The Abbasid Translation Movement

The translation movement was the effort to render the books of ancient philosophy and science into Arabic in the Abbasid period. Ibn al-Nadim, in the Fihrist, relates an account of why so many of these books came into the lands of Islam. ²

Ibn al-Nadim relates that al-Ma'mun saw in a dream a man sitting on his throne, who told him that he was Aristotle, and answered his question about the meaning of "the good." Ibn al-Nadim counts this dream among the strongest causes of the production of the books. ²

Al-Ma'mun wrote to the king of the Romans asking permission to translate what he chose of the ancient sciences kept in his treasury, and the king answered after refusing. Al-Ma'mun sent a group, among them al-Hajjaj ibn Matar, Ibn al-Bitriq, and Salm, who was in charge of the House of Wisdom, and they took what they found and translated it. ²

The Banu Shakir, astrologers, took care to bring out books from the lands of the Romans, and they sent Hunayn ibn Ishaq and others. Ibn al-Nadim reports from Abu Sulayman al-Mantiqi that they paid the translators, among them Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Habish ibn al-Hasan, and Thabit ibn Qurra, about five hundred dinars a month. ²

This picture comes from Ibn al-Nadim alone. What is not recorded here, namely other sources that confirm or discuss it, needs a further source.