 Before the rise of Islam, a multisecular tradition of learning (Brock 1977, 1994; Bettiolo 2005; Watt 2010) had already achieved in Syria the transition “from antagonism to assimilation” (Brock 1982) of the Greek philosophical  culture,[6]  especially but not exclusively  Aristotelian.[7]  Within the theological schools of Edessa and Nisibi, during the 4th and 5th centuries, not only were the exegetical works translated from Greek into Syriac (e.g. those of Theodorus of Mopsuestia), but so were philosophical works (in particular, Aristotle’s logical writings and Porphyry’s Isagoge). The continuity between the Neoplatonic schools of late Antiquity, with their typical approach to the Aristotelian corpus (Hadot 1991), is best exemplified by Sergius of Reshʿayna (d. 536), a physician who held a prominent position in the Syriac Church (Hugonnard-Roche 2001, 2004). A former student of Ammonius in the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria, Sergius translated into Syriac some thirty treatises by Galen, the pseudo-Aristotelian De  Mundo,[8]  a treatise by Alexander of Aphrodisias, On the Principles of the All (lost in  Greek),[9]  the writings of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite and Evagrius Ponticus (Watt 2011); he is also the author of a treatise on Aristotle’s Categories and another one on the scope of Aristotle’s  writings.[10]  After the Arab conquest of Damascus (635) and the whole of Syria (636), the Christian intellectual communities living under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) continued to assimilate Greek philosophy and science, focusing in particular on the Aristotelian logical corpus together with its Neoplatonic introduction, namely, Porphyry’s  Isagoge.[11]  This tradition of learning (Gutas 1983; Brock 1993; Hugonnard-Roche 2004; 2007; 2009; 2011) lay in the background of many of the Christians of Syria who took part in the translation movement fostered by the early ʿAbbasid Caliphate (Watt 2004, Janos 2015). Albeit superseded in number and importance by the translations into Arabic, translations into Syriac continued even amidts the growing translations into Arabic, in the ʿAbbasid capital of Baghdad.