8. What the Arabs owe to the Syrians is expressed by this circumstance amongst others,—that Arab scholars held Syriac to be the oldest, or the real (natural) language. The Syrians, it is true, produced nothing original; but their activity as translators was of advantage to Arab-Persian science. It was Syrians almost without exception, who, from the 8th century to the 10th, rendered Greek works into Arabic, either from the older Syriac versions or from those which had been in part improved by them, and in part re-arranged. Even the Omayyad prince, Khalid ibn Yezid (died 704), who occupied himself with Alchemy under the guidance of a Christian monk, is said to have provided for translations of works on Alchemy from Greek into Arabic. Proverbs, maxims, letters, wills, and in short whatever bore on the history of philosophy, were at a very early time collected and translated. But it was not till the reign of Mansur that a commencement was made with the translation into Arabic—partly from Pahlawi versions—of those writings of the Greeks which deal with Natural Science, Medicine and Logic. Ibn al-Moqaffa, an adherent of Persian Dualism, took a leading part in this task, from whom later workers must have marked themselves off by their terminology. None of his philosophical translations have come down to us. Other material too, belonging to the 8th century has gone amissing. The earliest specimen of this work of translation which we possess dates from the 9th century, the time of Mamun and his successors. The translators of the 9th century were, for the most part, medical men; and Hippocrates and Galen were among the first to be translated after Ptolemy and Euclid. But let us confine ourselves to Philosophy, in the narrower sense. A translation of the Timäus of Plato is said to have come from Yuhanna or Yakhya ibn Bitriq (in the beginning of the 9th century), as well as Aristotle’s ‘Meteorology’, the ‘Book of Animals’, an epitome of the ‘Psychology’, and the tract ‘On the World’. To Abdalmasikh ibn Abdallah Naima al-Himsi (circa 835) is to be ascribed a rendering of the ‘Sophistics’ of Aristotle, in addition to the Commentary of John Philoponus upon the ‘Physics’, as well as the so-called ‘Theology of Aristotle’,—a paraphrased epitome of the Enneads of Plotinus. Qosta ibn Luqa al-Balabakki (circa 835) is said to have translated the Commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias and John Philoponus upon the ‘Physics’ of Aristotle, and in part, Alexander’s Commentary on the ‘De generatione et corruptione’, as well as the ‘Placita Philosophorum’ of the Pseudo-Plutarch, and other works.