The translation movement from Middle Persian intoArabic in the early Islamic centuries has notreceived the kind of attention it really deserves.No monographs or comprehensive treatments of thisactivity comparable with the numerous generalstudies and assessments of Greek heritage in Arabicculture have been undertaken for the Persian. Thisdeficiency is still in need of being remedied.Better known classical Arabic bio-bibliographicaldictionaries such as al-Nadīm's Fihrist and its dependents name some 20individuals who were active in the arena oftranslation from Middle Persian into Arabic.However, closer scrutiny of a range of Arabic andPersian sources undertaken by the present writereasily raised this number to over 50 people, with alist of translated books in diverse fields ofancient sciences and literature exceeding the markof 500 titles. Only a few of these men and theirworks, mainly the ones mentioned by al-Nadīm, areknown to the more serious students of Islamicsocieties and cultures, among them Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ,Abān al-Lāḥiqī, Sahl b. Hārūn, and ʿUmar b.al-Farrukhān, but the majority remains in the dark.This preliminary survey has made it evident that thesubject is broad, and given the lack of sufficientcase studies on individual translators and thetranslated works, to accomplish the task of ageneral study in foreseeable time would end up as acatalogue of a series of mini-biographies of a largenumber of translators and introductory notes on thewhereabouts of innumerable translated titles. Thisbeing so, the scholarship still needs to concentrateon delineating the life histories and works ofsingle authors. By way of example this was done onAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿUbayda l-Rayḥānī. Theheretofore unheard of al-Rayḥānī was a prolificauthor and an active translator from Middle Persian,who followed the footsteps of the famous littérateurIbn al-Muqaffaʿ. He was born circa 140/757 atal-Baṣra, became a secretary to the Caliph al-Maʾmūn and died circa 219/834.

ʿAlī b. ʿUbayda l-Rayḥānī's book entitled Jawāhir al-kilamwa-farāʾidal-ḥikam, (“The Jewels of Speech and thePearls of Wisdom”), now pub- lished with an Englishtranslation and a study of his life and literaryproduction, as well as quite a few other remainingtexts from among his over sixty translations andoriginal writings are primarily on al-amthāl wa-l-ḥikam,proverbs and wise sayings, with much material ofdirect relevance to the genre of “Mirrors forprinces”. This is in fact no surprise, for a greatmany of the translated books from Middle Persianencompass substantial amount of moral maxims andpolitical wisdom.