3 - Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and early ʿAbbasid prose

Summary

LIFE

In the annals of Arabic literature Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ occupies a central position. For it is with his work that the history of ʿAbbasid prose literature begins; it is he who opens the door to the golden age of Arabic prose writing; it is by him that a wide humanistic concept of letters is introduced to the Arabs. Though rightly classified as an ʿAbbasid writer and littérateur, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ lived most of his life in Umayyad times, and it was under the Umayyads that he served his literary apprenticeship and began his career as a chancery secretary (kātib). Like his Umayyad precursor and older contemporary, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib, he was to become the luminary of the secretarial school of his day. As such, he won for himself unprecedented renown as a master of Arabic prose and contributed signally – though no more so perhaps than ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd – to the development of a written artistic prose tradition.

Born in Fīrūzābād in Fārs some time in the very early years of the second/ eighth century, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was the son of an Umayyad tax-officer of noble Persian origin and, indeed, bore the Persian name Rōzbih until at a mature age he converted to Islam from Manichaeism and took the name ʿAbdullāh. The date of his execution at the age of thirty-six is imprecisely known, but it was not earlier than 139/757 and in all likelihood fell in that very year.