The House of Wisdom

Podcast Transcript

The Abbasid Caliphate stood as a vibrant center of commerce, technology, and learning from the 8th to the 13th centuries.

At the heart of this Islamic dynasty was the House of Wisdom.

It was an extraordinary institute that drew scholars from across the known world, which made Baghdad an unrivaled center of learning. They made advancements in mathematics, science, and medicine, which are used in the world today.

Learn more about the House of Wisdom and how it shaped the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In the 8th century, Baghdad was on its way to becoming the largest and most important city in the world.

Medieval Baghdad was a metropolis that would have astonished a modern visitor, boasting a population of up to one million, an impressive number for the time.

The city was a hub of commerce, largely due to its thriving bazaars. These crowded marketplaces were a haven for trade, serving as the ultimate destination for the finest commodities of the Silk Road.

The wide marketplaces were crammed with vendors selling everything from fruit, spices, and flowers to silken goods and baked items.

Together, these vendors and bazaars infused the city with its unique and vibrant character.

One observer in the 11th century remarked: “Baghdad is like a hive of bees in which much honey is produced.”

By the 11th century, Baghdad boasted nearly 37 lending libraries, far outstripping Europe, where even a wealthy community might own only a dozen books.

Baghdad’s centerpiece was a circular, walled core nearly a mile and a half wide. Shaped by concentric rings, the city featured zones: some designated for housing and shopping, while others served as places of religious worship and the Caliph’s palace.

Such an urban center demanded the greatest minds of its age.

It was here that the House of Wisdom began in the Caliph’s library, soon outgrowing its original space.

The House of Wisdom’s scholars formed a diverse group drawn from across the known world. No limitations existed for those who wanted to study and share.

Byzantine, Greek, Arab, Indian, and Persian influences shaped the institution, which welcomed anyone capable of adding to the sum of human knowledge.

To maintain and organize a city of one million people, thinkers from the House of Wisdom were indispensable.

As a rapidly expanding city, Baghdad posed significant challenges for the scholars of the House of Wisdom, requiring innovative solutions. Addressing these problems became central to the city’s continuing success.

Foremost among these challenges was controlling the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a task essential to the city’s stability and survival.

Flooding along the Tigris and Euphrates challenged engineers since Mesopotamian times.

Engineers from the House of Wisdom created a twin canal system to meet these needs. By diverting water from the rivers, they also created secondary waterways, expanding options for transportation, irrigation, and commerce.

The Nahr Isa, the largest of these canals, was wide enough for large commercial vessels. These vessels used the canal to connect to rivers and the Persian Gulf. This gave Baghdad a key access point to the Indian Ocean trade networks, even though it wasn’t located on the coast.

Anchored by this access, Baghdad became a vital mercantile city. It thrived along the greatest trade networks of its era: the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean Sea Roads.

The canals also sustained Abbasid farmers outside the city. Farming in this region has always been challenging due to its arid climate and frequent flooding.

Supporting Baghdad’s huge population required innovations in food production; the canal system boosted regional farming. Historians often credit these innovations with creating a Green Belt around Baghdad.

Engineers also updated the Qanat water system. A qanat was an underground water-management system developed in ancient Persia that used gently sloping tunnels to bring groundwater from distant aquifers to the surface for irrigation and drinking without pumps.

They improved on the Persian designs, using waterproof mortar to deliver fresh water citywide through underground pipes.

This pioneering piping technology also improved waste removal. Islamic rituals and customs demanded frequent washing, so cities in the Islamic world, including Baghdad, became renowned for cleanliness.

The House of Wisdom’s engineers’ urban contributions made Baghdad at that time the most advanced city in the World.

Improving the city’s infrastructure was not the only legacy of the thinkers of the House of Wisdom. Their intellectual achievements carried an impact far beyond the city’s physical infrastructure.

The scholars of the House of Wisdom set a lasting standard for intellectual inquiry. The movement began as an effort to translate all of the knowledge of the known world into Arabic.

Islamic scientists enjoyed an advantage that their European peers lacked at that time. Scientific inquiry did not conflict with the Quran. It encouraged the pursuit of knowledge.

Early European thinkers found themselves limited by the early Christian church. These struggles would limit European scientists until after the arrest of Galileo and the emergence of Isaac Newton.

Islamic scholars of the period had no such limitations because the Abbasid Caliphate encouraged scientific enquiry.

The Qiblah, or the point of prayer, is a good example. The Quran mandates that Muslims pray five times a day toward Mecca.

While there are apps for this today, a thousand years ago, Islamic scholars needed basic scientific literacy to locate the point of prayer using instruments like the compass and astrolabe.

This head start on scientific inquiry drove the progress at the House of Wisdom.

A core role of the House was the translation of Greco-Roman texts.

Islamic scholars were puzzled by the reluctance of Greek thinkers to test their theories. Critiques of Greco-Roman texts, such as Al-Razi’s critique of Galen’s theories, led Islamic scientists to develop their own theories of the scientific process.

These criticisms, advanced by House of Wisdom scholars, helped lay the foundation for the modern Scientific Method.

The mathematical advances that came out of the House of Wisdom revolutionized mathematics.

Al-Khwarizmi, who has made appearances on many episodes of this podcast, was the House’s leading scholar. He wrote “Al-Jabr,” a manual on solving and balancing equations.

This became the foundation for Algebra.

In fact, Al-Khwarizmi’s name is so synonymous with mathematical acumen that his Latinized name is Algoritmi, which translates to algorithm in English!

The scholars of the House of Wisdom also researched and shared earlier Indian numeric systems. They presented them to the world as “Arabic Numerals.”

Among the numbers introduced to the world by mathematicians of the House of Wisdom stood perhaps the most important in advanced mathematics: zero.

To calculate the Qiblah direction worldwide, they developed spherical trigonometry.

Amongst the House of Wisdom’s most famous contributors were the Banu Musa brothers, a trio of Persian polymaths. The Banu Musa brothers produced arguably the most interesting work from the House of Wisdom, The Book of Ingenious Devices.

The book outlined more than 100 mechanical inventions, including automata, fountains, and self-regulating machines based on sophisticated hydraulic and pneumatic principles

The book inspired future engineers, offering models for early automated machines. It planted a seed for the Industrial Revolution and modern robotics.

Among Baghdad’s enduring legacies is Ibn Al-Haytham’s work. He revolutionized optics and laid the foundation for innovations like the modern camera. His camera obscura, a dark box with a pinhole allowing light to enter, proved that light travels in a straight line.

If you remember back to the previous episode on the subject, the Dutch artist Vermeer probably used a camera obscura to create his paintings.

It’s worth noting that his device was called the Qumra in Arabic, which translates to “camera” in English.

An astronomical observatory was built at the House of Wisdom in the Shammasiya district in the 9th century which was run by Sanad bin Ali Al-Yahoudi. He was also the man who added the decimal point to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

Perhaps the most significant legacy of the scholars at the House of Wisdom was their incredible advancements in medicine.

The translation movement facilitated the rediscovery of ancient Greek medical texts. While early Muslim scholars were intrigued by the theory of the four humors, they ultimately demonstrated that these humors were not the cause of illness.

Under the leadership of the Arab doctor Al-Razi, the Muslim doctors at the House of Wisdom developed a theory of contagion-based illness. Al-Razi’s contagion theory held that an external agent caused the illness, centuries before the germ theory of disease was developed in the 19th century.

Al-Razi’s work in categorizing illness proved crucial. For it was he who identified the difference between smallpox and measles. The identification of distinct diseases caused by different contagions led to treatment plans unique to each disease.

Amongst these treatments were a series of remedies derived from natural materials, such as honey. Muslim doctors in Baghdad had built on and formalized herbal and natural remedies for specific maladies.

In identifying specific illnesses, the doctors of Baghdad believed that keeping patients with similar symptoms together would prevent other patients who didn’t share their illness from contracting it.

The modern hospital has its roots in Baghdad, right down to the different wings for different ailments. These care facilities were free and funded by religious endowments, part of the practice of almsgiving, an essential pillar of Islam.

The Battle of Talas River was fought in 751 between the Chinese Tang Dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate. The most significant outcome of this battle was the transmission of papermaking technology between the two cultures.

The House of Wisdom and its achievements would not have been possible without paper. Prior to the advent of paper, manuscripts were written on expensive animal-skin parchment.

This was part of the reason Europe languished so far behind Song China and the Abbasid Caliphate. Books were an expensive luxury.

The first Abbasid paper mill was built in Baghdad in the 9th century, after which the price of books promptly plummeted, according to some estimates by as much as 90%.

In societies where paper books were common, people owned books, particularly sacred texts such as the Quran, which led to higher levels of literacy and intellectual inquiry.

Mathematical advancement was also far easier in papered cultures. Mathematics in non-paper cultures had to be on an abacus or in the mind of the mathematician. The Greeks would often just draw with sticks on the ground.

Paper allowed for math to grow in complexity and for scholars to work on longer problems.

In Abbasid Baghdad, papermaking was big business. Paper was subjected to the same scientific inquiry as math, astronomy, and medicine. The process was improved by Islamic scientists, leading to smoother paper that could be written on both sides.

Aside from cost and availability, the most significant outcome of paper was the transmission of knowledge. The House of Wisdom probably would have achieved incredible things without paper so long as they had a spirit of inquiry and support of an empire.

Yet what they achieved with paper is nothing short of transformative. It was the House of Wisdom and paper that transmitted Greco-Roman knowledge back to the West, yielding the Renaissance.

When printing arrived in Europe in the 15th century, it advanced quickly thanks to the inheritance of paper from the Abbasid Caliphate. The scholars of the House of Wisdom reintroduced Europe to its Greco-Roman heritage thanks to paper.

Sadly, all things must come to an end. As I covered in a previous episode, Baghdad spectacularly fell to the Mongols in 1258. Estimates of the dead range from the hundreds of thousands to millions, but this we do know: all of the libraries in Baghdad were destroyed.

The trajectory of civilization was in no small part forged by the scholars of the House of Wisdom.

It is not possible to overstate the significance of the House of Wisdom. Simply put, the work done by the scholars at the House of Wisdom played an important part in the creation of the modern world.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by Joel Hermensen

A bit of an announcement….

I’ve recently hired a new writer for the show, Joel Hermansen, who some of you might recognize from the Respecting the Beer Podcast.

Joel is also a high school teacher who teaches AP World History and has been using this podcast as a resource for his students.

We have begun a project to create a list of all applicable episodes and match them to the corresponding units in the AP World History curriculum.

We will also eventually do this for AP American History and, going forward, possibly other AP tests.

We will also create new episodes that fill gaps in the curriculum that haven’t been recorded yet. This will probably take a while, but for those of you who have no interest in this, you probably won’t notice a thing.

The resource we will create will be available to everyone, including teachers, students, and homeschoolers who are studying for the AP World History Test.

More details will be provided when they become available.

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