Taken from: http://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfAhikar/Ahikar_djvu.txt
....
ON
THE USE OF THE LEGEND OF AHIKAR IN THE
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 … by which Nadan
and Ahikar are described in the Tobit legends.
Job, moreover, is singularly like Tobit.
[According to the
AMAIC, Job was actually the son of Tobit, Tobias]
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, &c.*
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
Frov. 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.'
….
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