History glossary
translation movement
the Abbasid-era effort to translate and study major works from Greek, Persian, Indian and other traditions into Arabic.
- Category
- Scholarship
- Region
- Islamic world
- Date range
- Eighth to tenth centuries CE
What it means
The translation movement was a major intellectual project of the Abbasid period. Scholars translated works in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and other fields into Arabic, often through Syriac and other learned languages. Translation did not only preserve earlier knowledge; it helped create a shared scholarly language for new research.
