 Already in Damascus, under the Umayyads, some philosophical writings had been translated into Arabic. Salim Abu l-ʿAla’, secretary to the caliph Hisham ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 724–743), initiated the translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian letters on government to Alexander the  Great.[12]  This collection forms the nucleus of the most famous among the “mirrors for princes”, the Sirr al-asrar (Grignaschi 1967, 1976; Manzalaoui 1974), known in the Latin Middle Ages and early modern times as the Secretum  secretorum.[13]  One of the Arabic translations of the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo also traces back to this period (Grignaschi 1965–66). However, it was under the ʿAbbasids (750–1258), and in particular in the first two centuries of their caliphate, that the translations blossomed.