Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli

Ibn Ẓafar al-Siqillī, miniature of the XII century

Ibn Zafar al Siqilli, (Template:Lang-ar), or (Template:Lang-ar), or Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad Ibn Abī Muḥammad Ibn Ẓafar al-Siqillī al-Makkī al-Mālikī (are among the several variants), was a philosopher, polymath and Arab-Sicilian politician of the Norman period (1104 - 1170), and has come to be known in the West as "Niccolò Machiavelli's Arab Precursor".

Biography

Ibn Ẓafar was said to be physically deformed. His demonym 'al-Siqillī' indicates he was born in Sicily, but the patronym 'al-Makkī' suggests his family origins were in Mecca, where he is believed to have been raised and educated. Nicknamed 'The Wanderer', the precise chronology of his travels are uncertain. He probably spent his youth in Fatimid Egypt and Mahdia in Tunisia, but left there in 1148 when it fell to the Normans. After a period in Sicily, Ibn Ẓafar first went to Egypt, then to Aleppo in 1146, where he taught at the Madrasa Ibn Abī ‘Aṣrūn under the patronage of Ṣāfīal-Dīn. In 1154 he returned to Sicily under the patronage of Amīr Abū ‘Abd Allāh Ibn Abī al-Qāsim Ibn ‘Alī al-Qurashī, known as Ibn Hajar, a Sicilian Arab noble, who served as a general in the Norman army. Due to the civil unrest of the Muslim population some time later, Ibn Ẓafar left Sicily definitively and took refuge in Hamat, in Syria, where he died in poverty in 1170, or 1172. The geographer Yāqūt al-Rūmī refered to him as a ‘refined philologist’, and both Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī and Ibn Khallikān praised his scholarship and thought.

Works

Ibn Ẓafar authored 32 books and his magnum opus is Sulwān al-Muṭā fī Udwān al-Atbā (Template:Lang-ar) (Consolation for the Ruler During the Hostility of his Subjects). When four centuries later the famous Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli produced his treatise, 'The Prince' and dedicated it to Lorenzo di Medici, Ibn Ẓafar was almost unknown in the West. Even after Michele Amari published his Italian translation (1851), which included biographical details of the author and information about the history of the manuscripts, and Richard Bentley published an English translation (1852), Ibn Ẓafar remained in relative obscurity. At the beginning of the 20th century another Sicilian, political scientist and philosopher Gaetano Mosca, once again observed the striking parallels in the work of Ibn Ẓafar and Machiavelli's and drew public attention to the fact. Despite this the name Ibn Ẓafar receives rare mention in connection with his notorious successor, nor indeed is his book recognised as the original precursor to the current day.

The treatise takes the style of Mirrors for princes - counsel for princes and caliphs in the proper use of power, good governance and the conduct of commerce and trade - and is a form of wisdom literature with a long Arabian and Persian tradition. Ibn Ẓafar dedicated the first edition of 'Sulwan' to an unknown king facing revolt - possibly the ruler of Damascus expelled by Nur Eddin - and the second edition to his patron Abū al-Qāsim (Ibn Hajar).

Another work of Ibn Ẓafar, a biography of illustrious men, was translated into Italian, English and Turkish.

Bibliography

• R. Hrair Dekmejian and Adel Fathy Thabit: Machiavelli's Arab Precursor: Ibn Zafar al-Siquilli; British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2000), 27, 125-137.
• Brockelmann, C. Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, Vol. 1. Weimar, 1898.
• Arié, Miniatures pp. 1–4
• Umberto Rizzitano, ‘Ibn Ẓafar, Abū ‘Abd Allāh’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV, p. 970.
• E. J. van Donzel, Islamic Desk Reference