The House of Wisdom
A City of Scholars and Books
The Abbasid caliphs create one of the beautiful cities in the world, but they wanted Baghdad to be more than just a beautiful city. They wanted to make their capital into a city of learning and new ideas. Traders of Baghdad brought goods, knowledge and ideas from different part of the world. The caliphs also send scholars to search for new knowledge in Persia, Byzantine, northern American, India and China. These scholars collect treasures texts and brought them back to Baghdad. During the ninth century, Baghdad had becamea city of scholars and books.
The books in the House of Wisdom are from Worldwide
The centre of learning in ninth century Baghdad was the House of Wisdom. The caliphs brought scholars to the House of Wisdom from all over the Islamic World. He paid the scholars well, whatever their religion. The scholars translated Greek, Persian, Indian and other early text into Arabic. But these curious and open-minded man did more than translate. The scholars House of Wisdom often added their own comment to the ancient text. Much of the knowledge that collected, copied and commented on in Baghdad eventually reached Europe through Islamic Spain and Sicily. It affects many aspects of our lives today.
The House of Wisdom
Caliph Haroon al-Rasheed is credited with expanding the glory of Baghdad to its greatest height during his reign from 786 to 809 C.E. He created an intellectual ambience by encouraging mathematicians, astronomers, scientists, and philosophers. His son, Caliph al-Mamoon went a step further by establishing the House of Wisdom in, an academic institute devoted to translations, research, and education. It quickly became one of the most famous centers of learning, attracting scholars from all over the world, from many cultures and religions. Here, teachers and students worked together to translate Greek, Persian, Syriac and Indian manuscripts. They studied the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Brahmagupta and many others. Then, they began building on and testing the knowledge of the greatest ancient scholars, resulting in the development of the scientific method of observation and experimentation.
The Books of House of Wisdom
This is a video of the Baghdad House of Wisdom Paper, Books, Libraries and madrasas. It is easy to take paper for granted but our lives would be very different without it. Baghdad traders brought back knowledge for paper-making and wood-block printing from China in the eight-century. Paper mills were build along the bank of the river Tigris and Baghdad was soon well supplied with This new product. Paper made is possible to produce lots of copies of the same book at a low cost. Please enjoy and have fun!