# al-Mahdi

- id: al-mahdi
- dates: c. 744–785
- roles: commissioner, patron

Third Abbasid caliph. Needing Aristotle's manual of dialectic for staged debates with theologians of other faiths, he commissioned the patriarch Timothy I to produce an Arabic Topics around 782.

## Crossings

- c. 782: Topics into Arabic (commissioner) [attested]

## Sources

- Gutas, Dimitri (1998). Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society.