Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 205

of his campaign against Byzantium. The
effectiveness of the dream depended on
the culture of Hellenism generated by
the translation movement, which it pre-
supposed; the dream was thus the con-
sequence of the translation movement,
not its originator while at the same time
it provided further incentive for its more
aggressive prosecution.
The impetus given to the translation
movement by Abbāsid ideology was fur-
ther sustained by secondary causes gener-
ated by it, which continued to be active
even after the original ideologies ceased
to be relevant. The ideological campaigns
of Manūr and his immediate successors
achieved what they were designed to
accomplish; those of al-Mamūn, which
aimed to re-establish the caliph's political
and religious authority, suffered a setback
with the termination of the mina under
al-Mutawakkil and were subsequently
rendered irrelevant by the humiliation of
the office of the caliph at the hands of the
Turkish military. By that time, however,
the translation culture had become the
fashion among the élite in Ba ∞ dād, who
continued to support it well into the Būyid
century (945-1055). Sponsorship was not
restricted to any specific source; the spon-
sors came from all ethnic and religious
groups that played politically and eco-
nomically significant roles during the first
two centuries of Ba ∞ dād: Muslim Arab
aristocrats, foremost among whom were
members of the extended Abbāsid fam-
ily; Nestorian Arabs who converted to
Islam in office, like the Wahb family: sec-
retaries, wazīrs , and scholars; Zoroastrian
and Buddhist Persians who converted
to Islam in office, like the Nawba ¶ t,
Muna ¡¡ im, and Barāmika families:
astrologers, literati, theologians, secretar-
ies and wazīrs ; Arabised Persian Muslims,
like the āhirids: generals and politicians,
and like the Zayyāt family: manufacturers

and merchants, secretaries; and Arabised
Persian Nestorians, subsequently con-
verted to Islam, like the al- ⁄ arrāfamily:
secretaries.
Equally as significant as the support of
the political and social élite was the active
sponsorship of scientists and scholars of all
groups, who commissioned the transla-
tion of Greek texts for their practice and
research. Noteworthy among them were
Muslim Arab aristocrats like al-Kindī, sci-
entist and philosopher; the Gondē ª āpūr
medical heads, the Persian Nestorian fami-
lies of Bu ¶ tī ª ū, Māsawayh and ayfūrī;
and the upstart brothers, the Banū Mūsā,
of questionable pedigree.
The translators from Greek and Syriac
themselves belonged to the Christian
churches dominant in the Fertile Cres-
cent: Melkites (the Birī father and son,
usā b. Lūā), Jacobites (Abd al-Masīb.
Nāima al-imī, Yayā b. Adī), and
Nestorians (the family of unayn b.
Isā, Mattā b. Yūnus). Ethnically, they
were preponderantly Aramaeans, in some
cases Arabs (unayn). Called upon by
their various sponsors to translate Greek
works into Arabic, they had the pre- and
early Islamic Graeco-Syriac translations
to fall back on as models; however, this
proved of limited usefulness. The Graeco-
Syriac translations of non-Christian texts
did not cover the wide range of subjects in
demand for translation into Arabic, and,
having been made for scholarly purposes
in completely different circumstances than
those into Arabic, they were not subject
to the keen criticism and demand for pre-
cision. The translators, therefore, on the
one hand improved their knowledge of
Greek beyond the level of Syriac schol-
arship, and, on the other, developed an
Arabic vocabulary and style for scientific
discourse that remained standard well
into the present century. Throughout
the various stages of the movement, the