A suggestion made by Ignác Goldziher, and later written about by Philip Khuri Hitti in his "History of the Arabs", is that the name is taken from a story in "Kalilah waDimnah", in which a group of animals, by acting as faithful friends ("ikhwan al-safa"), escape the snares of the hunter. The story concerns a Barbary dove and its companions who get entangled in the net of a hunter seeking birds. Together, they leave themselves and the ensnaring net to a nearby rat, who is gracious enough to gnaw the birds free of the net; impressed by the rat's altruistic deed, a crow becomes the rat's friend. Soon a tortoise and gazelle also join the company of animals. After some time, the gazelle is trapped by another net; with the aid of the others and the good rat, the gazelle is soon freed, but the tortoise fails to leave swiftly enough and is himself captured by the hunter. In the final turn of events, the gazelle repays the tortoise by serving as a decoy and distracting the hunter while the rat and the others free the tortoise. After this, the animals are designated as the "Ikwhan al-Safa".