Table Of Content
Nothing of those medieval walls, or the east gate, remains today; I remember Bab al-Sharji as a sprawling, noisy and bustling square, with its food stalls and secondhand record shops scattered around the busy bus depot and taxi ranks. But its name is a reminder of the expansion and transformation of this proud city over the years since its foundation in AD762 as the new seat of power of the mighty Abbasid empire. Indeed, no other city on Earth has had to put up with the levels of death and destruction that Baghdad has endured over the centuries. And yet, as the capital of one of the world's great empires, this was the richest, proudest, most supercilious city on the planet for half a millennium.
Al-Jahiz and the Book of Animals
Undoubtedly, much knowledge about the past would have been lost if not for the continuous works of translation conducted in the House of Wisdom. Baghdad was a very prosperous and rich city, which allowed Al-Ma’mun to spare no expenses to purchase more works, including those from other countries. Although scholarship and translation indeed flourished in 8th- and 9th-century Baghdad, and some of that activity took place in association with the library and its collection, there is little evidence that Bayt al-Hikmah was at the centre of any of these trends.
Notable people
The Mongols killed most of the city's inhabitants, including the Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim, and destroyed large sections of the city. The sack of Baghdad put an end to the Abbasid Caliphate, a blow from which the Islamic civilization never fully recovered. Baghdad has a hot desert climate (Köppen BWh), featuring extremely hot, prolonged, dry summers and mild to cool, slightly wet, short winters.
The House of Wisdom: One of the Greatest Libraries in History
Remarkably, the Umayyads also appropriated paper-making techniques from the Chinese and joined many ancient intellectual centers under their rule, and employed Christian and Persian scholars to both translate works into Arabic, and to develop new knowledge. These were fundamental elements that contributed directly to the flourishing of scholarship in the Arab world. Mūsā ibn Shākir was an astrologer, and a friend of Caliph Harun al-Rashid’s son, al-Ma’mun. His sons, collectively known as the Banū Mūsā (Sons of Moses), also contributed with their extensive knowledge of mathematics and astrology.
War timeline
George Sarton, one the most famous historians of science known for his book, Introduction to the History of Science, called the period between 800 and 850 AD “The Time of al-Khwarizmi”. Besides that, this mathematician is responsible for the introduction of the Hindu decimal system to the Arab world, and through it to Europe. In al-Khwarizmi’s early career, he proposed ideas towards the Hindu astronomical tables known as Sindhind. As a result, Caliph Al-Ma’mun sought al-Khwarizmi out to work on the science of equations. In the Abbasid Empire, many foreign works were translated into Arabic from Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, Persian and Syriac. The Translation Movement gained great momentum during the reign of caliph al-Rashid, who, like his predecessor, was personally interested in scholarship and poetry.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: What to know about the ‘Golden Age’ of Baghdad - Al Jazeera English
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: What to know about the ‘Golden Age’ of Baghdad.
Posted: Thu, 05 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
It is the medical work of the physician Galen that is his most important legacy, for not only did it open up the Islamic world to this great treasure, in many cases it is only via these Arabic translations that much of Galen's work reaches us today. Exactly 1,200 years after its foundation, I was born in Karradat Mariam, a Shia district of Baghdad with a large Christian community, a stone's throw away from today's Green Zone and a few miles south of the spot where one of Baghdad's most famous rulers was born in 786. Half Arab, half Persian, this enigmatic caliph was destined to become the greatest patron of science in the cavalcade of Islamic rulers, and the person responsible for initiating the world's most impressive period of scholarship and learning since Ancient Greece.
In it, he offered six reasons that someone would embrace falsehood and four reasons to accept religious truth, one of which was signs and miracles. In a Baghdad where there were frequent public debates between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, Hunayn not only wrote about his faith, but was active in defending it, remaining faithful until the end. By the eighth century, with western Europe languishing in its dark ages, the Islamic empire covered an area larger in expanse than either the Roman empire at its height or all the lands conquered and ruled by Alexander the Great. So powerful and influential was this empire that, for a period stretching over 700 years, the international language of science was Arabic. Famous scholars from that period, such as the Banu Musa Brothers, Al-Khwarizmi and Al-Battani were attracted to the House of Wisdom where a variety of languages were spoken and written enabling the transfer of knowledge from foreign manuscripts in Persian, Syriac, Greek and other into Arabic. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict.
Twin towns – sister cities
It would also require the U.S. to continue to show understanding that change in Iraq takes time and U.S. support remains critical. Improving governance, especially reducing corruption, and creating an inviting business climate are key. Iraq is projected to be among the five countries hardest hit by the impact of climate change, threatening the water and food security of over 43 million Iraqis, projected to reach 80 million by 2050. With assistance from international partners, the Iraqi government and civil society have started acting on mitigation and adaptation, but they still need technology and know-how from the United States. As water scarcity grows, Iraq’s government needs a comprehensive strategy and action aligned with the realities of climate and environmental change. Many believe Al-Sudani represents the Iraqi desire for a capable and responsive Iraqi state, for not repeating the violent conflicts of the past and for the country to become a constructive actor on regional and global stages.
Sunni, Kurdish and ethnic and religious minority leaders believe that al-Sudani is genuine, even as other political actors continue to obstruct more meaningful and strategic progress such as the federal council law and national oil and gas law. Today, only fragments remain of Baghdad's Jewish heritage and there's a handful of Jews residing in the city. On the west bank are a number of residential quarters, including Al-Karkh (an older quarter) and several upper middle-class districts with walled villas and green gardens. Chief among these is Al-Manṣūr, surrounding the racetrack, which provides boutiques, fast-food restaurants, and sidewalk cafés that appeal to its affluent professional residents. These areas were the most heavily developed sections of the city under the Baʿathist regime of Saddam Hussein.
Employees in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad were people of higher intellectual abilities, the same was emulated in every public library across the Muslim world. They often had a staff list that reach sometimes hundreds of copyists, illuminators, binders, translators, and authors. Those whom we can consider librarians were not randomly chosen but they usually were scholars, poets, multilingual and writers who on the other side were well paid by caliphs, rulers or nobles.
The languages which were spoken, read and written there were Arabic (as the lingua franca), Farsi, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek and Latin; also occasionally Sanskrit, which was used to translate the old Indian manuscripts in astronomy and mathematics. Stories like this make me understand just why the belief system of Islam is considered to be ‘ok’ & not a problem to so many Westerners. This shows that the people of that time – these at least- were not extremists & did not hold to the ferocious writings in the Koran that cause the violence of the likes of ISIS nowadays and in other times & places. The problem is always that of the few who take literally every word spelt out in their religious ‘book’ !!!
Maktabs soon began to develop in the city from the 9th century on, and in the 11th century, Nizam al-Mulk founded the Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad, one of the first institutions of higher education in Iraq. Following his predecessors, al-Ma'mun would send expeditions of scholars from the House of Wisdom to collect texts from foreign lands. Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–873), an Arab Nestorian Christian physician and scientist, was the most productive translator, producing 116 works for the Arabs. As "Sheikh of the translators," he was placed in charge of the translation work by the caliph.
Meanwhile Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to visit cities like Baghdad or Antioch. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge, as well as keeping alive the works of Plato and Aristotle. When the best libraries in Europe held several dozen books, Baghdad’s great library, The House of Wisdom, housed four hundred thousand. Jonathan Lyons shows just how much “Western” ideas owe to the Golden Age of Arab civilization. By the thirteenth century, Baghdad had thirty-six libraries and a 100 book dealers, some of whom were also publishers.
Baghdad is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups with an Arab majority, as well as Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Yazidis, Shabakis, Armenians and Mandaeans. The majority of the citizens are Muslims with minorities of Christians, Yezidis and Mandeans also present. There are many religious centers distributed around the city including mosques, churches and Mashkhannas cultic huts. Not only did the Muslims in this era build observatories but soon after in Central Asia, they built a paper mill, which then led to the production of dyes, inks, glues, and even book bindings. The House of Wisdom was much more than an academic center removed from the broader society. Scholars from the Bayt al-Hikma usually doubled as engineers and architects in major construction projects, kept accurate official calendars, and were public servants.
Under Caliph al-Mamun ( ), who was an enthusiastic promoter of the House, it was greatly extended to include separate galleries for each branch of science. Among the notable features of Baghdad during this period were its exceptional libraries. Many of the Abbasid caliphs were patrons of learning and enjoyed collecting both ancient and contemporary literature.
