The number of translators, which amounted to about one hundred, might have been increased if Arab literature had further developed itself by incorporating works from other languages; but, as such was not the case, translators appeared very few and far between after the literature had attained to its highest perfection, at the end of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 913). The celebrated Ibn Al-Mukaffa was one of the earliest and best translators. His full name is Abd-Allah Ibn Al-Mukaffa, but before he made his profession of Islam he bore that of Ruzbeh. He was a native of Har, a town in the province of Fars, and first served as secretary to Daud bin Hobeirah, and then to Isa bin Ali, the uncle of the two first Khalifs of the house of Abbas. He was an excellent poet, letter-writer, and orator, equally skilled in his mother-tongue, the Persian, as in the Arabic language, from the former of which he left the splendid translations of-- (1) 'The Khodanamah,' a legend. (2) 'The Amirnamah,' or prince-book. (3) 'Kalilah wa Dimnah.' (4) 'Merdak.' (5) 'Biography of Nausherwan.' (6) 'The Great Book of Manners.' (7) 'The Small Book of Manners or Good Habits.' (8) 'The Book of Epistles.' So far the 'Fihrist'; what follows is from Ibn Khallikan. Ibn Al-Mukaffa was the secretary and most confidential servant of Isa bin Ali, with whom he dined the day before he made his public profession of Islam. Having sat down, he began to eat and to mutter according to the custom of the Magians. 'How,' said Isa, 'you mutter like the Magians, though resolved to embrace Islamism!' to which Ibn Al-Mukaffa replied that he did not wish to pass a single night without being of some religion. In spite of his conversion, he was always suspected of freethinking, like Muti bin Iyas and Yahya bin Zaad, and one day, when Al-Jahiz, the philologist, made the remark that they were persons the sincerity of whose religious sentiments was doubted, one of the learned, on hearing this, said: 'How is it that Al-Jahiz forgets to count himself?'