The House of Wisdom
—Jason

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The writing, keeping, translation, and transmission of information is one of the key components of a civilization.  As writing systems developed and changed over the course of thousands of years, people sought a connection with their predecessors.  

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE led to the subsequent “loss” of many of the ancient and classical Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern works for centuries.  The mass literacy of the Roman West disappeared, remaining only with those specially trained as monks and scribes and those who had the resources for education. This meant that many pre-Christian texts disappeared from circulation.  Most of the written works that followed the Fall of the West were religious in nature and focused on those writings that reinforced the position of Rome and the Pope as the supreme leaders of Christianity.

Despite the loss of works in Western Europe, they survived in the Byzantine Empire (395 – 1453 CE), which continued both to reproduce older works and create new ones.  These texts were written in and translated into a variety of languages: Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Farsi as examples.  By continually engaging with these sources, the Greek East had a deeper connection to its Ancient and Classical predecessors.  The trade routes that crisscrossed the Byzantine Empire also assured a steady supply of written works from the Far East as well.

The Sassanid Persian Empire (224 – 651 CE), centered around what is now modern Iraq and Iran, was another major power in the Near East with extensive literary traditions.  The Sassanid capital city of Ctesiphon was located on the left bank of the Tigris River, roughly 30 miles from the location of modern Baghdad.  This positioned it astride one of the major land and water routes that merchants had used for millennia to move goods, ideas, and technology across Eurasia and North Africa.  

During the Muslim Conquest (circa 622 and 750 CE), both the Byzantine and Sassanid Persian Empires lost a considerable amount of territory to the warriors emerging from the Arabian Peninsula.  Muslim warriors quickly stripped away Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, North Africa, and parts of Turkey.  The entirety of the Sassanid Empire was conquered by 637 CE and Muslims continued to push east towards India and Afghanistan. Throughout this era of conquest, many Muslim leaders made a point of collecting and keeping the literature of these areas. When the Abbasid Caliphate came into power in 750, their new capital of Baghdad included places for the philosophy, art, and literature that had been collected and maintained. 

Baghdad became one of the leading centers of learning between the eighth and eleventh centuries.  The Abbasid caliphs, starting with al-Mamun, sponsored scribes, artists, mystics, scientists, and philosophers in their capital and founded the House of Wisdom.  Al-Mamun founded, and he and his successors, continually expanded a massive library, Bayt al-Hikmah al-Baghdad, and an accompanying transcribing industry.  Texts from ancient Roman, Greek, Persian, Indian, Syriac, and Chinese sources were translated into Arabic and copies were sent to other major Muslim cities.  These texts eventually made their way to Western Europe where they were bought by those both literate, and wealthy enough, to afford them.

The works were not only translated but also commented upon and critiqued by scholars of the day.  Mathematics, especially in the field of algebra, were expanded beyond what was used in Western Europe.  The introduction of Arabic numerals, and the number zero, made trade and accounting much easier than using the antique Roman numeral system.  Astronomy was another favorite subject for many of the scholars in Baghdad as they had easy access to ancient Mesopotamian works upon which to expound.  Engineering was also an important field as scholars bent their minds towards the construction of the massive palaces and mosques built to showcase the power of the Abbasids.  

Two of the most famous Muslim scholars who contributed to the House of Wisdom were Ibn Sina and Ibn Rashid.  These two men ensured the survival of many ancient works as well as creating new ones. They left such an impression that they were added to Raphael’s collection of Western scholars in his Renaissance work School of Athens in 1511.

Ibn Sina (circa 980 – 1037 CE), better known as Avicenna to Westerners, was Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and writers of the Islamic Golden Age, and has been called the father of early modern medicine.  Avicenna wrote 450 works on various subjects, of which a little more than half survived into the modern world.  His most famous, and influential, work is The Canon of Medicine, a five-volume set which was a standard text for Western European physicians until the eighteenth century.

The works of Ibn Rashid (1126 – 1198 CE), better known in the West as Averroes, were instrumental in the transmission of both Classical and contemporary information to Western Europe.  Averroes was a Spanish polymath and jurist who was born in Cordoba.  During his life, most of Spain, or Al-Andalus, was controlled by the Muslims.  Averroes wrote numerous books on theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics.  

He wrote extensive commentaries on the works of Aristotle and has been called “The Commentator” and “Father of Rationalists” by Westerners.  Averroes played a huge role in the intellectual re-awakening in Europe during the Middle Ages led by Thomas Aquinas during the early thirteenth century.  Averroes’ works were initially translated from Arabic into Latin or Greek.  Philosophical, scientific, and religious texts long thought lost reemerged through his work, reconnecting Western Europeans to their ancient past.

As the demand for these lost works grew, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad slowly lost its hold over that knowledge.  The Abbasid Caliphate declined in the 900s and by the launch of the First Crusade in 1096 was a shadow of its former self.  The libraries in Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, and Cordoba were more readily accessible avenues for Classical texts to be transcribed and shipped across the Mediterranean and Western European trade routes.  

The final blow to the House of Wisdom came because of the Mongol invasion in 1258 when Baghdad was sacked.  Between 1206 and 1405, the Mongols erupted out of Central Asia and conquered the surrounding civilizations.  If an enemy city submitted without resistance, the Mongols would pillage it, take some of the men to use as fodder against the next city, and then move on after establishing the loyalty of the people.  If a city decided to fight and was besieged, the Mongols destroyed the city and put the population to the sword.  

News of the Mongol conquests in China, India, Central Asia, and Iran flowed into Baghdad before the nomadic armies arrived.  Al-Musta'sim Billah, the last of the Abbasid caliphs, believed that his city could withstand the Mongol assault.  However, he ignored the advice of his advisors and survivors of previous engagements with the Mongols.  When Mongol outriders reached Baghdad and asked for its surrender, Al-Musta’sim ignored their warnings and closed the city gates.  A massive, well-equipped Mongol army surrounded Baghdad and put it under siege.  

Baghdad held out for 13 days before the Mongols overwhelmed its defenders.  Al-Musta’sim and most of the city’s population were executed.  The huge libraries which had graced Baghdad for centuries were looted and their books burned.  Although the physical House of Wisdom may have been destroyed in 1258, its legacy and memory survived in the works its authors had translated, transcribed, and shipped across the Near East, North Africa, and Europe.