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He also compiled the universal Kitab Sirr al-Srar, known in the West as the Secretum Secretorum (Secret of Secrets). The doctor Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (1405–68), accompanied by his son Ishaq ibn Hunayn and his nephew Hubaysh, was one of the most important translators of Greek medical and scientific treatises. But the great humanist also advanced the frontiers of knowledge by commissioning the translation of his trove of literary and scientific works into Arabic. Before that decision, the works were exclusively reserved for court scholars, however now the library could be accessed by general public. Inspired by the ancient Museum of Alexandria (Mouseion), the project was envisaged during the reign of the Caliph Al Mansur ( ) as a simple repository of books, the Khizanat al-Hikmah (Library of Wisdom), but it would expand, under the rule of Harun al-Rashid ( ), into a flourishing academic centre. Bayt al-Hikmah, royal library maintained by the Abbasid caliphs during their reign in Baghdad.
Al-Ma'mun's reign
Tensions between the caliphate and the old establishment continued into the reign of al-Muʿtaṣim (833–842) and forced him to move the capital from Baghdad to nearby Sāmarrāʾ. Bayt al-Hikmah remained intact in Baghdad, but its association with al-Maʾmūn in 10th-century texts may indicate that its collection was not supplemented after the capital was moved to Sāmarrāʾ. Whatever may have remained of the collection in 1258 was destroyed in the Mongol sack of Baghdad. The research paper showed that the Abbasid Dynasty had much to offer for the human civilization of intellectual and scientific progress.
Legacy and myth as an academy
There are many religious centers distributed around the city including mosques, churches and Mashkhannas cultic huts. All these men are no less worthy of mention in the history of science than Aristotle, Galileo, Newton or Einstein. People from all over the Muslim civilisation flocked to the House of Wisdom – both male and female of many faiths and ethnicities.
Capital and largest city of Iraq / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
His reign saw the establishment of the first astronomical observatories in Baghdad and major research projects. Despite the sundry vicissitudes visited on the city in its history, Baghdad has maintained a mystique and allure equaled by few of the world’s cities. Many Muslims revere it as the seat of the last legitimate caliphate and others as the cosmopolitan centre of the Arab and Islamic worlds when they were at the height of their grandeur. Still others—including many in the West—know it primarily through print and film as the scene of many tales of The Thousand and One Nights adventures and other accounts found in a rich tradition of Middle Eastern storytelling.
Physicians from a lost history
The Nezamiyeh was founded by the Persian Nizam al-Mulk, who was vizier of two early Seljuk sultans.[60] It continued to operate even after the coming of the Mongols in 1258. The Mustansiriyah madrasa, which owned an exceedingly rich library, was founded by Al-Mustansir, the second last Abbasid caliph, who died in 1242.[60] This would prove to be the last great library built by the caliphs of Baghdad. In 750, the Abbasid dynasty replaced the Umayyad as the ruling dynasty of the Islamic Empire, and, in 762, the caliph al-Mansur (r. 754 – 775) built Baghdad and made it his capital, instead of Damascus. Baghdad’s location and cosmopolitan population made the perfect location for a stable commercial and intellectual center. The Abbasid dynasty had a strong Persian bent, and adopted many practices from the Sassanian Empire – among those, that of translating foreign works, except that now texts were translated into Arabic.
Suggested Books
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The architecture of the city ranges from traditional two- or three-story brick houses to modern steel, glass, and concrete structures. The traditional Baghdad house, usually located on a crowded narrow street, has latticed windows and an open inner courtyard; a few fine specimens from the late Ottoman period are tucked away in traditional quarters of Al-Karkh, Ruṣāfah, and Al-Kāẓimiyyah. The typical modern middle-class dwelling is built of brick and mortar and has a garden and wall. At this point Baghdad was ruled by the Il-Khanids, part of the Mongolian Empire centered in Persia.
Ancient-Origins
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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. Originally the texts concerned mainly medicine, mathematics and astronomy; but, other disciplines, especially philosophy, soon followed. Al-Rashid’s library, direct predecessor to the House of Wisdom, was also known as Bayt al-Hikma or, as the historian Al-Qifti called it, Khizanat Kutub al-Hikma (Arabic for “Storehouse of the Books of Wisdom”). Originally the texts concerned mainly medicine, mathematics and astronomy but other disciplines, especially philosophy, soon followed.
Twin towns – sister cities
The Sabian Thābit ibn Qurra (826–901) also translated great works by Apollonius, Archimedes, Euclid and Ptolemy. Translations of this era were superior to earlier ones, since the new Abbasid scientific tradition required better and better translations, and the emphasis was many times put in incorporating new ideas to the ancient works being translated. By the second half of the ninth century al-Ma’mun’s Bayt al-Hikma was the greatest repository of books in the world and had become one of the greatest hubs of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages, attracting the most brilliant Arab and Persian minds. The House of Wisdom eventually acquired a reputation as a center of learning, although universities as we know them did not yet exist at this time — knowledge was transmitted directly from teacher to student, without any institutional surrounding. 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.
Baghdad played a major part in the propagation and spread of knowledge in the Arts and in the Sciences and in the development of their material wealth. Al-Ma’moun took after his father Al-Rashid in establishing many higher institutes, observatories, and factories for textiles. It is said that the number of higher institutes during his reign reached 332, and they were packed with students pursuing various subjects in the Arts and in the Sciences.(ref). These were built in according to the finest style, and most of them were in mosques and monumental buildings (Mashahid); this figure excludes the equivalent of primary schools (Katateeb) not including schools. In 1258, the Mongol army ransacked the city of Baghdad and threw such a great number of manuscripts into the river Tigris that the waters ran black with ink. One popular narrative holds that the impetus behind the translation movement was because of Al-Mamun’s encounter with Aristotle in a dream.
(MJ & AS, pp. 254 & 255; NM, p. 129) Such cities included Mosul, Basra, Shiraz, Rayy, etc. (Encycl. of Islam). 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. The House of Wisdom was also referred to as Al-Hikma Bookstore (Khizanat Al-Hikma), and The House of Wisdom Bookstore of Al-Ma’moun (Khizanat Dar Al-Kutub Al-Ma’mouniya). It should be pointed out that the Arabic term Khizanat Kutub, meaning literally a bookstore, is an old name meaning a present day library. Foreseeing the impending tragedy, the Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi ( ) saved several thousand manuscripts by moving them to the Maragheh Observatory in northwestern Iran, built by Mongol ruler Hulagu in 1259. The Assyrian scholar Yahya Ibn al-Batriq ( ) translated all the major works of the ancient Greek physicians, including Galen and Hippocrates.
The data provided by Ptolemy was meticulously checked and revised by a highly capable group of geographers, mathematicians and astronomers. Al-Mamun also organized research on the circumference of the Earth and commissioned a geographic project that would result in one of the most detailed world-maps of the time. If this backward projection of our idea of a research institution works for the Library of Alexandria, then it is just as valid in the case of Baghdad's House of Wisdom.
There have been many studies on history of Islamic libraries (Houses of Wisdom) that evolved thanks to Baghdad's house of wisdom. However there was no research that could show the impact of the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) in Baghdad on formation of other new Islamic libraries. The current study analyses the organizational structure of Bayt al-Hikmah al-Baghdad and its divisions and services that it provided for scholars and readers. The paper shall also deal with the funding sources and governmental endowments that were commonly known at the time of the Abbasids. It also shows the intellectual as well as managerial impacts that Baghdad's House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) had on the spread of new Islamic libraries within the Muslim peninsula. The institution was not just an academic center but also played a role in civil engineering, medicine, and public administration in Baghdad.
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