A foreign ruling elite can build a new kind of political identity by studying, translating and adopting the learned traditions of the people it rules. By drawing local scholars to court and rendering dozens of their texts into its own language, it makes itself into something neither wholly foreign nor wholly local.
The picture of two religions locked in age-old conflict was largely built during later colonial rule. It suited the colonizers, who could then cast themselves as neutral keepers of the peace. Read back into a past that was actually marked by mutual respect and curiosity, this false history now fuels and justifies present-day intolerance.
When a court sponsors translations, the new text reshapes its source to fit the patron's tastes and concerns rather than copying it faithfully. Borrowed concepts are taken over and remade, mixing two traditions into something new.
A newcomer dynasty can claim legitimacy by taking over the local calendar and placing itself in a line of kings stretching back to the land's ancient myths. Local poets help by praising the ruler in their own established poetic forms.
Taking on the culture of the land it rules lets an empire mark itself off from its own cultural cousins elsewhere. Reinterpreting its inherited culture through a very different way of knowing produced a style that belonged to it alone.