Rough Draft: Bayt-al Hikma

Today Baghdad is a city that would be recognized as the center of war and political conflict. However, in 800 A.D, it was a celebrated metropolis of education, which attracted scholars, scientists and artists from all around the Muslim world. Much of the modern world’s scientific and philosophical knowledge has its roots in the Abbasid caliphate, and Baghdad its capital. Bayt al-Hikma, or the House of Wisdom was founded by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, and formally established by his son al-Mamun during the early middle ages of Europe. Bayt al-Hikma was a distinguished institution where a remarkable assemblage of scholars undertook the task of translating all of the scientific and philosophical classical age works into Arabic, which would be incorporated into Islam itself. The appeal towards the great library allowed for the preservation of classical age knowledge that is responsible for the facilitation of the European renascence and many of the advancements the modern world is dependent on. For the next four to five hundred years, alchemists, scientists, scholars, writers, men of letters, and copyists learned, read, wrote and translated manuscripts were originally in foreign languages for one specific purpose.

The Bayt al-Hikma was modeled after the Sassanid Imperial Library, with the similar motivation of religion. Muslims leaders have long relied on the study of astronomy to calculate the times for prayer, and in which direction Mecca was situated in relation to a city. The beginnings of the Muslim empire’s deep curiosity of knowledge can be traced back to the need to fulfill the five pillars of Islam. Religious periods such as the month of Ramadan, or the month of the hajj held a great importance in Muslim Empires, such as the an...

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...o mathematics, the Banu Musa brothers were great engineers who perfected the waterwheel, and oversaw the construction of underground channels called qanats, that the then expanding Baghdad relied on.

In contrast to the great Greek philosophers before them, the Abbasid scholars established the importance of scientific observation and experimentation. As for philosophy, Muslim scholar-translators studied classical texts, but solved problems using their own method of scientific observation rather than the pure logic of whom Aristotle was famous for. Muslim philosophers of the Bayt-al Hikma used the reasoning, and knowledge of Greek texts to aid their own philosophies and blend Greek and Islam ideas together. Perhaps the first philosopher of Islam, al-Kindi is rightly credited with being the scholar most responsible for mixing Greek philosophy with Islam philosophy.