The house of wisdom
The House of wisdom was a major intellectual centre during the Islamic Golden Age. The House of wisdom was found by Caliph Harun al-Rashid and became really famous under his son al-Ma’mum who is credited with bringing many well-know scholars (teachers and intelligent people) to share information, ideas and culture.
Based in Baghdad from the 9th to 13th centuries, many learned scholars (including those of Persian or Christian background) were part of this research and educational institute.
For most of the last 5,000 years, Iraq was a key centre of scientific knowledge. Mathematics gradually spread into ambitious areas such as predictive astronomy, making use of information collected and recorded at the temples of Uruk and Babylon over several centuries.
This was the high point of Islamic civilisation, when scholars of various religions from around the world went to the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) to study sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, zoology and geography.
The scholars gathered the greatest collection of knowledge in the world, and built on it through their own discoveries.
This was made possible by lots of people being able to read and by the availability of paper as an everyday writing material. The first paper arrived in Iraq from China, probably along the silk route via Samarkand, in the eighth century - long before it reached Europe.
Probably the most famous mathematician at the House of Wisdom was al-Khawarizmi, known as the father of algebra - a word taken from the title of his book, Kitab al-Jabr.
