material they did not distinguish them from their
other sources. Their sources betray themselves by an exaggerated Parsi
partiality where the penchant of these circles is clearly manifest. And
these are intimately connected with certain questions of daily
life,--the struggle for power between the Arab and the Iranian element
in the Khalifate. Enthusiastic partisans of the Persian element, these
circles as a counterblast to the poverty of civilizing factors of the
pre-Islamic Arab nation, turned to the glories of Persia, principally
of the Sasanian past. Iranophile writers had no need for inventions,
since historical truth was on their side. The effectiveness of their
method was indisputable. In this connection Iranian tradition among the
Musalmans as transmitted by Arab writers must take precedence of a
similar transmission, the Christian literature of the East, where all
possibility was excluded of polemics such as obtained under the Moslem
domination between the pro-Iranian and anti-Iranian parties. It is,
therefore, to be regretted that the literary activities of the Musalman
circles sympathising with Persian culture have descended to us only in
occasional extracts and are sometimes confined only to the titles of
books written by them.

[Footnote 1: For details, Goldziher. _Muhammedanische Studien,_ I,
147-310.]

We noticed above the revival of scientific activities in Sasanian
Persia. This activity for the most part has its significance in its
quality of being a connecting link, in the first place, as the
transmitter of Greek knowledge to the East, and secondly, as the unifier
of this knowledge with the heritage which Sasanian Persia had received
from scientific works belonging to Semitic culture, as well as from the
science of India. The principal representatives of this activity were
not Persians, but Christians, mainly the Syrian Nestorians, and
Monophysites from the school of Edessa.[1]

[Footnote 1: For a general account of the character of this activity see
T.J. de Boer, _History of Philosophy in Islam_, 17-20.]

What was the share in these operations of the Persians themselves it is
hard to tell. But at all events, it was not considerable.[1] The general
character of this activity does not leave particular room for wide
creative science, since it has expressed itself pre-eminently in
compilations, translations of philosophical, astronomical, astrological,
medical, mathematical and ethical commentaries on