Baghdad’s Round City featured a large building that was called, at first, The Bookstore. It was modeled after the Persian Empire’s library in Ctesiphon, but its chief purpose was to transfer civilization into the Arabic script of the recently-literate nomads. It was a translation hub, and soon it was called simply the House of Wisdom.
There were four caliphs, the founders of the Abbasid dynasty, who built, funded and enlarged the library. This is particularly interesting because in three places, at the same time, there were young, vigorous, cultured dynasties still in their prime. We will look next at the two other dynasties, in Europe, which ran parallel to the Abbasids: the Umayyads in Spain and the Carolingians in Aachen, Germany.
The Abbasids in Baghdad started with al-Mansour, then his son al-Mahdi, and his son Harun al-Rashid, then the great-grandson al-Mamoun. Al-Mansour began the book collection, expanded by his son. Harun al-Rashid created the first building and established scholars to begin translating, while al-Mamoun expanded it into a multi-wing institution and increased its funding and scope. These four caliphs spanned from 754 to 833. Baghdad’s Golden Age continued after, but the real glory years were these early ones centered around the year 800.
The first task of translation scholars was to put Persian books into Arabic, to make them accessible to the new dynasty. By this time, many Arabic nobles had married Persian heiresses, so there were multi-lingual children to step into translation roles. (Caliph al-Mamoun was among them; his mother had been Persian, so he was naturally bilingual.) Coming from Damascus, other scholars translated the Aramaic and Syriac books of the Levant into Arabic. They also recruited some Sanskrit scholars to import the works of captured northern India into Arabic. Every Muslim government included Jewish scholars and officials, so they had ready ability to translate Hebrew as well.
During the time of Caliph al-Mamoun, there were two huge book importation projects. By this time, the mission of the House of Wisdom had shifted from translating conquered literature to translating all literature. Greek literature resided primarily in Constantinople, but there was also a good library in Sicily. Sicily agreed to sell the contents of its library to Baghdad. According to Islamic tradition, the books were imported in mass quantity by ship and camel caravan. Then the Caliph arranged for some of his officials to enter Constantinople as visiting scholars to translate Greek and Latin works stored there. It was at this time that the original building was massively expanded to include many wings and courtyards, each dedicated to a branch of learning.
There was a particular focus on astronomy and mathematics. Sanskrit mathematical treatises, often from the Jain sect of northern India, were now available in Arabic and Persian. There was no original plan to make the House of Wisdom into a university, but of course, by making the works available, Baghdad spurred further study. Al-Mamoun funded an observatory to continue the study of astronomy, and during this time, the first astrolabe was invented in Baghdad. The principles of algebra, too, were worked out in Baghdad by Arab-Persian scientists.
The words beginning with “al” come from this time: alchemy, algebra, algorithm, almanac, alcohol, alkali. Greek Ptolemy’s astronomical calculation tables have come to us with the title “Almagest,”also from their passage through Arabic. Even more words entered through Spanish, but more of that later.
To skip far ahead in time, eventually the Mongol conquest of Baghdad ended the House of Wisdom. The integration of Mongols and Turks into Islam created another shock of the city vs. nomad type. By then, North African and Arabian nomads had made some degree of peace with the existence of cities and libraries. Baghdad was conquered by Genghis Khan’s grandson, and their nomadic disdain for civilization was still running very, very strong. The library went into the Tigris River, to bleed ink until the water ran black, soon after the last Caliph’s entire family was executed.
But that wasn’t until 1258, so for about 400 years, the Abbasid-founded library center served its purpose of transferring scientific knowledge from one part of the empire to another, and from one language to another.