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Dimna's Trial and Apologia in Kashifī's Anvār-i Suhaylī. Morality's Place in the Corrupt Trial of a Rhetorical and Dialectical Genius.1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2016

CHRISTINE VAN RUYMBEKE
CHRISTINE VAN RUYMBEKE*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridgecv223@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

This essay challenges the received idea that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, the eighth-century Arabic translator of the Kalīla-Dimna fables, added the Trial of Dimna, the sequel to the first story of the Lion and the Bull, in order to let morality win in the end. The analysis of this sequel's synopsis shows the absence of morality and how the ruler uses the judicial to manipulate public opinion and to redress his politically-damaged image. The essay also shows that the sequel's main purpose and use is to give a practical demonstration of the art of forensic rhetoric, casting Dimna as a pre-eminent and redoubtable sophist. The Anvār-i Suhaylī version, the fifteenth-century Persian rewriting by Vā’iz Kāshifī, on which the essay is based, also engages with the philosophical conundrum of tasdīq, which seems absent in the Arabic versions of the text.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 549 - 583
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

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Footnotes

1

My research on the Kalīla and Dimna and on its fifteenth-century version Anvār-i Suhaylī began during my 2007 sabbatical term as Fellow in Residence at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars, Reid Hall in Paris. I hereby would like to thank the Institute for their invaluable help. A preliminary and much abridged version of this research was presented at the Wright Lectures and Graduate Seminar at FAMES, University of Cambridge UK in October 2012. It has benefited from the constructive feedback and remarks made by generous colleagues and research students on this occasion. This topic will also be part of my forthcoming monograph on Anvār-i Suhaylī.

References

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