Sunday, November 01, 2026
Four Classes of Men
Ibn al-Faqīh, Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1885), p. 1,
tr. in Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. Edited and Translated by Bernard Lewis, Vol. II: Religion and Society
(1974; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 198:
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Men are divided into four classes: kings, raised up by their right to rule; viziers, distinguished by understanding and judgment; upper classes, raised up by affluence; and middle classes, linked with them by education. The rest of mankind are vanishing scum,1 floating refuse, vile men and women bound to meanness, whose only concern is to eat and to sleep.
1 1 Cf. Qur'an, xiii, 18.
