In Chapter 3, The Rebirth of Philosophy and the Translations into Arabic
Translation had played a crucial role in the cultural history of multilingual Near Eastern peoples ever since the beginning of the second millennium BC with the translations of Sumerian texts into Akkadian. The conquest of ¶ the Near East by Alexander the Great and the ensuing spread of Hellenism and the Greek language led to two significant developments, before the rise of Islam, in the two major indigenous linguistic and cultural groups, Aramaic and Pers…