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Of tangential interest to Arabic typography:

The always excellent In Our Time programme on BBC Radio 4 was devoted, this week, to the ‘Abbāsid Greek-to-Arabic translation movement:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20081002.shtml

Thanks I enjoyed listening to this program. It is fascinating to hear experts describe the rich ferment of translation, scholarship and enlightened research in Baghdad and other Arab and Islamic cities a thousand years ago. They called it 'the first Renaissance' because it was a direct cause of the Renaissance in Europe a few centuries later. It was interesting how many non-Moslems were active in the translation movement from Greek to Arabic. A parallel to that today would be how some non-Arabs are active and even pioneers in Arabic typography! Right, John?