---
title: "Ibn al-Muqaffa"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Ibn al-Muqaffa"
aliases: ["Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ","Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa"]
first_seen: "2026-07-27T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Kalila wa-Dimna","Borzuya","Sasanian Persia","transmission of texts","al-Yamani"]
---


8th-century translator and man of letters (d. c. 757 CE), a Zoroastrian
convert to Islam, credited with the surviving Arabic recension of *Kalīla
wa-Dimna* — the sole surviving descendant of Borzuya's lost Pahlavi
translation, and the ancestor text behind the collection's spread into
Syriac, Greek, Persian, Hebrew, Latin, and Old Castilian. Matters to this
vault as the single load-bearing link in the entire transmission chain in
[[claim-kalila-wa-dimna-descends-from-borzuyas-lost-pahlavi]]: every earlier
stage (Sanskrit, Pahlavi) is lost, so everything the vault knows about them is
inferred backward from his Arabic text. Also the subject of the one
documented dissent this vault has found on the chain's authenticity — see
[[claim-al-yamani-disputed-kalila-wa-dimnas-indian-origin]] — and, per this
promotion's own capture, reportedly executed c. 757 CE for alleged heresy, a
detail not yet independently verified this session and left as an open lead
rather than a claim.

## References
- [[claim-kalila-wa-dimna-descends-from-borzuyas-lost-pahlavi]]
- [[claim-al-yamani-disputed-kalila-wa-dimnas-indian-origin]]
- [[claim-two-syriac-translations-of-kalila-wa-dimna-survive-independently]]
- [[claim-de-blois-borzuya-mission-historically-plausible-not-proven]]
- Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-borzuya-kalila-wa-dimna.md, 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-26-do-tier-12-scholarly-sources-encyclopaedia-iranica-de.md