-Hajjaj tortured him until his hand became crippled. Others say he merely made qifāʿ al-khus, palm-fiber baskets like a quffa.

Someone asked Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, “Who taught you?” He answered, “Myself: whenever I see something good in someone, I adopt it; whenever I see something ugly, I avoid it.”

It is said that he met al-Khalil ibn Ahmad. After they parted people asked al-Khalil, “How did you find him?” He said, “His knowledge exceeds his intellect.” They asked Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, “And how did you find al-Khalil?” He replied, “His intellect surpasses his knowledge.”

The governor of Basra, Sufyan ibn Muʿawiya ibn Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, once remarked, “I have never regretted keeping silent.” Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ retorted, “Then muteness would be an adornment for you.”

On another occasion he asked him, “What do you say about a man who dies leaving behind a zawj and a zawja?”—a quip that enraged him.

Al-Asmaʿi said: “Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ composed Al-Durra al-Yatīma (The Unique Pearl), a work the like of which has never been produced.”

Among Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s sayings: “I have drunk my fill of orations yet could not confine them to a single rhyme; they ebbed, then overflowed—neither pure verse nor ordinary prose.”