Abstract
Abstract The basic claim of this work is that there once was an intellectual movement within the boundaries of Islamic civilization that can be referred to as political realism; that Ibnu'l- Muqaffa was the pioneer of this movement; that no thinker organized his thoughts without refering to other thinkers of his generation or thinkers of previous generations, or socio economic events; and thus, that many of the Islamic thinkers including Ibn Haldun should be studied in the context of this movement. My intention is to present clear and short information considering basic inclinations of Islamic political realism; to concentrate on Ibnu'l-Muqaffa's political philosophy emphasizing two of his shorter works, namely, `Kelile ve Dimne` and `Risaaletu's-Sahaabe`; to compare his thoughts with those of Machiavelli's and determine what kind of realism it presents. The process we followed in order to understand what Ibnu'l-Muqaffa meant can be summarized in three steps: 1) To present a short biography of the thinker, list of his works, and some information about the economic and political conditions in which he lived in order to grasp his work in its own originial historical context. 2) To try to illustrate where does the thinker stand considering the discussion of the philosophical problematic in which he takes part. With problematization we refer to the `bunch of problems that are connected with each other in a certain period and for a certain people, so that which are theoretically too complex to be handled individually.` In our view, like other intellectuals of his time, Ibnu'l Muqaffa thinks within a problematic that can be summarized as `The relation of God's will to personal will and politics`, but some of his propositions go beyond this problematic; and thus accomplishes -to use a term we borrowedfrom Bachelard- the `epistemological break`. In short, he maintains that political power belongs to the `Sovereign`, not to the `Caliph`; that the fundamental principles of law should drive not from the Islamic Canon but from a `Security Contract` presented to the Sovereign by `a group of expert bureaucrats`; and that the ruled are not a `religious community` but a community of subjects divided into certain commercial, ethnical, social etc. bodies. 3) To determine certain basic concepts that the thinker uses, and examine the significance he attaches to them. In order to do that some `between the lines` reading may be necessary. With this we mean to find the secondary implications of the thinker's intellectual goals, and to disclose and comment on the phrases-sentences that the thinker leaves polysemous due to political and economic restrictions. The need for such a reading can be justified thus: in the thinker's work, just as throughout the history of Islam, we come across with expressions that are left polysemous for they are intended to be understood only by small groups which, upon reading, should act in accordance with the `intended` meaning. Thus ordinary readers deal with the surface meaning, while other certain groups which are familiar with the author's political-cultural identity grasp the core of the message. The communication of the oral or written messages through closed concepts is method that can be followed in Ibn Sina, Farabi and Ibn Rushd as well. Islamic political realism is a philosophical movement that was given birth after the acquaintance of the Islamic civilization with neighboring cultures were settled and thus the religious state were transformed into a universal empire. Its main sources are oral narratives like `Eyyaamu'1-Arab` which deal with the wars and peace agreements of Arabs in the Cahiliya period; Siyar books which deal with the life story of the prophet; and even Sasani Iran's political culture. It has three basic tendencies: the one that depends on `sovereign- religious cannon-fukaha`, the one that depends on `sovereign-expert bureaucrat-constitution`, and the one that depends on the dialectics of hadariya and badawiya based on asabiya.Ibnu'l Muqaffa is the father of the political realism that depend on `sovereign-expert bureaucrat-constitution`, he is a significant figure in the intellectual history of the region, and in spite of the claims of certain authors, he is not an ordinary man of letters writing only fables, nor a Shu'ubi in search for an `Iranian type God-King`. He is the first thinker with an organized proposal of `social contract`; he named it `Aqdu'l-Amaan` (The Security Contract) but this proposal did not become popular in his own times. Today, he has to be counted among Cahiz, Abdulhamid al-Katib, Ibn Miskawayh etc. as one of the predecessors of Ibn Khaldun; his thoughts deserve to be re-examined. Another reason why Ibn al-Muqaffa's work seems interesting is that some suggestions and metaphors offered by Macbiavelli remind us of his words. Although it is not possible to establish a direct link between them, it can be argued that Machiavelli was possibly influenced by Ibnu'l Muqaffa's work through Ibn Zafer of Sicily or EbuT-Welid Turtushi of Tortossa.
