The House of Wisdom: the translation workshop that changed the history of science

The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) was a library and centre of learning in Baghdad that flourished under the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (reigned 813–833). Scholars gathered books on medicine, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy from several languages and translated them into Arabic.

The translators

The best known is Hunayn ibn Ishaq, a physician who translated many works of Galen and Hippocrates. He compared several manuscripts before translating, a careful method well ahead of its time.

Al-Khwarizmi

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi worked in Baghdad in the same period and wrote The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing. European languages took the word algorithm from his name and algebra from the title of his book.

The road to Europe

Centuries later these Arabic works were translated into Latin in Toledo and Sicily, reached Europe's universities, and fed its scientific revival.