Dimna's Trial and Apologia in Kashifi's Anvar-i Suhayli. Morality's Place in the Corrupt Trial of a Rhetorical and Dialectical Genius

摘要

This essay challenges the received idea that Ibn al-Muqaffa', the eighth-century Arabic translator of the Kalila-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 Anvar-i Suhayli version, the fifteenth-century Persian rewriting by Va'iz Kashifi, on which the essay is based, also engages with the philosophical conundrum of tasdiq, which seems absent in the Arabic versions of the text.