Das Kitāb al-Ādāb al-kabīr des Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ als Ausdruck griechischer Ethik, islamischer Ideologie und iranisch-sassanidischer Hofetikette

Abstract

In the 8th century Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ wrote his book about the instructions for the ruler, the Kitāb al-Ādāb al-kabīr . Central themes are friendship, prudence, justice and moderation; knowledge and reason are cornerstones, which explicitly do not exclude the values of religion. We detect central concepts of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . At the same time, in comparison with the letters by his contemporary ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib, with the apocryphal exchange of letters between Aristotle and Alexander in the translation by his contemporary Sālim Abū l-ʿAlāʾ, with the letter of the Zoroastrian priest Tansar/Tosar and with parallels in the Zoroastrian encyclopaedia Dēnkard Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ turns out to be a representative of Iranian-Sassanian traditions of the mirror of princes including their Greek sources, and of Islamic parenetic literature, as reflected in his contemporary Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Kitāb al-Ādāb al-kabīr can only be understood, if we take into account the meanings of concepts, as shaped in their historical context and reflecting the process of association and dissociation.