Kalila wa Dimna

Kalila wa Dimna is a collection of interlinked animal fables that reached its most influential form in an eighth-century Arabic translation by Ibn al-Muqaffa, made around 750 CE from an earlier Middle Persian version of material ultimately derived from the ancient Indian fable collection the Panchatantra. Framed as instruction offered to a king, the fables are narrated largely through two jackals, Kalila and Dimna, whose own intrigues at a lion king's court open onto further embedded stories illustrating questions of good conduct, prudent decision-making and the consequences, often severe, of flattery, envy and poor judgment. Ibn al-Muqaffa's Arabic version became a foundational text of the mirror-for-princes tradition of political and ethical instruction for rulers, and its stories were translated onward into Persian, Syriac, Greek, Hebrew and eventually most European languages, exerting a documented influence on later fabulists including Jean de La Fontaine.