The turning point in the period of translations came in 830 AD when the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which contained a research institute, a library, a museum and a translation center.

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            To gather works in the library, the caliph sent emissaries to Byzantium to research and acquire works of "ancient science" and then ordered them to be translated by a group of experts.

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           It is said that Al-Ma'mun had a dream about Aristotle himself, which led him to focus his efforts on acquiring and translating Greek works. As the greatest patron of philosophy and science in the eventful history of Islam, Al-Ma'mun presided over meetings of scholars to hold philosophical and theological debates.

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            The most important name during Al-Ma'mun's reign was the Nestorian Christian Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (809/873 AD), who translated much of the philosophy and science of the ancient Greeks into Arabic. He is credited with translating a large part of Galen's and Hippocrates' medical books.

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          Hunayn was assisted by a team of equally competent translators who, under his guidance, would also go down in history. Many of Aristotle's works were translated by this group under the guidance of Hunayn who commissioned them to translate practically the entire Aristotelian corpus.

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