Moral Studies in Farsi Transmitted to Moral Works Written in the Fourth Century (the Islamic World)

Moral works were extensively composed at the beginning of the fourth century. In this period, some pieces of in-depth research were conducted in the field of ethics due to the political and social stability maintained by the Buyid dynasty’s rule on the one hand, and due to the translation movement which provides a great deal of the moral works of other nations for scholars in that century on the other hand. The works on ethics in Farsi translated from Pahlavi to Arabic made Iranians’ morals enter into the moral writings of Muslim thinkers. The question arises as to which moral approaches in ancient Iran could contribute to the Islamic world. Using an analytic-library method, this paper first indicates that there are two kinds of Farsi ethics (religious Farsi ethics and empirical Farsi ethics) and how they are different. Then, it explains that religious Farsi ethics could not get into the Islamic world for three reasons: (1) the works on religious Farsi ethics remained untranslated; (2) they were mixed with mythological concepts; and (3) they met political and social opposition. On the contrary, empirical Farsi ethics could get into the Islamic world and was used by the scholar of that time since (1) it was promoted by scribes and teachers; (2) it was favored by the taste of Eastern people; (3) it was based upon the idea of “Philosophia Perennis”.