The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations - the Greeks in particular. In this book, the author explains by which civilizations the Islamic scientific tradition was influenced and the role translation played in this. The author suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of Islamic scientific tradition.