#127 Th (10/27/22) - The trackless wastes, the cry of an owl

 "The Sassanian king Bahram ibn Bahram, on hearing the cry of an owl, asked the Mobedhan, the chief religious dignitary among the Persians, what the cry meant. The priest replied with a fable: when a male owl wanted to marry a female owl, she demanded twenty ruined villages, so that she could hoot in them. But the male replied that that would be no problem as long as King Bahram continued to rule in the way that he was doing, since the owl would be able to give her a thousand villages. Hearing this, the ashamed King resolved to manage the affairs of his kingdom better."

From

The trackless wastes: Writing history without hope in fourteenth-century North Africa

Link

Author: Robert Irwin
Date: Mar. 23, 2018 
 
excerpted from Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography by Robert Irwin 

 

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