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At its height, Baghdad was estimated to have over one and half million people living in the city.[19] It may have been the largest city in the world during that time. As the capital of the modern Republic of Iraq, Baghdad has a metropolitan area estimated at a population of 7,000,000 divided into neighborhoods in nine districts. It is the largest city in Iraq, the second-largest city in the Arab world (after Cairo) and the second-largest city in West Asia (after Tehran). The Tigris splits Baghdad in half, with the eastern half being called "Risafa" and the Western half known as "Karkh". The land on which the city is built is almost entirely flat and low-lying, being of quaternary alluvial origin due to the periodic large floods which have occurred on the river. A major contribution from the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is the influence it had on other libraries in the Islamic world.
Famous People
He also promoted Egyptology and participated himself in excavations of the pyramids of Giza. Al-Ma’mun built the first astronomical observatories in Baghdad, and he was also the first ruler to fund and monitor the progress of major research projects involving a team of scholars and scientists. Throughout the 4th to 7th centuries, scholarly work in the Arabic languages was either newly initiated, or carried on from the Hellenistic period. These works used a set of ten symbols to represent numbers-not letters of the alphabet, as in Baghdad and Rome.
The Golden Age of Arab Civilization: How Baghdad Led the World in Learning
And the reign of Ma'mūn was notable for more than just the scholarly writings of these individual geniuses. Not satisfied with setting up his seat of learning, Ma'mūn ordered the building of the first astronomical observatory in Baghdad around the second decade of the ninth century. This was the only way his astronomers could check the accuracy of the various, often conflicting, Greek, Persian and Indian astronomical texts at their disposal, most notably Ptolemy's Almagest. Ma'mūn was almost fanatical in his desire to collect all the world's books under one roof, translate them into Arabic and have his scholars study them.
Notable intellectuals
His sons, collectively known as the Banū Mūsā (Sons of Moses), also contributed with their extensive knowledge of mathematics and astrology. Between 813 and 833, the three brothers were successful in their works in science, engineering, and patronage. Abū Jaʿfar, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (before 803 – February 873), Abū al‐Qāsim, Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (d. 9th century) and Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (d. 9th century) are widely known for their Book of Ingenious Devices, which describes about one hundred devices and how to use them. Among these was “The Instrument that Plays by Itself”, the earliest example of a programmable machine, as well as the Book on Measurement of Plane and Spherical Figures. Mohammad Musa and his brothers Ahmad and Hasan contributed to Baghdad’s astronomical observatories under the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun, in addition to the House of Wisdom research.
The sack of Baghdad put an end to the Abbasid Caliphate, a blow from which the Islamic civilization never fully recovered. Baghdad gained significance on 3 January 2020, when Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. This is a list of notable people related to the House of Wisdom and the rise of Arab science. By measuring the position of the sun and stars, they could precisely tell the time of the day or night, or predict the moment when the sun would rise in the morning. The House of Wisdom also housed an observatory which facilitated astronomical advancements, leading to refinements of such scientific tools as the astrolabe. A point has to be made here about the term Medieval frequently used in civilisation literature.
Bayt al-Hikmah had its own system but sources have not stated a precise description that bind the system that the house of wisdom used to function. Caliph Al-Ma’mun is said to have encouraged translators and scholars to add to the library in the House of Wisdom by paying them the weight of each completed book in gold. People from all over the Muslim world flocked to the House of Wisdom – both male and female of many faiths and ethnicities. Most of Iraq’s manufacturing, finance, and commerce is concentrated in and around Baghdad.
Baghdad is situated on the Tigris River at its closest point to the Euphrates, 25 miles (40 km) to the west. The Diyālā River joins the Tigris just southeast of the city and borders its eastern suburbs. (See Tigris-Euphrates river system.) The terrain surrounding Baghdad is a flat alluvial plain 112 feet (34 metres) above sea level. Historically, the city has been inundated by periodic floods from the Tigris’s tributaries to the north and east. These ended in 1956 with the completion of a dam on the Tigris at the town of Sāmarrāʾ, north of Baghdad, and the ending of the floods has permitted extensive expansion of the city to the east and west.
h and 21st centuries
Hulagu has ruined almost all books that have been translated or authored by distinguished scholars and scientists, the works that were used to spread culture and knowledge and wisdom among the Muslims and non-Muslims were gone into dust. As a result the world witnessed the fall of one the preserving libraries of human intellect and human civilization of that time which has had a calamitous impact on the Islamic civilizational heritage. The Muslim libraries have played a major role in translating and transmitting works of Greek, Persian, Indian and Assyrian physicians and philosophers, works that later became the basic textbooks in European schools of Bologna, Naples and Paris.
The main hall leads to a square shape room above it there was a big dome with 80 cubit high, the main hall also has a statue of knight holding a spear that spins with the spear. The ground floor contained a number of divisions for book closets and sections for translating, authoring, copying, binding, reading as well as studying in all subjects of knowledge, sciences and literature, as for the upper floor it was devoted to residents from authors, translators, students and employees. Unlike what some people may believe about the ancient libraries being unable to match the contemporary bookstores, libraries were the meeting place for men of literature, science, cultures, religions, etc. Originating in a period of rich intellectual tradition, the House of Wisdom built upon earlier scholarly efforts during the Umayyad era and benefited from the Abbasids' interest in foreign knowledge and support for translation. Caliph al-Ma'mun significantly bolstered its activities, emphasizing the importance of knowledge, which led to advancements in science and the arts.
In more peaceful times, modern Baghdad has been a prosperous and sophisticated city whose rich cultural life can be measured by its many museums, universities, and institutes and by the myriad scholars and literati who traveled there and made it their home. Al-Ma’mun was personally involved in the daily life of the House of Wisdom, regularly visiting its scholars and inquiring about their activities. Inspired by Aristotle, al-Mamun regularly initiated regular discussion sessions and seminars among experts in kalām. Kalām is the art of philosophical debate that al-Mamun carried on from his Persian tutor, Ja’far.
It became a provincial capital controlled by the Jalayirid (1400–1411), Qara Qoyunlu (1411–1469), Aq Quyunlu (1469–1508), and Safavid Persian (1508–1534) – (1624–1638) empires. Thousands of architects, engineers, legal experts, surveyors, carpenters, blacksmiths, diggers, and labourers from across the Abbasid Caliphate were brought in to survey, measure, and excavate the foundations. "They say that no other round city is known in all the regions of the world," according to Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi. Four equidistant gates pierced the outer walls where straight roads led to the center of the city.
Baghdad’s international airport (formerly Saddam International) has served a number of international carriers, including Iraqi Airways (1945); it was closed throughout the 1990s because of UN sanctions. These connect Baghdad with Basra and Umm Qaṣr near the Persian Gulf, with Kirkūk and Erbil in the northeast, with Mosul in the north, and with Al-Qāʾim near the Syrian border in the northwest. The main offices of the Central Bank of Iraq (founded in 1947), which has the sole right to issue currency, and the commercial Rafidain Bank (1941) are in Baghdad.
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To the north, urban expansion has absorbed the old townships of Al-Aʿẓamiyyah on the east bank and Al-Kāẓimiyyah on the west bank. Another group of buildings dates from the late 13th and 14th centuries (the Il-Khanid and Jalāyirid periods). These include the minaret of the caliph’s mosque (1289), the ʿAqūlī Mosque (1328), and two superb buildings constructed by the Jalāyirid governor Marjān ibn ʿAbd Allāh—the Marjān Mosque (1356), partly demolished in 1946, and the Marjān Khān (1359), a restored caravansary (inn). The Wasṭānī Gate, the only remnant of the medieval wall, has been converted into the Arms Museum.
Mahmud Ahmad Derwich has found a suitable architectural planning for Bayt al-Hikmah through his studies on the golden castle constructed by Al-Mansur. The house of wisdom composed of a yard surrounded by halls of two floors from its four sides, it was headed by a penthouse on a row of pillars. In the middle of every side among the four sides of the yard there were halls topped by semi-cylindrical dome of 25 cubit.
Iran launched a number of missile attacks against Baghdad in retaliation for Saddam Hussein's continuous bombardments of Tehran's residential districts. In 1991 and 2003, the Gulf War and the US invasion of Iraq caused significant damage to Baghdad's transportation, power, and sanitary infrastructure as the US-led coalition forces launched massive aerial assaults in the city in the two wars. Also in 2003, a minor riot in the city (which took place on 21 July) caused some disturbance in the population. The historic "Assyrian Quarter" of the city, Dora, which boasted a population of 150,000 Assyrians in 2003, made up over 3% of the capital's Assyrian population then. The community has been subject to kidnappings, death threats, vandalism, and house burnings by al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups. As of the end of 2014, only 1,500 Assyrians remained in Dora.[84] The Iraq War took place from 2003 to 2011, but an Islamist insurgency lasted until 2013.
The stars and planets were perceived to influence events on earth and astrology was thus carried out with the greatest attention to detail. Bayt al-Hikmah, like Baghdad itself, was greatly enriched under the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809). Patronage of the arts and sciences—and, of course, luxury—poured in not only from the caliph but also from the viziers and the other courtiers. The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) had influenced not only similar public libraries, but a new form of libraries that were for personal use and for show. One writer has estimated that some private libraries were bigger and richer than public or private, libraries in Western Europe.
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