Table Of Content
Today, all that remains of Ctesiphon is the shrine town of Salman Pak, just to the south of Greater Baghdad which is where Salman the Persian is believed to have been buried. Ctesiphon itself had replaced and absorbed Seleucia, the first capital of the Seleucid Empire, which had earlier replaced the city of Babylon. As for the philosopher Kindi, who outlived Ma'mūn, he seems to have fallen victim to a conspiracy led by the Banū Mūsa brothers, who had grown jealous of his extensive personal library and plotted against him until they persuaded the then caliph, al-Mutawakkil ( ), to expel him from the House of Wisdom. He lived his remaining years a lonely man and after his death his philosophical work fell into obscurity. Baghdad had reached its highest reputation and glorious status during the reigns of the Caliphs Al-Rasheed, Al-Ma’moun, Al-Mu’tadhid and Al-Muktafi. Its buildings had expanded widely on both banks and sides of the river Tigris, in a form of urbanism resembling that of contiguous towns, and its population had reached about one million.
When Baghdad was centre of the scientific world
The existence of the House of Wisdom is presently disputed, as is its form and function. Arabist Dimitri Gutas posits in his 1998 book that “House of Wisdom” is a translation error from Khizanat al-Hikma, which he asserts simply means a storehouse, and that there are few sources from the era during the Abbasid Era that mention the House of Wisdom by the name Bayt al-Hikma. This theory is debatable, owing to the destruction of the Round city of Baghdad and conflicting sources in both academic texts and poetry. It is likely, given the Abbasid Caliphs’ patronage of the arts and sciences, that an extensive library existed in Baghdad, and that scholars could have access to such texts, judging by the volume of work produced by scholars centered in Baghdad. Without consistent naming conventions, a physical ruin, or corroborating texts, the phrase “House of Wisdom” may just as well have been a metaphor for the larger Academic community in Baghdad rather than a physical academy specializing in translation work. The House of Wisdom grew rapidly with the acquisition of texts from Greece, Persia and India, swelling with the addition of the Arabic translations of these texts, a process that was already becoming an industry in Baghdad.
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Although some of the princes of the previous Umayyad dynasty had begun to gather and translate Greek scientific literature, the Abbasids were the first to foster Greek learning on a large scale. Many of these libraries were private collections intended only for the use of the owners and their immediate friends, but the libraries of the caliphs and other officials soon took on a public or a semi-public character.[60] Four great libraries were established in Baghdad during this period. Another was established by Sabur ibn Ardashir in 991 or 993 for the literary men and scholars who frequented his academy.[60] This second library was plundered and burned by the Seljuks only seventy years after it was established. This was a good example of the sort of library built up out of the needs and interests of a literary society.[60] The last two were examples of madrasa or theological college libraries.
Books
Among the books that al-Mansur initiated their translations were the book of Al-Sind Hind a book on mathematics and a huge collection of Aristotle, Euclid and of Claudius Ptolemy writings. 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.
Synagogues and Jewish heritage
At the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad, scholars pored over Indian books on mathematics. These works used a set of ten symbols to represent numbers-not letters of the alphabet, as in Baghdad and Rome. In the early 800s, mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi wrote a book on how to do math using the Indian system. Eventually, people all over Europe followed Al-Khwarizmi's example-and switched to the "Arabic" numerals we use today. The Bab al-Sharji district in the centre of Baghdad derives its name, which means east gate, from the medieval fortifications of the city. During the brief British stay at the end of the first world war, its gatehouse was used as a garrison church.
European knowledge from Arabick roots
The storage space was called a ganj (“treasury”), a term equivalent to the Arabic khizānah. The historical approach has determined the research framework of gathering relevant information about the House of Wisdom and its administrative and intellectual impact on emergence of new public and private libraries. The history of libraries is a history of human thought for libraries have been the stronghold of thoughts preserving them and passing them from generation to generation. We can say that among the first centers of human civilization intellect was the library of the Mesopotamian peninsula a saying that has been proved correct by different Cuneiform script writings.
City layout
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. 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).
During this time, Sahl ibn Harun, a Persian poet and astrologer, was the chief librarian of the Bayt al-Hikma. Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–873) an Arab Nestorian Christian physician and scientist, was the most productive translator producing 116 works for the Arabs. Al-Ma’mun established the House of Wisdom, putting Hunayn ibn Ishaq in charge, who then became the most celebrated translator of Greek texts. As “Sheikh of the translators” he was placed in charge of the translation work by the caliph. Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated the entire collection of Greek medical books, including famous pieces by Galen and Hippocrates. The Sabian Thābit ibn Qurra (826–901) also translated great works by Apollonius, Archimedes, Euclid and Ptolemy.
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The city was rebuilt and flourished under Ilkhanid rule, but never rose to its former glory. It was briefly occupied by Safavid Persia in 1508, but fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1534. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Baghdad fell under the British Mandate in 1920 and became the capital of the independent Kingdom of Iraq in 1932 (converted to a Republic in 1958).
The libraries that have flourished following the example of the house of wisdom's have had their doors open to scholars from all over the world. Libraries have had almost the same kind of translated books that were culled from scholarships of dozen languages. The house wisdom was a center of knowledge and education, it was a rival of the Constantinople's if it did not exceed it.
It is likely that without the Muslim libraries, modern Europe's scientific and intellectual progress would have been remarkably inhibited. Mahmud Ahmad Derwich has found a suitable architectural planning for Bayt al-Hikmah through his studies on the golden castle constructed by Al-Mansur. The house of wisdom composed of a yard surrounded by halls of two floors from its four sides, it was headed by a penthouse on a row of pillars. In the middle of every side among the four sides of the yard there were halls topped by semi-cylindrical dome of 25 cubit. The main hall leads to a square shape room above it there was a big dome with 80 cubit high, the main hall also has a statue of knight holding a spear that spins with the spear. There have been many studies on history of Islamic libraries (Houses of Wisdom) that evolved thanks to Baghdad's house of wisdom.
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The Sasanian city of Gur in Fars, built 500 years before Baghdad, is nearly identical in its general circular design, radiating avenues, and the government buildings and temples at the center of the city. This style of urban planning contrasted with Ancient Greek and Roman urban planning, in which cities are designed as squares or rectangles with streets intersecting each other at right angles. The House of Wisdom flourished under al-Ma’mun’s successors al-Mu’tasim (r. 833 – 842) and his son al-Wathiq (r. 842 – 847), but considerably declined under the reign of al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861). Although al-Ma’mun, al-Mu’tasim, and al-Wathiq followed the sect of Mu’tazili, which supported mind-broadness and scientific inquiry, al-Mutawakkil endorsed a more literal interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadith.
Al-Karkh in particular was the centre of Baʿathist political offices and of regime security services. At this point Baghdad was ruled by the Il-Khanids, part of the Mongolian Empire centered in Persia. It became a provincial capital controlled by the Jalayirid (1400–1411), Qara Qoyunlu (1411–1469), Aq Quyunlu (1469–1508), and Safavid Persian (1508–1534) – (1624–1638) empires. Thousands of architects, engineers, legal experts, surveyors, carpenters, blacksmiths, diggers, and labourers from across the Abbasid Caliphate were brought in to survey, measure, and excavate the foundations. "They say that no other round city is known in all the regions of the world," according to Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi.
It was a tragic ending for one of the most advanced, diverse and progressive cities of the age, and an ending from which it would take Baghdad centuries to recover. Following his predecessors, al-Ma’mun would send expeditions of scholars from the House of Wisdom to collect texts from foreign lands. In fact, one of the directors of the House was sent to Constantinople with this purpose.
