avourite with the Khalif,
he took great liberties with Sofyan, the Governor of Busra, and
insulted the memory of his mother. One day Sulaiman and Isa, the
uncles of the Khalif Mansur, desired to obtain a letter of amnesty
from him for their brother Abd-Allah, and they instructed Ibn
Al-Mukaffa to compose one in the strongest terms, which he did, and
added to it the following clause, 'Should the Prince of the Believers
ever act treacherously towards his uncle Abd-Allah, then may he be
divorced from his wives, may his slaves be free, and may his subjects
be solved from obedience!' The Khalif's dignity was shocked, and he
ordered the writer of this letter of amnesty to be forthwith executed,
and the Governor of Busra, whom Ibn Al-Mukaffa had many times insulted,
very gladly undertook the duty. Al-Madaini narrates that when Ibn
Al-Mukaffa was brought before Sofyan, the latter asked him whether he
remembered the insults he had heaped upon his mother, and added, 'May
my mother really deserve those insults if I do not get you executed in
a manner hitherto unheard of!' He also recalled Ibn Al-Mukaffa's joke
about Sofyan's big nose, because he had one day asked the governor,
'How are you and your nose?' On another occasion, when the governor
remarked that he never had reason to repent keeping silence, Ibn
Al-Mukaffa replied, 'Dumbness becomes you; then why should you repent
of it.' Accordingly Sofyan ordered the members of Ibn Al-Mukaffa's body
to be chopped off, one after the other, and thrown into a burning
oven, into which, last of all, the trunk of his body was also thrown.
There are other accounts of his death, viz., that he was strangled in
a bath, or shut up in a privy. One opinion, however, generally
prevails, that the execution was not a public one. The date of it is
uncertain--A.D. 756, 759, and 760, are all given; but the victim was
only thirty-six years of age at the time.

A few remarks may be made about the support given to learning and men
of letters by the Omaiyide and Abbaside Khalifs, as also by those of
the Spanish or Western Khalifate.

The Omaiyide Khalifs, with their capital at Damascus, were generally
patrons of science, poetry, architecture, song, and music. But all
these branches of knowledge were at that time merely rudimental; and,
of the fourteen sovereigns of the dynasty, only five really deserve
the name of protectors of learning; and of these Abdul Malik (A.D.
684-705), and his son Walid I. (A.D.