Bağdat

Abbasi hilafetinin başkenti ve ortaçağ dünyasının entelektüel merkezi. Buradaki Beytülhikme, tüm Yunan felsefe külliyatını Arapçaya çevirerek bilim ve felsefede bir altın çağ başlattı.

Baghdad was built from scratch in 762 CE by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, a perfect circle of administrative buildings and canals on the Tigris. Within a generation it was the largest city in the world outside China. The caliphs funded translators to render Greek, Persian, and Indian texts into Arabic — Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, all of it. The institution that housed this work is called the House of Wisdom, Bayt al-Hikma, though historians debate exactly what kind of place it was. What is not in doubt is the output: centuries of commentary, synthesis, and original work in mathematics, medicine, optics, and philosophy. Al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and later Ibn Rushd all worked in this tradition. The Mongols sacked the city in 1258, throwing books into the Tigris until the river ran dark.