Baghdad and the Islamic Golden Age

762 CE — Near East, Abbasid Caliphate

Today: Baghdad, Iraq

At its founding, the Abbasid capital of Baghdad became the largest, richest city on Earth outside China and the heart of a golden age of learning. In its House of Wisdom, scholars translated the philosophy and science of Greece, Persia, and India into Arabic — preserving knowledge the West had lost — and pushed it further, giving the world much of the substance of algebra. While early-medieval Europe is remembered as dark, the Islamic world was carrying and brightening the lamp of learning.

Worth knowing: Our word 'algebra' comes from the title of a Baghdad textbook, and 'algorithm' from its author, al-Khwarizmi — a ninth-century scholar whose name now describes the code running your phone.

Pattern: Information-medium revolution — A new way to record or transmit information lowers the cost of copying ideas and reorders who holds knowledge and power.

Entry 100 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.