Literature. Animals have a sanctified place in Islamic theology, so early Muslim writings about the animal world combined religion, scientific observation, and morality tales in which humans are reminded that they have a lot to learn from animals. Muslims inherited three pre-Islamic traditions concerning animals from the Arabic, Greco-Alexandrian, and Indo-Persian cultures. The Indo-Persian tradition was quite different from that of the Greeks. While the Greeks had many "morality tales" in which animals were characters, the Greeks wrote predominantly scientific descriptions of animals. In contrast, the Indians and Persians paid attention to the spiritual and moral aspects of the animal world. The best-known Indian animal legends of this era were the Indian tales of Bidpai, which became the Arabic collection Kalilah wa Dimnah (Kalilah and Dimnah). The main point of these stories is that people can learn from animals as well as about...