From the middle of the 8th century to the 10th century, almost all non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books, on diverse topics such as astrology, alchemy, physics, botany and medicine, that were available throughout the eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East, were translated into Arabic. This work explores the major social, political and ideological factors that brought about the unprecedented profusion of translation from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly-founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the "Abbasids", during the first two centuries of their rule. The author draws on the preceding historical and philological scholarship in Graeco-Arabic studies and the study of medieval translations of secular Greek works into Arabic, and analyzes the social and historical reasons for this phenomenon.