page_title: House of Wisdom
section_title: Main activities
hierarchical_section_title: House of Wisdom / Main activities
context_page_description: The House of Wisdom, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad, refers to either a major Abbasid public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad or to a large private library belonging to the Abbasid Caliphs during the Islamic Golden Age. The House of Wisdom is the subject of an active dispute over its functions and existence as a formal academy, an issue complicated by a lack of physical evidence following the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate and a reliance on corroboration of literary sources to construct a narrative. The House of Wisdom was founded either as a library for the collections of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late 8th century or was a private collection created by Al-Mansur to house rare books and collections of poetry in both Arabic and Persian.
  The House of Wisdom and its contents were destroyed in the Siege of Baghdad in 1258, leaving very little in the way of archaeological evidence for the House of Wisdom, such that most knowledge about it is derived from the works of contemporary scholars of the era such as Al-Tabari and Ibn al-Nadim.
context_section_description: The House of Wisdom included a society of scientists and academics, a translation department and a library that preserved the knowledge acquired by the Abbasids over the centuries. They also researched and studied alchemy, which was later used to create the structure of modern chemistry. Furthermore, linked to it were also astronomical observatories and other major experimental endeavors. Institutionalized by Al-Ma'mun, the academy encouraged the transcription of Greek philosophical and scientific efforts. Additionally, he imported manuscripts of important texts that were not accessible to the Islamic countries from Byzantium to the library. The House of Wisdom was much more than a library, and a considerable amount of original scientific and philosophical work was produced by scholars and intellectuals related to it. This allowed Muslim scholars to verify astronomical information that was handed down from past scholars.
caption: 13th-century Arabic translation of De Materia Medica.
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