Content area
Full Text
Routledge Publishers, August, 1998.
Dmitri Gutas' Greek Thought, Arabic Culture analyzes the mideighth century translation movement in Baghdad as a social movement. In it, human actors take the place of historical forces. Without the support of the caliphate, this movement to translate diverse Greek and Syriac texts, among others, into Arabic would not have constituted the historical force that it became. Gutas focuses on the texts translated directly from Greek because the majority of Greek secular texts were not translated into Syriac, as the pre-existing Syriac translations were concerned primarily with religion. The uniqueness of Gutas' work lies in his effort to move beyond the confines of a narrow description of what was translated by whom to the more important questions of how and why the movement occurred.
The mid-eighth century was a time of great transition with the `Abbasid revolution that saw the ascension of As-Saffah (750-54 CE). AlMansur, who was the initiator of the translation movement, soon replaced him (754-75 CE). Why was this so? Gutas argues that Sasanian imperial ideology motivated the translation of the first Greek and Syriac texts into Arabic. These texts often concerned particular subjects, especially astrology and related sciences (p. 34). Sasanian imperial...