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Ibn Khallikan has devoted seven pages to the life of Ibn Mukaffa who is called the Katib and was renowned for the elegance of his style. He was the author of admirable epistles. He was a native of Fars and a Magian. But he was led to the profession of Islam by the uncle of the two first Abbaside Al Safar and Al Mansur. He then became a secretary and was admitted into intimacy.
In the palmy days of the Abbaside Caliphate it was quiescent enough, and men of all creeds were welcomed at Baghdad for their art, learning, or handicraft when we were massacring Jews in London as part of a coronation pageant.
In 912 the threatened ruin of the dynasty was arrested by the coming of another Abd-er-Rahman, third Sultan of that name. Rebellion was put down, and fifty years of wise and just administration gave solidity to the kingdom, which also then became a Khalifate. The Abbaside Khalifs, after the deposition of the Omeyyads, had removed the Khalifate from Damascus to Baghdad.
In this last connection the Sasanian tradition survived for a long time a number of Moslem dynasties. The powerful influence which Iranian tradition exercised was felt by the Abbaside Khahlifs and after them by the Turkish Seljuks.
Later, too, the Ommiad and Abbaside Caliphs exercised this right of legislation by deputy; it was in their names that the Mujtaheddin, Abu Hanifeh and the rest, framed their first codes of law; and to the last the words of their mouth were listened to, as in some measure inspired utterances, by the faithful.
A short time before his death, Saladin had become the virtual ruler of Egypt, and had ordered the Khotba to be read in the name of the Abbaside Caliph el-Mostadi of Bagdad. Benjamin on his return journey passed through Sicily when the island was no longer governed by a viceroy. VI, pp. 230 et seq.; also notes 1 and 10 at the end of vol.
It is interesting that in the Abbaside period the translations made from the Persian authors or authors belonging to Persia appertain to a certain special genre of works of a technical nature, books on warfare , on divination, on horse-breaking , on the training of other animals, and on birds trained to hunting.
The coast was also defended by a powerful fleet of armed vessels, of which each of the seaports fitted out its proportion, against the hostile attacks of the Abbaside lieutenauts of Africa, and the predatory descents of the Majus or Northmen; who, after laying waste with fire and sword the French and English coasts, had extended their ravages into the southern seas even to the Straits of Gibraltar.
The book was handsomely bound in black and gold, the colours of the Abbaside caliphs; and contained a circular "earnestly requesting that the work might not be exposed for sale in public places or permitted to fall into the hands of any save curious students of Moslem manners." The last volume was issued in July 1886.
The Abbaside army of invasion was utterly annihilated; and the qualities slumbering in this son of the Khalifs may be judged when we relate that the heads of the Abbaside leaders were put into a bag with descriptive labels attached to their ears, and sent to the reigning Khalif as a present.
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