Talk:Mirror-of-princes writing

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Hi!

I stumpled upon this subject while reading about Thomas Aqinas. The text I provided for this article is copy-pasted from this page:

http://www.mtp.hum.ku.dk/details.asp?eln=200654 (Hope they don't mind. At least I have credited them.)

As this was the best google could provide.

I hope someone has a little knowledge about the subject, and are willing to share. Meanwhile the subject at least exists.

Andreas N. Benediktson

[edit] Persian / Arab Islamic Origins

I don't have time to add anything to this in the near future, but if anyone is interested they should check out "A History of Islamic Societies", second edition, by Ira M. Lapidus. Pg. 149 - 155

Its quite Islam-centric unfortunately, but has some good information. It starts by describing how the Mirrors-For-Princes (term used in book)literature developed out of a Persian tradition of manuals of statecraft. These were translated into Arabic over the 8th and 9th centuries to counsel the Abbasids. The style further developed and expanded from there, quite probably proliferating into Europe through the Umayyids in Spain and especially the Abbasids (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasids#Learning_under_the_Abbasid_dynasty ). al-ghazali is an important writer to check out.

If someone can check out this book from the library or has it they could at least get something started, otherwise I'll have to wait a bit and see if I have time to research more. Bajeda 16:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)Bajeda