Description
This book of political morality tales, written at the end of the fourteenth century, approximately a hundred years before Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, might well have been its original inspiration. Now considered a classic, Le Livre des Ruses was only recently "discovered" within the ancient manuscripts collection at Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale.
Written in a rich, anecdotal style, Le Livre des Ruses is a book of finely woven parables that contain nothing less than the foundations of the political thought of the Arab world. Introduced by French scholar and translator René R. Khawam, the book also includes the original author’s introduction and bibliography. This text should prove invaluable to both scholars and general readers alike for its view into an important aspect of Arab culture, and for its reference to lost ninth century texts from that little-known period preceding the appearance of Islam in ancient Persia.