Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden Age is the era of the Abbasid caliphate. Its intellectual life centred on Baghdad, the capital the Abbasids created near the former Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon.

The emblematic institution of that world was the House of Wisdom. Harun al-Rashid was a patron of arts and learning who wished Muslims to lead the world.

The Abbasids were an Arabic dynasty that took the caliphate in 750 CE and retained spiritual supremacy as caliphs until 1258 CE. They inherited the hereditary principle that the Umayyads had introduced, and replaced that dynasty as rulers. The founding of Baghdad by al-Mansur, near the former Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon, was intended to replace Damascus as the seat of government.

Caliphal power was later eroded by the Buyids, who captured Baghdad in 945 CE and reduced the caliphs to figureheads until the Seljuks overthrew them in 1055 CE, while a rival Shia caliphate appeared in western North Africa under the Fatimids in 909 CE.

Abd al-Rahman I escaped the slaughter and raced across the Abbasid realm to Spain, where he founded the Emirate of Cordoba in 756 CE.

The Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom, was a royal library in Baghdad that reached its zenith under Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun, and it played a central role in acquiring and translating scientific and philosophical treatises, particularly Greek ones. The translation movement that grew up around Baghdad placed the entire Aristotelian corpus at the disposal of learned Muslims, together with translations of Galen's medical works, through the work of Hunayn, Ishaq and the other translators associated with them. Most scholars hold that this movement of translation from Greek gave rise to the intellectual tradition of falsafa.

Al-Ma'mun supplied the intellectual weaponry of his inquisition by importing Hellenistic thought and sponsoring the translation of Greek philosophy into Arabic. The simultaneous translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics and De Caelo, of certain writings of Alexander of Aphrodisias, of Plotinus' Enneads and of Proclus' Elements of Theology was of momentous importance for the development of falsafa.

Islamic medicine was built on Greek and Roman tradition, and for Islamic scholars Galen and Hippocrates were the pre-eminent authorities.

The word algorithm descends from Algoritmi, the Latin rendering of al-Khwarizmi's name. The earliest known text offering a direct treatment of decimal fractions is al-Uqlidisi's arithmetic. Al-Kashi contributed to the development of decimal fractions for approximating algebraic numbers and also for real numbers such as pi, and his contribution was so major that for many years he was considered their inventor.

Algebra was a unifying theory that allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes to all be treated as algebraic objects, and it gave mathematics a development path much broader in concept than that which had existed before. Khayyam's Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra contained a complete classification of cubic equations with geometric solutions obtained by intersecting conic sections.

Omar Khayyam directed the work of the astronomers of the Observatory of Esfahan for eighteen years, and within that tenure he contributed to the reform of the calendar in 1079.

Al-Biruni introduced techniques to measure the earth and distances on it using triangulation, and he found the radius of the earth to be 6339.6 km, a value not obtained in the West until the sixteenth century.

With the support of Abu'l Abbas Ma'mun, al-Biruni built an instrument at Jurjaniyya for observing solar meridian transits, and in 1016 he made fifteen observations with it.

Ibn Sina, known in the Latin West as Avicenna, is remembered above all as a polymath and physician whose Canon of Medicine defined the field of medicine from Europe to India for six hundred years. The work was translated into Latin and disseminated throughout Europe, where it was published more than thirty-five times during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alone. Its authority was not confined to one civilization: the Canon continued to be taught as a medical textbook in Europe and in the Islamic world until the early modern period.

Ibn Rushd was born in Cordova in 1126 into an influential Andalusian family that was famous for its judicial power and for its scholarship in the religious sciences. His commentaries on Aristotle carried the Greek philosopher's thought into the Latin West, where his reception shaped the scholastic tradition.

Ibn Sina's thoughts on God and philosophy influenced Muslims, Jews and Christians, including Thomas Aquinas.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba is a unique artistic achievement and an irreplaceable testimony to the Caliphate of Cordoba, and it is the most emblematic monument of Islamic religious architecture.

Al-Kindi, who lived around the period from the year 800 to about 870 of the common era, was the first self-identified philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

By the 1260s the label Averroist was used in a pejorative sense in Latin Europe, particularly in connection with Ibn Rushd's teaching on the unicity of the intellect, the eternity of the world, and determinism.

Cordoba became the capital of an emirate depending on Damascus and in 929 the headquarters of the independent Caliphate established by Abderraman III, and its period of greatest glory saw some 300 mosques and innumerable palaces and public buildings built.

Paper reached the Islamic world through knowledge learned from China, though the craft was adapted: linen served as the raw material in place of mulberry bark.

• 750 CE
  Abbasid accession
  The Abbasid dynasty came to power.
• 786–809
  Caliphate of Harun al-Rashid
  A patron of arts and learning who wished Muslims to lead the world, he presided over the establishment of the Bayt al Hikma, or House of Wisdom, in Baghdad, where classic Greek works were translated into Arabic.^{1Abbasid Dynasty · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 813–833
  Caliphate of al-Ma'mun
  His reign is dated to this span.
• 980
  Birth of Ibn Sina
  Ibn Sina was born near Bukhara.
• 1037
  Death of Ibn Sina
  Ibn Sina died in this year.
• 1079
  Calendar reform at Esfahan
  A calendar reform was undertaken at Esfahan.
• 1126
  Birth of Ibn Rushd
  Ibn Rushd was born in Cordova.
• 1198
  Death of Ibn Rushd
  Ibn Rushd died in Marrakesh.
• 1270
  Latin translation of the Kitab al-Manazir
  The seven-volume Kitab al-Manazir, considered by many to be Ibn al-Haytham's most important contribution to optics, was rendered into Latin as the Opticae thesaurus Alhazeni.^{16Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham · MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews ↗}