Absāl, An Unveiled Enigma in the Ninth Chapter of Ishārāt Print

Salāmān and Absāl is a well known mysterious story with different versions. The criticism of Fakhr Rāzi on a phrase in the ninth chapter of Ishārāt was the main reason of spreading various versions of the story. This critic kept Khājeh Nasir's mind so busy that he finally decided to search for Ibn Sinā's original version. Following Khājeh Nasīr other writers and commentators began to opine on the same subject and tried to decode the story. A claim can be made that all of the other research works which appeared later are mostly based on Khājeh's perspective who after a long investigation found two old versions of the story. One of them was a tale translated from Greek to Arabic by Honain-Ibn-Ishāq about a centurey prior to Ibn-iSinā's time. Nevertheless, Khājeh that philosophically interpreted both versions believed that IbniSinā had no regard for Honain's version. The succeeding commentators to Khājeh mainly followed him and asserted that the mysterious concepts of the story are not in conformity to Ibn Sinā's comment. It appears that the main rasen for such an conviction may be misunderstanding of them from the esoteric meanings of the story. In the present article an attempt has been made to analyse and criticize different interpretations of the story as narrated by Honain. Furthermore, by looking at the ninth chapter of Ishārāt, I have tried to prove that in spite of the popular view among scholars, Ibn Sinā's version of the story is in conformity with mysterious concepts mentioned in Honain's version. In fact in comparison to the other interpretations of the story, Ibn-i- Sinā's one may be reckoned among the best mystical exegeses of the story.