كليلة ودمنة

The Indian king Dabshalim asks the philosopher Bidpai for a parable of two friends set against each other by a liar, and the answer, the tale of the lion, the bull and the two jackals Kalila and Dimna, opens a cascade of animal fables nested one inside another. Ibn al-Muqaffa's eighth-century Arabic prose became a model of the language and a handbook for rulers.

Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.