Science · 9th century CE
Baghdad's House of Wisdom
Baghdad (Iraq)
After the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded Baghdad in 762, the city became a centre of learning, and under al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833) a royal library known as the House of Wisdom became a hub for scholars translating Greek, Persian, Syriac and Indian works into Arabic.
Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated Galen and Hippocrates, and al-Khwarizmi, who worked there around 820, wrote the book on al-jabr that gave us the word 'algebra'. Some historians doubt it was a formal academy, seeing the name as covering a library and Baghdad's wider community of scholars.
Why it mattered
The translation movement preserved and built on ancient science and philosophy, and Arabic works such as al-Khwarizmi's later reached Europe in Latin; his Latinised name gave us the word 'algorithm'.
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