Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022): 603-611

Book Review

The Library of Arabic Literature has added another key title to its catalogue with the publication of 
Kalīlah and Dimnah,1 edited by Michael 
Fishbein and translated jointly by Fishbein 
and James Montgomery.2

There are three main parts of the 
volume that should be discussed. The first 
is an introduction by Fishbein (roughly 
twenty-five pages, including his “Note 
on the Text”), in which he provides a 
concise overview of the biography of Ibn 
al-Muqaffaʿ (d. ca. 139/757), the journey 
of Kalīla and Dimna as a world-literary 
phenomenon, and noteworthy features 
of the Arabic text as it is given in the 
manuscript that represents the basis 
for this edition. Second, there is the 

1.  The spelling Kalīlah and Dimnah follows the Library of Congress style for the romanization of Arabic. 
Throughout this review, in cases where the title of the work is used in a general sense—rather than in reference 
to this edition/translation—it is written according to the IJMES style: Kalīla and Dimna.

2.  For the purposes of this review, I will assume that almost everything apart from the translation—for 
example, the introduction—is to be credited to Fishbein alone.

edition itself, which has been carried out 
competently and with an honest, realistic 
perspective on the complicated nature of 
the codicology and textual history of the 
Arabic Kalīla and Dimna—the result being a 
version of the text that meets the standard 
for general-purpose use and citation. Third, 
there is the translation by Fishbein and 
Montgomery, which should immediately 
become the English translation of choice 
for this work, supplanting the fine but 
dated rendition by Wyndham Knatchbull 
(1819). Taken as a whole, this publication 
of Kalīla and Dimna provides something 
close to “one-stop shopping.” The book 
could be handed to students with little 
prior contextualization; they could use the 
introduction to gain a general idea of Kalīla 

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, ʿAbd Allāh Rūzbih b. Dādūya. Kalīlah and 
Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice. Edited by Michael Fishbein; 
translated by Michael Fishbein and James E. Montgomery. The 
Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University 

Press, 2022). ISBN 9781479806539. xxxix + 430 pp. $30 cloth.

Theodore S. Beers 
Freie Universität Berlin

(theodore.beers@fu-berlin.de)

© 2022 Theodore S. Beers. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and 
only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.



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and Dimna, after which they would have an 
Arabic text with facing English translation 
that facilitates different modes of reading 
(including for language learning).3

What follows is commentary on, and 
occasional criticism of, various aspects 
o f  t h i s  e d i t i o n / t r a n s l a t i o n .  I t  b e a r s 
emphasizing that the critical notes below 
generally relate to complexities and 
problems of the Kalīla and Dimna tradition 
itself and are not meant to detract from this 
volume’s overwhelmingly positive qualities.

Fishbein’s introduction

T h e  f i r s t  f e w  p a g e s  o f  F i s h b e i n ’ s 
i n t r o d u c t i o n  a r e  d e v o t e d  t o  a  b r i e f 
discussion of the life and times of Ibn 
al-Muqaffaʿ, including an explanation of 
how Kalīla and Dimna fits into his oeuvre 
(much of which has not survived). The goal 
is not, of course, to add anything to the 
scholarly literature on Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, but 
rather to give a basic overview. Fishbein 
s u c c e e d s  a t  t h i s ,  a n d  h e  c i t e s  a  f e w 
authoritative works of scholarship—e.g., 
István Kristó-Nagy’s La pensée d’Ibn 
a l - M u q a f f a ʿ  ( 2 0 1 3 ) — w i t h  w h i c h  a n 
interested reader could dig deeper.

One point in this passage that could 
perhaps be expanded upon occurs during 
Fishbein’s comparison of Kalīla and Dimna 
to another work of political and ethical 
instruction by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, al-Adab 
al-kabīr. In drawing a link between the  
two books, Fishbein observes, “Although 
the stories of Kalīlah and Dimnah are, on 

3.  Kalīla and Dimna has long (if not always) been used as an educational text. As Ahmed El Shamsy has shown, 
the Būlāq press in Cairo, in its first couple decades of operation, was largely not focused on printing classical 
Arabic works. The exceptions that were made tended to be for books that were “basic teaching texts,” especially 
on grammar. There was, however, an 1836 printing of Kalīla and Dimna. This is probably an indication of its 
perceived educational value. See El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics (Princeton: Princeton University 
Press, 2020), 67–71. It would be only fitting for students of Arabic in our time to continue the tradition of relying 
on Kalīla and Dimna; a side-by-side edition/translation will make this easier than ever.

the surface, entertaining narratives, their 
underlying purpose … is didactic” (p. xiv). 
It would be worth adding that the logic 
of Kalīla and Dimna, whereby serious 
messages are encoded in tales that are 
amusing to read, is an early manifestation 
of an idea that would become central to 
Arabic adab literature: the mixture of 
al-jidd wa-l-hazl, seriousness and jest. 
Rather than viewing the entertaining 
aspects of Kalīla and Dimna as surface-
level features that mask the true purpose 
of the book, one could treat the two sides 
as more complementary. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ 
says as much in his preface (as translated 
by Fishbein and Montgomery): “Because 
such a book combined entertainment 
with wisdom, the wise would study it for 
its wisdom, and the simple for its value as 
entertainment; young pupils and others 
would be delighted to read it and it would 
be easy for them to memorize. When the 
young person reached maturity and grew 
in knowledge, he would ponder what he 
had memorized—as it had been recorded 
and inscribed in his heart without his 
knowing its true nature—and would come 
to realize that he had acquired a great 
treasure” (p. 23). There is no question 
that Fishbein and Montgomery are well 
acquainted with this dynamic, but it might 
help readers of the introduction to clarify 
the interplay of seriousness and jest in 
Kalīla and Dimna, which is part of situating 
the work in the early history of Arabic 
adab.



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The next section of the introduction 
traces the development of Kalīla and 
Dimna from its origins in the Sanskrit 
Pañcatantra, to the Sasanian-era translation 
and expansion in Middle Persian, to 
the landmark Arabic translation by Ibn 
al-Muqaffaʿ, and beyond. This is a story that 
has been told numerous times, and one will 
find no surprises in the overview given by 
Fishbein. There are, however, a few points 
that call for further comment.

First, with regard to the older of the 
two Syriac versions of Kalīla and Dimna—
the one translated from Middle Persian—
it is worth noting that, although the 
original (and unique) extant manuscript 
disappeared in Paris around the turn of 
the twentieth century, four copies of it had 
been made for the use of scholars in the 
1870s and ’80s, and those have survived.4 
So it is still possible to study the older 
Syriac Kalīla and Dimna in manuscript 
(with certain caveats).

Second, after listing the main early 
translations based on the Arabic of Ibn 
al-Muqaffaʿ—into Persian, Syriac (again), 
Old Castilian, Hebrew, and Middle Greek—
F i s h b e i n  c o m m e n t s ,  “ E a c h  o f  t h e s e 
translations was made independently from 
different forms of the text” (p. xvii). This 
raises a difficult question. What exactly 
would it mean for each translation to 
relate to a “different form” of Kalīla and 
Dimna? It is true that, if one looks at 
translations from the Arabic into various 
other languages in the medieval period, 
one will sometimes notice significant 
differences that suggest there was no 

4.  See the section by Jan J. van Ginkel in Beatrice Gruendler et al., “An Interim Report on the Editorial and 
Analytical Work of the AnonymClassic Project,” medieval worlds 11 (2020): 241–79. It is also worth noting that 
the text of the older Syriac Kalīla and Dimna was edited on the basis of the nineteenth-century copies, not the 
original manuscript.

5.  Of course, it is often the case with Arabic texts from the early Islamic period that they have survived 

single “original.” The influential Persian 
translation (ca. 540/1146) by Abū al-Maʿālī 
Naṣr Allāh Munshī, for example, follows 
a chapter order unlike what is typically 
found in Arabic manuscripts—and also 
unlike the chapter order used in many 
other translations, e.g., into Old Castilian 
(1251 CE). We should pay attention to such 
indications of the divergent evolution 
of the underlying Arabic text. But it is 
by no means easy to draw definitive 
general conclusions, and there is a risk 
of overstatement in the claim that each 
translator was working with a substantially 
different version of the book (depending 
on one’s definition of “different”).

Third, in a potential case of under-
statement, Fishbein observes, “Of the many 
surviving manuscripts of the Arabic Kalīlah 
and Dimnah, most are relatively late in 
date.” In fact, as Fishbein specifies in the 
next paragraph, the earliest extant copy is 
dated 618/1221—nearly five centuries after 
the career of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ. And we have 
only a handful of manuscripts from the 
seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth 
centuries. It is important, particularly for 
the benefit of non-specialist readers, to 
stress just how troublesome the codicology 
of this text really is.5

Fourth, Fishbein mentions that medieval 
adab works that contain quotes from Kalīla 
and Dimna, such as the ʿUyūn al-akhbār 
of Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), offer further 
evidence that the Arabic Kalīla and Dimna 
“had ceased to have a single authoritative 
text” from an early period. This is true to 
a meaningful extent. Johannes Stephan 



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of the AnonymClassic project has carried 
out important research on the “indirect 
transmission” of textual material from 
Kalīla and Dimna in anthologies and other 
sources.6 Again, however, we should take 
care when making broad statements. If 
early adab works quote from Kalīla and 
Dimna in ways that reveal variations in the 
text—and they do—then how remarkable is 
that? Where do we draw the line between 
“normal variation” to be expected in the 
transmission and reception of a text, and 
a more fundamental differentiation? Also, 
how can we correct for problems in the 
codicology of adab anthologies themselves, 
where surviving manuscripts are often 
fairly late? These are complicated issues 
that demand circumspection. It should be 
acknowledged, however, that Fishbein’s 
overall point is not wrong: the contents of 
the Arabic Kalīla and Dimna must already 
have varied significantly by the time of Ibn 
al-Nadīm (d. ca. 385/995), who mentions 
having seen versions of the book in which 
multiple chapters are either added or left 
out.7

The next few sections of the intro-
duction, which address the evolution 
of Kalīla and Dimna starting from the 
Pañcatantra, are nicely written. I do not 
believe that I have seen a clearer or more 
concise explanation of how the text grew 
into the form(s) in which it is found in 

in much later copies (if at all). What makes Kalīla and Dimna unusually challenging is a combination of factors: 
the popularity and influential status of the work; the apparent freedom felt by copyists to make changes, both 
large and small; and, yes, the several-century gap between the initial authorship of the text and the production 
of the oldest extant manuscripts.

6.  For an introduction to this topic, see the section by Johannes Stephan in Gruendler et al., “An Interim 
Report.”

7.  See Dagmar Riedel, “Kalila wa Demna i. Redactions and circulation,” Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, https://
dx.doi.org/10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_10658.

8.  Rushain Abbasi, “Islam and the Invention of Religion: A Study of Medieval Muslim Discourses on Dīn,” 
Studia Islamica 116 (2021): 1–106.

Arabic. Again, this is based on existing 
s c h o l a r s h i p — F i s h b e i n  c i t e s  F r a n k l i n 
Edgerton and Carl Brockelmann, among 
ot hers — but  it  is  an ad ept  s y nt hesis. 
When he comes to the question of the 
prefatory chapter to Kalīla and Dimna 
in which the Iranian physician Burzūya 
gives his (purported) autobiography, 
Fishbein notes that scholars have debated 
whether its origins lie in the Middle 
P e r s i a n  t r a n s l a t i o n ,  o r  w h e t h e r  I b n 
al-Muqaffaʿ authored the chapter himself. 
Fishbein more or less accepts the view 
of Theodor Nöldeke that some version of 
this chapter was probably found in the 
Middle Persian—though it is still possible 
that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ made additions and 
changes to it. It would be worth adding 
h e r e  t h a t  B u r z ū y a ’ s  a u t o b i o g r a p h y 
continues to attract scholarly attention 
as a commentary on general ideas about 
religion written in (or translated into) 
Arabic in the early Islamic period. One 
recent study, which probably appeared 
just too late to be included in Fishbein’s 
bibliography, is by Rushain Abbasi.8

Perhaps the most important part of 
Fishbein’s introduction—and definitely the 
most original—is the discussion of what 
he terms “Islamic elements” that have 
been woven into the text of Kalīla and 
Dimna in the (ca. ninth/fifteenth-century) 
manuscript that serves as the basis for 



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this edition. Fishbein shows how the book 
is given a subtly different flavor through 
the insertion of references to Allāh taʿālā 
or Allāh subḥānahu wa-taʿālā; the use of 
phrases like in shāʾ Allāh in dialogue; and 
references to, e.g., relying on the help of 
God to navigate a difficult situation. In 
one touching example, a pair of doves 
are discussing a plan to save extra grain 
for the upcoming dry season, and one of 
them says, “What a good idea! That’s what 
we’ll do, in shāʾ Allāh taʿālā” (pp. 342–43). 
These religious flourishes are not found 
in the earliest extant manuscripts of the 
Arabic Kalīla and Dimna, such as the one 
used for the edition of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 
ʿAzzām.9 As Fishbein notes, there are other 
versions of Kalīla and Dimna that are set in 
a still more explicitly Islamic context, with 
quotes from Qurʾanic verses and aḥādīth. 
We could point to, for example, the sixth/
twelfth-century Persian translation by 
Naṣr Allāh Munshī. What is striking about 
the base manuscript of this edition is that 
it presents the “original” Arabic Kalīla 
and Dimna, in a gently changed form that 
shows how the stories might be read in a 
mature Islamicate milieu. This section of 
the introduction represents new research 
and could be expanded into a journal 
article.

Map of Kalīla and Dimna versions

Between the introduction and the 
“Note on the Text” that follows it, Fishbein 
h a s  i n s e r t e d  a  m a p  t i t l e d  “ P r i n c i p a l 
T r a n s l a t i o n s  o f  t h e  A r a b i c  K a l ī l a h 
wa-Dimnah.” This will probably be useful 
to many readers as a visual aid, but, upon 
examining it in detail, I was puzzled by a 

9.  ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Muqaffaʿ, Kitāb Kalīla wa-Dimna, ed. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām (Cairo: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 
1941).

few aspects. In general, it can be difficult 
to use a map to show a combination of 
geographical breadth and change over 
time. The versions of Kalīla and Dimna that 
are plotted here stretch from Toledo to 
Agra geographically, and from the fourth/
tenth to the tenth/sixteenth century 
chronologically. The languages included 
are Persian (several times), Greek (twice), 
Spanish, Hebrew, Latin, and Ottoman 
Turkish. Some of the versions are not, in 
fact, direct translations from the Arabic—
so the content of the map goes beyond 
what may be suggested by its title. For 
example, the Persian version that is plotted 
at Konya and dated ca. 641–62/1244–63 
refers to a versification by the poet Qāniʿī 
Ṭūsī, made on the basis of the prose 
text of Naṣr Allāh Munshī. The Ottoman 
Turkish version placed on the map—i.e., 
the Hümāyūn-nāme of ʿAlī Vāsiʿ Çelebi 
(d. 959/1543–44)—is based on the Anvār-i 
suhaylī, a Persian rewriting by Ḥusayn 
Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504–5). One could 
also ask why later Arabic renditions of 
Kalīla and Dimna have not been included. 
If Persian versifications are fair game—
the map has two—then why not add the 
well-known Arabic versification by Ibn 
al-Habbāriyya (d. ca. 509/1115)?

It may be that the primary purpose 
of such a map is to impress upon the 
reader that there are many translations 
and adaptations of Kalīla and Dimna, 
in various languages, produced across 
much of the oikouménē over a period of 
several centuries. Insofar as that is the 
case, this map is a clear success. If, on the 
other hand, there were a goal of plotting 
the descendants of the Arabic Kalīla and 



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Dimna in a relatively comprehensive and 
fastidiously accurate manner, then various 
questions could be raised.

Notes on the text

In the last introductory section before 
the text itself, Fishbein explains the process 
underlying the edition and translation. He 
notes that it would hardly be sensible to 
attempt a composite critical edition based 
on a group of manuscripts. The variation 
among extant copies is too great, too 
fundamental—not to mention their general 
lateness. We will never have an Urtext of the 
Arabic Kalīla and Dimna. A more difficult 
question is how to choose a manuscript, or 
a small group of manuscripts, for an edition, 
after acknowledging that there is no ideal 
option. Both Louis Cheikho (1905) and 
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām (1941) prioritized 
using the oldest copies that were available 
to them—even if this led to a greater need 
for emendation owing to lacunae and other 
problems with the text.

F i s h b e i n  h a s  c h o s e n  a  d i f f e r e n t 
approach. For one thing, it seems that he 
was (understandably) disinclined to retread 
the paths of earlier editors. Rather than 
going back to, e.g., the 618/1221 Ayasofya 
manuscript used by ʿAzzām, Fishbein 
selected a copy that is somewhat later; is 
almost complete (with only minor lacunae 
at the beginning and end); and was written 
cleanly by a scribe who seems to have had 
a reasonably good command of classical 
Arabic. The manuscript in question is Or. 
4044 at the British Library. It is worth 
looking at the catalogue entry for this 
manuscript, by Charles Rieu.10 Fishbein has 
not cited it directly, though he does include 

10.  See Charles Rieu, Supplement to the Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: 
British Museum, 1894), 731–32, no. 1156.

Rieu’s Supplement in the bibliography.  
As it turns out, this is a codex that contains 
two texts. It has Kalīla and Dimna at fols. 
1–135 and, at fols. 136–207, the Sulwān 
al-muṭāʿ fī ʿudwān al-atbāʿ of Ibn Ẓafar 
al-Ṣiqillī (d. ca. 565/1170)—a “mirror for 
princes” work that brings together various 
anecdotes, wisdom sayings, and more. (The 
Sulwān pairs nicely with Kalīla and Dimna; 
it would also be a good match for al-Adab 
al-kabīr.) It is not clear whether the copies 
of these books were produced in the same 
context, or how they came to be bound 
together. Judging from high-resolution 
images, however, the grain of the paper, 
the handwriting, and the art style appear 
quite similar. Both texts feature a number 
of illustrations, though they are found 
more frequently in Kalīla and Dimna than 
in the Sulwān. It may have been on the 
basis of the paintings that Rieu placed this 
manuscript approximately in the tenth/
fifteenth century, despite the lack of a 
dated colophon. In any case, for Fishbein’s 
purposes, this represents a good, middle-
of-the-road copy of Kalīla and Dimna. It is 
neither early nor very late; it was evidently 
produced with care; and it has not been 
used for previous editions. Philologically 
inclined readers may wish that more space 
had been given to the description of the 
manuscript. (The presence of the Sulwān 
al-muṭāʿ, for example, is not mentioned.) 
But it is possible that, in keeping with 
the conventions of the Library of Arabic 
Literature series, technical discussion has 
been limited to meet the needs of a diverse 
readership.

Given that Or. 4044 is defective in 
certain passages, and that there is always 



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Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Kalīlah and Dimnah  •  609

a need to consult multiple copies at points 
where the text is unclear, Fishbein has 
made reference to a few other manuscripts 
of Kalīla and Dimna, as well as to earlier 
editions by ʿAzzām, Cheikho, and others. 
He follows a hierarchy whereby Or. 4044 
is  t he bas e m anus cript ; t hen, where 
necessary, he has drawn from two other 
copies;11 and, when all else fails, he cites 
further manuscripts and editions. Readings 
from any source apart from Or. 4044 are 
indicated in footnotes. This framework 
seems reasonable and should be simple 
enough for the reader to understand.

Fishbein also discusses his strategy with 
regard to normalizing the Arabic text. He 
claims not to have forced everything to 
agree with (what we think of as) standard 
orthography and classical Arabic grammar. 
Nor, by any stretch of the imagination, has 
he produced a diplomatic edition. Fishbein 
refers to the approach that he has taken 
as a compromise. Dots are often missing 
from letters in the manuscript; they are 
always included in the edited text. Various 
forms of hamza are written here according 
to the modern convention, though they 
are rarely marked at all in the manuscript. 
According to Fishbein, in contrast to such 
matters of orthographic consistency, 
any normalization that has syntactic 
implications is footnoted. (We will return 
to this question shortly.)

Finally, there is a brief note on the 
English translation, emphasizing that 
Fishbein and Montgomery have aimed 

11.  The two secondary manuscripts are Or. 8751 (dated 799/1397) at the British Library and MS 3655 at 
the Royal Library of Morocco (in Rabat), which is thought to have been produced in the seventh/thirteenth 
century. The date of Or. 8751 is given by Fishbein as 799/1396, based on a description of the manuscript by 
François de Blois. As it turns out, de Blois gives the full colophon date as 1 Jumādā al-Ūlā 799 and then equates 
it to January 1396. This is probably a typographical error. The year 799 AH started in October 1396 CE, but most 
of it (including Jumādā al-Ūlā) fell in 1397. See de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of 
“Kalīlah wa Dimnah” (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1990), 66–67.

at a “natural style.” This is true, and 
perfectly acceptable. The translation will 
be discussed below.

Edition

There is no way to review the entirety 
of an edition of a text as substantial as 
Kalīla and Dimna. The best that one can do 
is to compare select passages to the base 
manuscript in order to gauge whether 
the work has been done with attention 
to detail and in accordance with the 
criteria laid out in the introduction. The 
short answer, for this edition, is that it 
looks good. The text is clean and matches 
what is found in Or. 4044, allowing for the 
aforementioned normalization and setting 
aside cases where recourse has been made 
to another manuscript or edition.

It may be useful to go through one 
passage and list the changes that are 
visible from the manuscript to the edited 
text. For this I have chosen “The Ascetic 
and the Guest,” a short chapter that falls 
near the end of the book. (In fact, it is the 
last chapter in Or. 4044, though it is not so 
in all manuscripts.)

The first difference that I noticed, 
on fol. 134v (p. 396 in the edition), is a 
correction of the verb yataʿaddā (ending 
in alif) to yataʿaddá (with an alif maqṣūra). 
This is simply orthographic and, per the 
standard outlined by Fishbein, need not 
be noted. Next, on the same folio/page, 
the phrase fa-yaṣīr ḥayrānan (or ḥayrānā; 
the tanwīn al-fatḥa is not marked) has 



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been corrected to fa-yaṣīr ḥayrān, since 
ḥayrān is diptote. Here I might have 
expected a footnote, but none is given. 
Next, the verb daʿá is corrected to daʿā. 
Next (and still on fol. 134v, p. 396), the 
short vowels are marked for the word 
ṭurfa in the manuscript, but omitted in 
the edition. This raises a question of the 
appropriateness of removing detail that is 
given in the manuscript, which might be 
seen as more objectionable than adding 
detail that is lacking, such as dots on 
letters. Next, an unclear word is replaced 
with qilla from another manuscript. This is 
properly footnoted.

Next, on fol. 135r (still p. 396 in the 
edition), what appears to be the word 
taʿlīm has been read instead as taʿallum, in 
a context in which the latter makes more 
sense. A footnote is provided. Next, on the 
same folio (but now on p. 398),12 the phrase 
fa-ṣāra ḥayrān mutaraddid is corrected 
to fa-ṣāra ḥayrān mutaraddidan, since 
mutaraddid is not diptote. Again, there is 
no note. Next, the word lā is read as allā 
(i.e., the contraction of an lā), as found in 
the editions of Cheikho and ʿAzzām. This 
may be a case of overcorrection, but it 
is footnoted. Next, tadbīr is corrected to 
tadbīran in an adverbial context, without 
a note. Next, the words ilā baʿḍ are added, 
with reference to multiple other editions, 
to complete a “min baʿḍ…” construction.

Next, on fol. 135v (still p. 398 in the 
edition), the word fī is added for clarity, 
based on another manuscript. Finally, 
the phrase taḍyīʿ li-l-ḥazm is inserted, on 
the same basis. And the chapter comes to  
a close.

12.  We have “skipped” here from p. 396 to 398 because this is a side-by-side edition/translation, with Arabic 
text on even pages and English on odd pages. The numbering runs continuously, so that, for example, the Arabic 
on p. 396 corresponds to the translation on p. 397.

Hopefully the example of this short 
section is sufficient to give a sense of 
Fishbein’s editorial practices. There is 
some normalization, though only to a 
modest degree (by the standards of Arabic 
literature scholarship). Where a sentence 
might be unclear, Fishbein occasionally 
makes a small change or adds a word 
or two, drawing on his other sources. 
The edition is overall close to its base 
manuscript. Again, I have not scoured the 
whole text, and it may be that a detail-
oriented reader will find the odd nit to 
pick.

PDF of the edition

In accordance with its normal policy, 
the Library of Arabic Literature has made 
the edited text of Kalīlah and Dimnah 
freely available in digital form. This is 
commendable. I do think it is worth 
noting, however, that the PDF file that 
t h e y  h a v e  p u b l i s h e d  i s  u n u s a b l e  f o r 
searching in the text. It contains textual 
data that does not correspond to the words 
on the page. I assume that this is related 
to some technical limitations in their 
typesetting process. It would be much 
better if, in the future, the publisher found 
a way of providing the Arabic text of their 
editions in a format suitable for searching 
and computational analysis. In the era of  
digital humanities, that would be an even 
greater gift to the field.

Translation

O f  t h e  m a j o r  c o m p o n e n t s  o f  t h i s 
volume, the English translation is the one 
about which—in a positive sense—I have 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Kalīlah and Dimnah  •  611

the least to say. Fishbein and Montgomery 
have translated Kalīla and Dimna just as is 
indicated in the introduction. The prose is 
clear and not too formal. The Arabic text is 
represented faithfully enough, but not in 
a way that hampers the readability of the 
translation. After all, the Arabic is always 
on the facing page, and every paragraph 
is numbered, so that there can be no 
doubt as to the concordance on the level 
of a sentence. The standard that should 
be met, from my perspective, is that a 
student of Arabic language and literature 
should be able to use the translation for 
help in parsing a difficult passage in the 
original. As far as I have seen, Fishbein 
and Montgomery’s rendering of Kalīla 
and Dimna would certainly allow for this. 
It will also be an easy and enjoyable read 
for those who are interested only in the 
English.

Concluding thoughts

T h i s  v o l u m e  d o e s  i n c l u d e  s o m e 
back matter. First, there are occasional 
notes for the translation—sixty-six in 
total, across the entire book. These are 
mostly intended for clarification based 
on subtleties in the meaning of Arabic 

13.  Two of the noteworthy and fairly new articles that are included are Christine van Ruymbeke, “Kalīla and 
Dimna as a Case-Study: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s and Nasrullah Munshī’s Translations,” in The Routledge Handbook 
of Arabic Translation, ed. Sameh Hanna, Hanem El-Farahaty, and Abdel-Wahab Khalifa, 253–69 (New York: 
Routledge, 2020); and Matthew L. Keegan, “‘Elsewhere Lies Its Meaning’: The Vagaries of Kalīla and Dimna’s 
Reception,” Poetica 52 (2021): 13–40.

14.  Complementary to this edition is the work of the AnonymClassic project at the Freie Universität Berlin, 
which has sought to build a large corpus of manuscripts of Kalīla and Dimna and to develop a digital platform 
that facilitates juxtaposing their contents. This effort represents another response to the impossibility of a 
single solution, i.e., by offering a multitude of partial solutions.

phrases, or to comment on points that are 
unclear in the manuscript. Second, there is 
a short glossary of names and terms. Third, 
Fishbein and Montgomery have provided 
a  b i b l i o g r a p h y ,  w h i c h  i s  o f  m o d e s t 
length but helpful. Fourth, and perhaps 
more importantly, there is a passage on 
“further reading,” which calls attention 
to scholarship (some of it quite recent) 
on different aspects of Kalīla and Dimna.13 
Fifth, and finally, we are given an index of 
proper nouns.

As was stated at the outset, this edition/
translation, along with its introduction and 
other resources, will give many readers 
everything that they need to study Kalīla 
and Dimna. One last question to address 
is whether Fishbein’s edition can replace 
other published versions of the text, such 
as that of ʿAzzām. The answer, realistically, 
is “probably not.” Given the foundational 
problems with the textual history of the 
Arabic Kalīla and Dimna, those who wish 
to engage in close reading will continue 
to need to consider a range of versions, 
in both print and manuscript. Thanks to 
Fishbein, we now have another high-
quality published option, but—as he has 
freely acknowledged—there is no universal 
solution.14