Panel “Premodern Fables and Ambivalent Authorship: Interlocutors, Copyists, and Creative Redactors.”

Chair: Olga M. Davidson
Discussant: Neguin Yavari

Recensions of Riddling Beast Fables: The Case of an Aesopic Werewolf  / Gregory Nagy

A Comparative Approach to the Medieval Theory of Authorship / Yuriko Yamanaka

A Western European Parallel to the Mythological Version of an Aetiology for Kalīla wa Dimna / Olga Davidson

Reassessing the Sources of Qāni‘ī Ṭūsī’s Versification of Kalīla and Dimna (ca. 658/1260) / Theodore S. Beers

Elusive Justice: Rewriting the Chapter of “Dimna’s Trial” in Kalīla and Dimna / Beatrice Gründler

Abstract: Several translations and adaptations of Kalīla and Dimna were written in Persian throughout the medieval period. These works arose in different patronage contexts and with a variety of literary aims. Some are in prose, others in verse. Some are heavily embellished; others present the fables in a spare style. And some are famous and well-studied, while others remain virtually unknown and have attracted little scholarly interest. I would like to use this paper to delve into a text that belongs to the latter category: the versification of Kalīla and Dimna by Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd “Qāni‘ī” Ṭūsī, composed ca. 658/1260 and dedicated to ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāvūs, one of the Seljuk sultans of Rūm. At least two manuscripts of Qāni‘ī’s rendition of the fables have survived (both deficient), and they served as the basis for an edition by the Georgian Iranologist Magali Todua, published in 1358 SH (i.e., 1979–80). Despite the availability of Todua’s edition, however, there is still minimal scholarship on Qāni‘ī’s work—even in Persian. Among the first questions that one might ask about this adaptation of Kalīla and Dimna is what it was based on. Did Qāni‘ī start with the classic Arabic text attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. ca. 139/757)? Or was he working from a source that was already in Persian? In the introduction to his edition, Todua answers this question matter-of-factly, stating that what Qāni‘ī produced is a versification of the famous Persian prose translation of Kalīla and Dimna (ca. 540/1145–6) by Naṣr Allāh Munshī—itself derived from the Arabic. But Todua does not substantiate the link between the two works. It turns out to be surprisingly complicated to identify Qāni‘ī’s source(s), since he does not mention explicitly which version of Kalīla and Dimna he has turned into poetry. (The absence of some passages in the surviving manuscripts may add to the confusion.) As I will demonstrate in this paper, a careful examination of Qāni‘ī’s text does yield support for Todua’s judgment. There are certain idiosyncratic passages that Naṣr Allāh added to the fables of Kalīla and Dimna, which Qāni‘ī has preserved. At the same time, it is important to recognize the substantial originality of this poem, which runs to easily ten thousand lines and is filled with new ideas and motifs.

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AIS encourages works grounded in the social sciences and humanities, which probe new scholarly approaches to Iranian Studies, broadly defined. AIS also welcomes submissions on all aspects of Iran’s historical borderlands, including Turkic-Iranian history and culture, Kurdish spaces, the Persianate world, and the Iranian diaspora.

Full conference programme available via the AIS homepage.