al-Sadaqa wa al-Sadiq
- Author died
- 400 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Fikr al-Mu‘āṣir
Al-Sadaqa wa al-Sadiq (Friendship and the Friend) is an Arabic literary and philosophical treatise by Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (d. c. 400 AH / 1010 CE), dedicated to the ethical, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of friendship and companionship .
Composition and Context
The idea for the work began in Baghdad, where listeners heard al-Tawhidi speak on friendship, fellowship, affection, loyalty, mutual assistance, and chivalric values—qualities he lamented had vanished among both the commonality and the elite . After being requested to write down his reflections, he compiled his remarks and supplemented them with sayings of sages, scholars, and virtuous figures into a complete treatise beneficial for worldly life and the hereafter .
In 371 AH, Zayd ibn Rifa'a informed the Buyid official Abu Abd Allah Ibn Sa'dan that al-Tawhidi was planning an epistle on friendship and the friend, leading Ibn Sa'dan to encourage him to complete it . Although drafted for Ibn Sa'dan, al-Tawhidi did not finish the work immediately; he continued revising and augmenting the material over thirty years until publishing it around 400 AH .
Content and Method
The work is organized as an adab anthology of maxims, ethical reflections, philosophical anecdotes, and poetic verses, arranged in the tradition of al-Tawhidi's larger anthology al-Basa'ir wa al-Dhakha'ir . Alongside al-Tawhidi's own introduction and observations regarding Ibn Sa'dan's companions, the book brings together philosophical definitions of friendship—such as the Aristotelian notion that a friend is "another self" or "you in essence, though different in person"—and features commentaries by contemporaries such as Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani on the psychological and spiritual harmony required between true companions .
Publication
The work has been edited and printed in both Istanbul and Cairo .
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