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Since the interest of Muqaffa was concentrated in the province of Persian culture it is indisputable that his activity was not confined in this direction to one book and the contents of the book have vestiges in a high degree of dependence on Persian motifs. This is proved by a variety of circumstances.
On the other hand, had he been set down in this passage of the Fihrist as a translator of scientific works he would have been assigned a place not at the close of the list but in the middle of the translators of this class of books, that is, after Ibn Muqaffa and in the midst of the descendants of Naubakht and other persons mentioned above.
It bears particularly on didactic literature though it has been as yet very ill studied from the comparative standpoint. The Sasanian influence is perfectly obvious. Some portions of Al Yatima of Ibn Muqaffa may be parallelled to corresponding remnants from Pahlavi literature in the Kabus Nameh and the Siasat Nameh.
First of all as may be expected is mentioned Ibn al Muqaffa about whom the Fihrist speaks in detail at another place. An examination of the aforesaid names of translators in order would, it seems to us, afford material for the solution of the problem regarding the different varieties of Persian literary tradition in the first centuries of Islam.
Well-known is the importance enjoyed in the beginning of the epoch of the development of the Arabic Musalman literature, by the activities of the Parsi Ibn al Muqaffa. He is famous as the first commentator of the Greek books on logic in Arabic literature, but he is particularly renowned as the efficient supporter of the Persian literary tradition and its translator into the Arabic literature.
Ibn al Muqaffa stands in the first place belonging to him by right. He was a genuine encyclopaedic translator familiar with the Arab society with all its influence of spiritual Sasanian life of Persia finding expression in its literature. He translated scientific, epico-historical, and ethico-didactic books.
We have indicated in the preceding chapter the translations of Ibn al Muqaffa from Persian books into Arabic. Besides those of an ethico-didactic contents, among them there were books of historical character. All these translations have not come down to us. Extracts of these renderings into Arabic, however, have been preserved in the original and sometimes in paraphrase.
See La perle incomparable ou l'art du parfait courtisane de Abdallah ibn al-Muqaffa, 1906. Besides Muqaffa a number of writers of the epoch of the development of Arabic Musalman literature interested themselves in themes connected with Persian antiquities. No doubt, further more, writers of Persian origin followed in their books on Adab Persian models.
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