Calila e Dimna is a colection of Castilian tales from 1251 translated by Alfonso X order when he was an infant.
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This is the most literary work related with Alfonso X. Its narration comes from the Eastern literature, as it translates the Arabic text Kalila wa-Dimna which is a translation that the Iranian Ibn al-Muqaffa' did to the Arab in the 8th century and this comes from the Hindu Panchatantra (300 AD[1]). In the year 570 was translated to Pahlavi and later to Syriac.
It is linked with the wisdom manuals of prince's education by the oriental motive of questions and answers between the king and a philosopher, that leads to exemplary tales or exempla told and featured by animals: an ox, an lion and two jackals called Calila and Dimna, which are who tell a bigger number of tales. This structure is used in Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor.
This story has arrived to us throught two manuscripts named as A and B. In the last part of the first one (from the first third of the 15th century) it is said that the book "was translated from Arabic to Latin, later it was Romanised by order of don Alfonso in 1261"[2]. However, as the Spanish version is very near the Arabic one, a translation to Latin can be discarted. The fact that Alfonso is cllaed "infante" (he was crowned in 1252) lead to set the date of composition in 1251 what would convert the book into the first prose-fiction work written in the Iberian Peninsula.
The main structure of the work is the narrative frame (the conversation between the king Decelem and the alguacil-philosopher Burduben). It has three parts clearly differenciated: