sh Shahriyar_. In this manner these
translators mentioned after Ibn al Mukaffa constituted in a manner a
peculiar group of scholars who prepared translations from Pahlavi into
Arabic.

[Footnote 1: 176, 20-177, 9; 177, 9-19; 274, 7-13; 275, 25-6. See Ibn al
Kifti 165, 1-5 and 409, 3-14.]

[Footnote 2: See Ibn al Kifti, 1711, 10-11.]

Balazuri and Jabala ibn Salem have already been mentioned above. The
first translated into verse a Book of the Counsels of Ardeshir and the
second the Book of Rustam and Isfandiyar as well as the romance of
Behram Chobin. In this way the themes handled by these writers may be
called epico-historical and ethico-didactic. Purely historical questions
interested the seven succeeding translators from Ishaq ibn Yazid to
Mobed Behram. These persons are sufficiently known in their special
departments of literature. They were the translators into the Arabic
language of the _Khuday Nameh_.[1] Accordingly we may group them in a
class by themselves.

[Footnote 1: Compare the essay of Rosen mentioned above _On the
question of the Arabic translations of the Khuday Nameh_, 173-176, and
182-186.]

The next author mentioned at this place in the Fihrist as a translator
stands by himself,--Umar ibn al Farrukhan. He is altogether unknown as a
translator of historical works. Hence he was not included in the group
of persons mentioned before. On the other hand, had he been set down in
this passage of the Fihrist as a translator of scientific works he would
have been assigned a place not at the close of the list but in the
middle of the translators of this class of books, that is, after Ibn
Muqaffa and in the midst of the descendants of Naubakht and other
persons mentioned above. Therefore we think that Umar ibn Farrukhan was
a translator of another species of work or, may be, works. In support of
our assumption we must call attention to that place in the Fihrist where
are enumerated the books of this author and to which an-Nadhin himself
refers in the analysis of the number of translators from Persian into
Arabic.

Besides this place in the Fihrist, Umar ibn Farrukhan of Tabaristan has
been mentioned in two other places. Once briefly,[1] (268, 25-26) as the
annotator of the astronomical book of Dorotheya Sidonia and in another
place (277, 14-18) in a few lines[2] specially devoted to him. Here he
is mentioned as the annotator of Ptolemy as translated by Batrik Yahuya
ibn al Batrik and as the author of tw