© 2019 Hartford Seminary. DOI: 10.1111/muwo.12307 510 Creatio ex Philosophia: Kalām as Cultural Evolution and Identity-Formation Means in the Early Abbasid Era 1 Najib George Awad Hartford Seminary From Greek into Arabic: the Dawn of Translation D uring the 8 th -10 th centuries in the Middle East, an era of Arabic translation movement was ushered in in the capital of the Abbasid rule, Baghdad. Many books from the ancient textual heritage that were known and extant at that age were translated into Arabic from Persian, Greek, Syriac and Sanskrit, making accessible to the Arabic-speaking public of the Abbasid Caliphate an immeasurable source of knowledge and intellectual creativity. This movement is conventionally associated with the rule of the Caliph al-Māʾmūn (r. 813-833). Yet, serious scholarship traces the story of translation movement in Muslim history back to the caliphs, al-Manṣūr (r. 754-775) and his son al-Mahdī (r. 775-785). 2 The Graeco-Arabic, but also the Persian-Arabic, translation activities were initiated by al-Manṣūr and al-Mahdī and culminated during al-Māʾmūn’s rule, and on the shoulders of these caliphs fell the responsibility of legitimiz- ing and solidifying the Abbasid dynasty’s inheritance of Islamic rule from the Umayyads’ era. These caliphs were occupied with implementing all the policies imaginable to unify the diverse factions in their empire under one cultural, intellectual ideology of their own creation. This was their strategy to spread all over their caliphate’s territories a sustainable state of political stability. 3 This broader context makes the translation movement not just an astounding phenomenon, but 1 I am grateful beyond words to Prof. Cristina D’Ancona Costa for the time and attention she gracefully of- fered to read the first draft of this paper and to feed me back on it with corrections, comments and sugges- tions. I am deeply indebted to her erudite and excellent scholarly knowledge on Greek-Arabic Translation, which improved and sharpened the argument of this essay in a profound manner. Any weaknesses or faults remain in my paper are all my sole responsibility. 2 Nevertheless, and though the Arabic translation movement did not start with the son of Hārūn al-Rashīd, one can still validly maintain that it was the caliph al-Māʾmūn’s great interest in rationalism and intellectual theologization that led naturally to a conspicuous, unprecedented enhancement of the interest in Greek sci- ence and philosophy in that era: Gerhard Endress, “Die wissenschaftliche Literatur,” in Grundriss der arabischen Philologie II: Literaturwissenschaft, Helmut Gätje (ed.), (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1987), pp. 400-506. See also Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, 3 rd . ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 11. See also the classical study of Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs: from the Earliest Times to the Present, 10 th . Ed., (New York: Palgrave MaCmillan, 2002), pp. 297-316. 3 Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ’Abbasaid Society (2nd-4th/5th-10th c.), (Oxon & New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 29.