Libraries · a Light

The House of Wisdom was probably a library, not an academy

Baghdad's Bayt al-Hikma is often described as a great research academy where Greek learning was translated by teams of salaried scholars. The evidence is thinner than that picture. Early sources mention it mainly as a palace library, in existence under Harun al-Rashid and expanded under al-Ma'mun, associated above all with translation from Persian and with astronomical work. Dimitri Gutas and others have shown that most Greek to Arabic translation was commissioned privately, by wealthy families such as the Banu Musa, who reportedly paid Hunayn ibn Ishaq in gold matching the weight of the books he produced. The translation movement was real, expensive and enormous. It simply was not run out of one building with a famous name.

Baghdad · 8th and 9th centuries