There was once a government official and literary figure of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad named Abu Ali Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Muqla al-Shiraz. He is known to history as Ibn Muqla, and he lived from about A.D. 885 to 940. According to his biographer Ibn Khallikan, Ibn Muqla began his government service career as a tax collector in the city of Fars.
The naturalist Leo E. Miller published an engaging record of his South American adventures in 1918 entitled In the Wilds of South America. We have previously related one of his adventures in Colombia, his quest for the elusive “cock of the rock” whose nesting places were perched over inaccessible, cavernous waterfalls. While he was in British Guiana, he received word that ex-president Theodore Roosevelt had received permission from the Brazilian authorities to explore the ominously-named Rio da Duvida in the Amazon; he would be guided in this effort by Brazil’s most famous living explorer, the indestructible Candido Rondon.
One of the primary virtues that Ibn Zafar believes a good leader should possess is the virtue of self-denial. In Arabic this word is زهد, or “renunciation” of worldly things. What he means by this is that no leader–or any other person, for that matter–can ever become truly great until he learns how to subordinate his desires in the face of higher purposes.
When Quintus Curtius’s translation of On Duties was first published in 2016, it achieved something few would have thought possible.
We read about how certain Roman emperors were “deified” after their deaths. Unfortunately it is not easy to learn the details about how this process was actually undertaken. I was fortunate to come across a rare description of how the deification (deificatio) ceremony took place in the humanist Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans (Rome in Triumph). This Renaissance Latin work, published in 1459, contains a wealth of information on Roman religion and ceremonies, compiled from a painstaking review of the Latin sources available to him.
The naturalist Leo E. Miller was a participant in the famed Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition of 1913–1914 that explored Brazil’s unknown Rio da Duvida. He also had a distinguished career exploring the wilds of many different South American countries and cataloging various species of animal life; he would later record these experiences with the publication in 1918 of In the Wilds of South America.
Ibn Zafar’s well of wisdom provides us with another fable to ponder. How the reader relates it to his or her own life experience, or to the world’s current events, will be up to him or her to decide. While the narrative below is my own, I have also included some of Ibn Zafar’s quotes (as translated by J. Kechichian and R. Dekmejian–with minor variations by me–in their excellent edition of the Sulwan Al-Muta’) as they appear at relevant points in the story.
The following story is told by the political theorist Ibn Zafar (1104–1172?) in his treatise on the art of government. We have encountered him several times previously in these pages, and have discussed many of his ideas on leadership, governance, and the conduct of foreign affairs. There are times when anecdotes can bring certain principles into sharp focus.
It is a feature of human nature to try to control our environment. We wish to exert some kind of influence over the outcome of events, and thereby enhance our own feelings of security and comfort. Yet there are many times when human labor will fall short; it will prove itself to be incapable of dealing with a situation, or unable to weigh the nuances of an evenly balanced pattern of fact. When these situations come about, we must step back from the work-shop; we must move away from the work-table, the field of conflict, or the courtroom, and Fortune take over the guidance of events.
I recently received an email from a man who is about to ship off to USMC boot camp. He wanted to know if I had any pieces of advice for him before he goes. This is a subject I could talk about for hours, so I had to force myself to boil things down to the absolute essentials. I offer ten points that I found to be useful from my own experience. You’ll do fine. You will rise to the occasion, and will be surprised at the progress you have made by the final week.
Quintus Curtius 
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