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Baghdad and the Islamic Golden Age

762 CE/Near East/Abbasid Caliphate
Today Baghdad, IraqSpan Abbasid Caliphate · 750–1258 CE

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 knowingOur 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.
◆ The mechanismInformation-medium revolution

A new way to record or transmit information lowers the cost of copying ideas and reorders who holds knowledge and power.

Also: Trade-route shift · Ideological movement

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