commissioner · patron

al-Mahdi

c. 744–785

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 , Syriac Arabic · commissioner · Baghdad attested

Sources

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