Ahiqar and Aesop
Part Two:
Ahiqar,
Aesop and Lokman
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Now concerning this Lokman, the commentators and the
critics have diligently thrown their brains about. The former have disputed
whether Lokman was an inspired prophet or merely a philosopher and have decided
against his inspiration: and they have given him a noble lineage, some saying
that he was sister's son to Job, and others that he was nephew to Abraham, and
lived until the time of Jonah”.
F. C. Conybeare et
al.
According to these authors, “… the legend of Ahikar was known
to Mohammed, and … he has used it in a certain Sura of the Koran”.
First of all, there was no
historical Mohammed - ‘he’, as a single historical entity supposedly of the C7th
AD is as dead as a doornail. See e.g. my article:
Prophet
Jonah, Nineveh, and Mohammed
noting that Mohammed claimed to be a ‘brother of
the prophet Jonah’, an anomalous historical mish-mash as crazy as the above
suggestion that “Lokman … was nephew to Abraham, and lived until the
time of Jonah”.
But, then, why
not? That would make Lokman only something like a thousand years old!
A veritable
spring chicken.
“The Story of Ahiqar” by F. C. Conybeare et al. does make some interesting connections,
however – Ahiqar/Aesop and Lokman:
....
ON THE USE OF THE LEGEND OF
AHIKAR IN THE
KORAN AND ELSEWHERE.
We pass on, in the next place,
to point out that the legend of Ahikar was known to Mohammed, and that he has
used it in a certain Sura of the Koran.
There is nothing a priori
improbable in this, for the Koran is full of Jewish Haggada and Christian legends,
and where such sources are not expressly mentioned, they may often be detected
by consulting the commentaries upon the Koran in obscure passages. For example,
the story of Abimelech and the basket of figs, which appears in the Last Words
of Baruch, is carried over into the Koran, as we have shown in our preface to
the Apocryphon in question. It will be interesting if we can add another volume
to Mohammed's library, or to the library of the teacher from whom he derived so
many of his legends.
The 31st Sura of the Koran is
entitled Lokman (Luqman) and it contains the following account of
a sage of that name.
* We heretofore bestowed wisdom
on Lokman and commanded him, saying, Be thou thankful unto God: for whoever is
thankful, shall be thankful to the advantage of his own soul: and if any shall
be unthankful, verily God is self-sufficient and worthy to be praised. And
remember when Lokman said unto his son, as he admonished him.
….
O my son, Give not a partner
unto God, for polytheism is a great impiety.
♦ ♦♦♦♦♦
O my son, verily every matter,
whether good or bad, though it be of the weight of a grain of mustard-seed, and
be hidden in a rock, or in the heavens, God will bring the same to light: for
God is clear-sighted and knowing.
O my son, be constant at
prayer, and command that which is just, and forbid that which is evil, and be
patient under the afflictions that shall befall thee: for this is a duty
absolutely incumbent upon all men.
♦ ♦♦#♦♦
And be moderate in thy pace,
and lower thy voice, for the most ungrateful of all voices surely is the voice
of asses.'
♦ ♦♦#♦♦
Now concerning this Lokman, the
commentators and the critics have diligently thrown their brains about.
The former have disputed
whether Lokman was an inspired prophet or merely a philosopher and have decided
against his inspiration: and they have given him a noble lineage, some saying
that he was sister's son to Job, and others that he was nephew to Abraham, and
lived until the time of Jonah. Others have said that he was an African: slave.
It will not escape the reader's notice that the term sister's son to Job, to
which should be added nephew of Abraham, is the proper equivalent of the [€f aSeX^o?] by which Nadan and Ahikar are described in the
Tobit legends.
Job, moreover, is singularly
like Tobit.
That he lived till the time of
Jonah reminds one of the destruction of Nineveh as described in the book of
Tobit, in accordance with Jonah's prophecy. Finally the African slave is
singularly like Aesop … who is a black man and a slave in the Aesop legends.
From all of which it appears as if the Arabic Commentators were identifying Lokman
with Ahikar on the one hand and with Aesop on the other; i.e. with two
characters whom we have already shown to be identical.
The identification with Aesop
is confirmed by the fact that many of the fables ascribed to Aesop in the west
are referred to Lokman in the east: thus Sale says: —
'The Commentators mention
several quick repartees of Luqman which agree so well with what Maximus
Planudes has written of Aesop, that from thence and from the fables attributed
to Luqman by the Orientals, the latter has been generally thought to be no
other than the Aesop of the Greeks. However that may be (for I think the matter
may bear a dispute) I am of opinion that Planudes borrowed a great part of his
life of Aesop from the traditions he met with in the east concerning Luqman,
concluding them to have been the same person ….
These remarks of Sale are
confirmed by our observation that the Aesop story is largely a modification of
the Ahikar legend, taken with the suggestion which we derive from the
Mohammedan commentators, who seem to connect Lokman with Tobit on the one hand
and with Aesop on the other.
Now let us turn to the Sura of
the Koran which bears the name Lokman, and examine it internally: we remark (i)
that he bears the name of sage, precisely as Ahikar does: (ii) that he is a
teacher of ethics to his son, using Ahikar's formula ' ya bani ' in teaching
him : (iii) although at first sight the matter quoted by Mohammed does not
appear to be taken from Ahikar, there are curious traces of dependence. We may
especially compare the following from Ahikar: ' O my son, bend thy head low and
soften thy voice and be courteous and walk in the straight path and be not
foolish And raise not thy voice when thou laughest, for were it by a loud voice
that a house was built, the ass would build many houses every day.'
Clearly Mohammed has been using
Ahikar, and apparently from memory, unless we like to assume that the passage
in the Koran is the primitive form for Ahikar, rather than the very forcible
figure in our published texts. Mohammed has also mixed up Ahikar's teaching
with his own, for some of the sentences which he attributes to Lokman appear
elsewhere in the Koran. But this does not disturb the argument. From all sides
tradition advises us to equate Lokman with Aesop and Ahikar, and the Koran
confirms the equation. The real difficulty is to determine the derivation of
the names of Lokman and Aesop from Ahikar ….
Some of the Moslem traditions
referred to above may be found in Al Masudi c. 4 : ' There was in the country
of Ailah and Midian a sage named Lokman, who was the son of Auka, the son of
Mezid, the son of Sar ….
….
Another curious point in
connexion with the Moslem traditions is the discussion whether Loqman was or
was not a prophet.
This discussion cannot have
been borrowed from a Greek source, for the idea which is involved in the debate
is a Semitic idea.
But it is a discussion which
was almost certain to arise, whether Lokman of whom Mohammed writes so
approvingly had any special … as a prophet, because Mohammed is the seal of the
prophets.
And it seems from what Sale
says on the subject, that the Moslem doctors decided the question in the
negative; Lokman * received from God wisdom and eloquence in a high degree,
which some pretend were given him in a vision, on his making choice of wisdom
preferably to the gift of prophecy, either of which was offered him.' Thus the
Moslem verdict was that Lokman was a sage and not a prophet.
On the other hand it should be
noticed that there are reasons for believing that he was regarded in some
circles and probably from the earliest times as a prophet. The fact of his
teaching in aphorisms is of no weight against this classification: for the
Hebrew Bible has two striking instances of exactly similar character, in both
of which the sage appears as prophet. Thus Prov. XXX. begins :
* The words of Agur the son of
Jakeh, even the prophecy*
and Prov. xxxi begins :
*The words of king Lemuel, the
prophecy that his mother taught him.'
Both of these collections
appear to be taken from popular tales*, and they are strikingly like to the
sentences of Ahikar.
….
The legend of Ahikar has also
had an influence upon other books of a similar type, where story-telling and
the enforcement of ethical maxims are combined. Such a case is the Story of
Syntipas the Philosopher, a late Greek translation of a Syriac text, of which
the date of composition is uncertain, as also whether it was primitively
composed in Syriac or in some other language ….
There was an Arabic form of
this story extant as early as 956 A.D., and the diffusion of the collection of
tales is phenomenal in later times.
The opening of the story is as
follows :
'There was once a king whose
name was Cyrus. He had seven wives; but had become old and had no son. Then He
arose and prayed, and vowed a vow and anointed himself.
And it pleased God to give him
a son. The boy grew and shot up like a cedar …. Then he gave him over to learn
wisdom and he was three years with his teacher, without however learning
anything.'
The opening of the story is
common matter to an Eastern novelist, but there are allusions which betray the
use of a model of composition. To put Ahikar into the form Cyrus was not
difficult in view of the Slavonic Akyrios for the same name; 'seven wives' is
the modification of a later age on the original * sixty wives ' of Ahikar ; but
what is conclusive for the use of the earlier legend is the remark that the
king's son ' shot up like a cedar.' Thus we have in the Arabic version, 'Nadan
grew big and walked, shooting up like a tall cedar,' and in the final
re-proaches of the sage, ' My boy! I brought thee up with the best upbringing
and trained thee like a tall cedar.' So that Ahikar is as truly a model for
Syntipas as he was for Tobit [sic].
At the conclusion of the
Syntipas legends, when the young man is solving all the hard ethical problems
that his father proposes to him, we again find a trace of Ahikar, for he speaks
of the 'insatiate eye which as long as it sees wealth is so ardent after it
that he regards not God, until in death the earth covers his eyes.' And amongst
the sayings of Ahikar we find one to the effect that * the eye of man is as a
fountain, and it will never be satisfied with wealth until it is filled with
dust.' Dr Dillon points out that this is one of the famous sayings of Mohammed,
and if that be so, we have one more loan from Ahikar in the Koran.
Cf Sura 102, 'The emulous
desire of multiplying [riches and children] employeth you, until ye visit the
graves.' ….
No comments:
Post a Comment