Part II
The transformation of the Abbasid palace library, the House of Wisdom, into a nineteenth-century European academy or fully-fledged modern-day university, has had a very interesting adventure from the viewpoint of historiography. In the following pages, we shall take up the few accounts in the classical Arabic sources and references in the biographies of the scholars associated with this library, which were turned into a myth. Some innocent errors, the shifting of a word’s meaning during translation, the imagination of those dealing with the subject, and also emotional and nationalist aspirations paved the way for the birth of this myth.
The early studies conducted by pioneering orientalists reveal that the first examples of the confusion related to Bayt al-Hikma resulted from the problems of editing Arabic manuscripts or translating specific Arabic words and terms that had no standard equivalents in the European languages. The first example of this confusion is found in Güstav Flügel’s 1858 edition of the Ottoman bibliographer and polymath scholar Katib Çelebi’s (d. 1657) hitherto unpublished famous encyclopedic bibliography Kashf al-Zunun. As quoted by Katib Çelebi from earlier biographic sources, the phrase about Salm, the head of the caliphal library known as the House of Wisdom, which in Arabic reads as “sahib Bayt al-Hikma”, was translated to Latin as “libri beit el-hikmet auctor”.1 Here Salm was introduced as the author of a book entitled Bayt al-Hikma. However, this misunderstanding did not last long because Flügel, in publishing al-Nadim’s Fihrist for the first time in 1871, corrected his mistake, and revised Bayt al-Hikma’s translation as a library and the term sahib as a librarian “bibliothecario oder bibliothecae beit el-hikmet dictae praefecto”.2
Moritz Steinschneider, in his leading study of the Arabic translations of Greek books, refers to Flügel’s mistake [which follows suit in Suter’s work]3 and confirms the information provided by al-Qifti (d. 1248) and Katib Çelebi about Salm and translations made by him.4 However, Steinschneider, while referring to Bayt al-Hikma as the “Institute of Sciences”, unintentionally opens the door to a very wide and long chain of speculations about the nature of this library.
Another interesting example of shifting the meaning of a word can be seen in the translation of the word ‘madrasa’, the main educational institution of the Islamic world, to European languages. Italian priest Toderini Giambattista (d. 1799) in his book on Ottoman Culture De La Litterature des Turcs translates madrasa as “Academy”. Meanwhile, German orientalist F. Wüstenfeld (d. 1899) who translated Ibn Schobba’s (d. 1448) Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyya which documents the life’s and works of early shafi’i scholars, also used the word “academy” as equivalent to madrasa.5
The minor shift in understanding and translation of available historical accounts have had serious effects on the building up of the image of the hitherto unknown institution called Bayt al-Hikma. Hence, Bayt al-Hikma came alive as a great institution of learning with multifarious functions in Carl Brockelmann’s first edition of Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur.6 First published in 1898, it would be for decades an indispensable reference for all scholars of Islamic and Arabic studies. In his account of the translation activity that was carried on during the reign of Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun, Brockelmann presented Bayt al-Hikma, which according to him was founded by the caliph, as an active institution of scientific pursuit including a library and an observatory headed by Salm who was practicing as translator from Persian to Arabic. Brockelmann repeats this version of Bayt al-Hikma in the 1937 edition of his Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur7 “in Baghdad al-Ma’mun founded the Bayt al-Hikma which also housed a library and observatory”. This statement constitutes the main source for the image of an institute of science that includes many subsidiary departments for different scientific pursuits. It is rather paradoxical to mention that it was Brockelmann in his other studies, who sufficed himself with the real identification of Bayt al-Hikma as a court library founded by al-Ma’mun where he treasured books of Islamic and foreign cultures.8
Brockelmann drew the information about the translation of books in the early Abbasid period from Steinschneider, who did not suggest any of the new elements put forward in the expanded image of the House of Wisdom. Since none of the few references in the primary sources, however slight, conjectured in this context, it may be concluded that the source of such an image was probably due to the misunderstanding and confusion of references about the scholars, who were under the patronage of al-Ma’mun and involved in the translation activities and the Shamsiyah observatory, as will be explained in more detail below.
It seems clear that in presenting his first version of Bayt al-Hikma, Brockelmann was under the influence of the model of European academies in general and the Berlin Academy in particular, the third major academy in Europe. As envisaged by Leibniz, the societās under the patronage of the Prussian Court would be composed of different departments, salas, laboratories, and an observatory, consequently rising to the peak of learned societies in Europe, and would stand alongside the Paris Academy.9 Perhaps Brockelmann was inspired by the Berlin Academy which impelled him to read in the primary Arabic sources of the ninth-century Abbasid court library, a nineteenth-century European academy. This would be his source of inspiration, supposedly, an academy of the Abbasid court compared to the academy of the Prussian Court.
The year 1928, strangely enough, witnessed three publications related to the reign of al-Ma’mun and cultural life during his reign, with diverse references to the House of Wisdom showing the different motivations of the authors. The first publication of this year was a doctoral thesis titled The Contribution of Arabs to Education by a Palestinian student Khalil Totah at Columbia University.10 He later published his thesis in Arabic in 1933.11 The introductory remarks of this young scholar show how enthusiastic and emotional he was about the glory of Arabic civilization in its golden age and his aspirations for the future of public education in the “awakening Arab world”. He presented the House of Wisdom as an institution of high education where mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy were studied. The astonishing aspect of Totah’s account of Bayt al-Hikma was that while he quoted from the known primary sources correctly, his comments were totally baseless; so in the conclusion he makes the following strange remarks:
In conclusion the “House of Wisdom” appears to have been the university of Baghdad with its distinguished performance, library and observatory… [it] may justly claim the honor of having been the first university of both the medieval and the modern world; for it bore the torch aloft long before Bologna, Paris, Prague, Oxford and Cambridge …12
The second publication was a book in Arabic about the age of al-Ma’mun (‘Asr al-Ma’mun) written by Dr. Ahmad Farid Rifa’i a graduate of the Egyptian University.13 The book is a compilation from a number of chronicles and lectures of his Egyptian and European professors at the university. Despite his reference to Totah’s book published earlier in the same year, he does not share any of unbiased exaggerations related to the House of Wisdom, which he refers to as the library of the “Ma’munian state”.14
The third book published in this year presents new claims to the baseless image of Bayt al-Hikma. The construed image of Bayt al-Hikma, closely related to the European academy model, reached its maturity by acquiring a fixed date of establishment and the addition of a school of translation to its elaborate functions. Max Meyerhof (d. 1945), a German ophthalmologist living in Cairo, became interested in the history of his profession and published the original text and the English translation of the Book of the Translations of Ten Treatises on the Eye ascribed to Abbasid physician and translator Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (809–877). In his introduction, Meyerhof fixed the date of the establishment of Bayt al-Hikma as 830:
…. The caliph who appointed him [Hunain Ibn Ishaq] as a kind of superintendent to his “library-academy” which he founded in Baghdad in 830 A.D., under the name of Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) … A staff of young translators was employed in this institution in making translations from Greek into Syriac and later into Arabic ….15
Thus, he portrays the House of Wisdom as the caliph’s translation school where Hunayn has trained his pupils.16 It is clear that Meyerhof misunderstood the scattered references in the primary sources related to the biography of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq and added a school of translation to the “academy-library”.
Two years later, Meyerhof in a famous article titled “From Alexandria to Baghdad” repeated his assertion that the Bayt al-Hikma was established by al-Ma’mun in 830. He also maintained that it was first headed by Yuhanna Ibn Masawayh who was Hunayn’s teacher, but this time he claims that Hunayn Ibn Ishaq was appointed to the head of “this school” by the Caliph al-Mutawakkil after 25 years of Ibn Masawaih’s leadership.17
It is obvious that Meyerhof thought that the positions of the director (sahib) of Bayt al-Hikma and the person who was in charge of the translations (amin) were the same; however, this was not the case. A careful examination of the sources at hand reveals that there is no mention of Yuhanna Ibn Masawayh or Hunayn’s appointment as the director of Bayt al-Hikma, but there is a clear reference to their being in charge of translations as (amin). It is reported that Yuhanna Ibn Masawayh was put in charge of translations by Harun al Rashed,18 whereas Hunayn Ibn Ishaq was appointed to this task by al-Mutawakkil.19 It is also quoted that as a young man he was asked by al-Ma’mun to translate Greek books into Arabic.20 At any rate, none of these references relate to their appointments as head of Bayt al-Hikma.
All these fictitious elements that were added to the image of the House of Wisdom started with Brockelmann, continued with Meyerhof and Totah, and then were combined in Phillip Hitti’s account of the golden age of al-Ma’mun in his popular book History of the Arabs, first published in 1937. The book that presented this image to a wider readership with its numerous editions and translations into Arabic and other languages, drew the standard picture of the Abbasid House of Wisdom. The most interesting element in Hitti’s presentation was his assumption that the establishment of Bayt al-Hikma was the result of a determined policy.
In pursuance of his policy, al-Ma’mun in 830 established his famous Bait al-Hikma in Baghdad, a combination of library, academy and translation bureau which in many respects proved to be the most important educational institution since the foundation of the Alexandria Museum in the first half of the third century B.C.21
Hitti did not elaborate on what he meant by referring to the Alexandria Museum and did not give any evidence for his claim that Bayt al-Hikma was an educational institution. In a clear-cut statement, Hitti claimed that the translation movement under al-Ma’mun and his successors centered mainly in “the newly founded academy”.
To complete the image of a modern European academy, Hitti annexed the second of the two observatories founded by al-Ma’mun to this great academy.
In connection with his Bait al-Hikma, al-Ma’mun erected at Baghdad a new shamsiyah gate, an astronomical observatory under the directorship of Sind ibn ‘Ali, a converted Jew, and Yahya ibn abi-Mansur. To this observatory al-Ma’mun soon added another one on Mt. Qaysun outside Damascus.22
This undocumented, unauthentic image of Bayt al-Hikma was widely disseminated by the several editions of Hitti’s book since 1937 until the present day,23 as well as its concise Arabic translation (first edition 1946),24 and drew the standard picture of Bayt al-Hikma.
In 1967, Yusuf Eche published his doctoral thesis entitled Les Bibliotheque Arabes, presenting the first detailed study on the House of Wisdom. This comprehensive research that he had started in 1934 on the history of what he calls public and semi-public libraries, is composed of three parts, the first of which is devoted to the Abbasid House of Wisdom and the history of the early libraries in Islam. Eche who remarkably exhausted almost all available primary sources in both published and manuscript form, does not leave much room for those who wish to search for further information about the House of Wisdom in classical literature. However, as he identifies the already established image of the House of Wisdom, he mixes the solid evidence he found with what he calls “suggestive facts/faits suggestive”. For instance, he discusses the function of what the primary sources present as the “secretary of translations” (Amin ala al-Tarjama). First, he presents a hypothetical description of the duties of the holder of this position and presumes that it consists of: (1) studying the books which were acquired and choosing those that will be translated; (2) distributing the books to the translators for translation; (3) checking over the works of these translators and coordinating their work when needed; (4) after the translations were finished, presenting them to Bayt al-Hikma, where they would be copied by calligraphers and permanently recorded.25 After a long discussion of the existing historical accounts, he arrives at the following conclusion without any proof: the translation activity centered on Bayt al-Hikma was organized according to a systematic plan. The “secretary of translations” was the highest supervisor; the work was distributed among senior translators assisted by writers, who most probably prepared the first draft; an editor was assigned to make corrections on their language. Isn’t this type of an organization the most suitable one that enables it to perform its work in the most meticulous and fastest way?26 Eche’s long work dedicated to the study of the House of Wisdom and its epoch ends with the following definition of this “semi-public institute”.
It seems to us as we have shown, with sufficient reports and facts, that Bayt al-Hikma was established according to the Arabs’ conception of this type of ancient institutions. Its founders and patrons took care to collect the works of ancient scholars, have them translated, commented on and summarized; they engaged astrologers who were equipped with instruments and probably worked in observatories and brought together scholars and staff to deliberate and study these books and engage in debates. The caliph provided lodgings for those that worked here. We believe that we can now define the Bayt al-Hikma in its developed form as a quasi-public institution comprising a set of branches with the aim of developing scientific activities, such as collecting and translating books for studies and scientific productions; maintaining a staff of astrologers capable of fulfilling the patrons’ wish to be foretold of the future; housing a certain number of scholars who would work there and hold what he calls “réunions spéculatives”.27
The concoction of the House of Wisdom’s false image reached its peak with a book of more than 500 pages devoted totally to its history. The author of the book claims that it was a doctoral dissertation without clearly mentioning where he defended the compilation and array of his gross errors, which unfortunately escaped the attention of academic critics. The book presents detailed information on various activities of this academy, public library, translation center, and the first Islamic university. It includes curricula of the different departments of the university (mathematical and natural sciences) furnished in an elaborate style; the payroll of the faculty members and the stipends for the students and their dormitories are also presented. Lists of the books translated from different languages are listed and the commencement ceremonies are also discussed in detail with reference to the academic dress to be worn by the teaching staff and students. The innocent ninth-century palace library of the Abbasid Caliph acquired this final image at the end of the twentieth century.28
It seems that the publication of Khedr Ahmed Attallah’s book has encouraged scholars to publish independent monographs and “studies” on the same subject. In 1996, a master’s dissertation of 252 pages titled “Beyt-ül Hikme” by Mustafa Demirci was published in Istanbul.29 Examining this book, it is obvious that it was following the footsteps of Attallah and mainly recycling the wrong information popularized in the secondary literature.
A new episode in the long history of creating the myth was the establishment of a new national institution with the same name of the House of Wisdom in 1995 in Baghdad under the patronage of the President of the Republic. After the establishment of the new national cultural institution carrying the same name of Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad in 1995, two publications by this institution on the Abbasid House of Sciences came through. The first, printed in 2000, was a bilingual book in Arabic and English prepared by Sundus Abbas, whose title in English reads “Bayt’ol-Hikma constant Contribution 1200 years”. This title means that the House of Wisdom continued in its activities from the reign of Harun al-Rashid (r. 768–809) to the time of President Saddam Husain.
The second official publication by this institution was by Prof. Dr. Abd al-Jabbar Naji (2008). It was a serious academic study addressing many related questions on the history of the Abbasid House of Science. Though it relied on primary sources, however, it was still full of the exaggerated fancy depictions. For instance, Prof. Jabbar has “developed” the so-called center of translation to consist of different departments assigned to specific sorts of books on astronomy, medicine and the certain languages like “Nabataean” and “Indian” languages.
The highlight in the new episode was the organization of an international conference on the 1200th anniversary of the establishment of the Abbasid Bayt al-Hikma organized in Bagdad in 2001. The speeches and papers presented at the symposium once again registered the invented story and image of Bayt al-Hikma with additional undocumented wild exaggerations to the extent of claiming that Bayt al-Hikma had “roots that go deep in history; that is to say in the heritage of ancient Iraq from the days of the Sumerians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians”.30 They gave it an age that ran for “six centuries from the third century of Hijra to mid-seventh century of Hijra”31 (!!) until it was burnt by Hulagu on 17 January 1258, who killed its scholars and flung the contents of its library into the waters of the Tigris”.32
It is worth noting that the representative of the UNESCO Director-General, at the inauguration of this symposium in his tribute to the Abbasid Institution, generously identified it with UNESCO by taking the liberty of saying “accordingly I would say UNESCO would have been established here in Baghdad in the ninth century”. It is also worth mentioning that the papers submitted to this “international ceremonial meeting” was published the same year in two big volumes (Volume I: 659 pages; Volume II: 556 pages).
The last study on this topic is devoted to illustrating “the ascendance of the Islamic tradition of science institutionalization” and the
founding and patronage of academies, the example of Baghdad’s Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) which flourished in the ninth century AD [which is] examined closely in the light of primary Arabic sources on the subject as well as recent contemporary international literature.
The study then goes beyond “the existing narratives on Bayt al-Hikma to argue that it was an ‘academy of sciences’ that preceded by centuries the Academia dei Lincei of Rome, considered by many scholars as the world’s first academy of sciences established in 1603”.33
With this quotation, the process of creating a myth arrives at its last destination and links the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid and Founder of the House of Wisdom Academy with the founder of the oldest Italian academy, the Italian aristocrat Federico Cesi (1585–1630), and makes the Abbasid “academy” of the ninth century a source of inspiration for the seventeenth century’s first academy in Europe.
With the increasing interest among Western readers in the scientific activities within Islam, the House of Wisdom came to the fore and attracted the attention of wide segments of readership to the effect that two books in English carrying the same title of the House of Wisdom were published in 2009 and 2010.
The first book, by Jonathan Lyons, was subtitled “How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization” and the second by Jim al-Khalili bore the subtitle “How Arabic Science Served Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance”.
These two books are well researched and eloquently written, presenting to the western readership an attractive narrative of the scientific advancement that happened during the history of Islam and the role of these achievements in building universal advancement in science and culture. They draw on a wealth of information published for narrow circles of scholars that were not accessible to the public. However, both authors were clearly influenced by the already extant myth. For instance, J. Lyons is very convinced by the myth, stating that “al-Mansur established a royal library modelled after those of the great Persian Kings”. He maintains that
over time, the House of Wisdom came to comprise a translation bureau, a library and book repository and an academy of scholars and intellectuals from across the empire. Its overriding function, however, was the safeguarding of invaluable knowledge, a fact reflected in other terms applied at times by Arab historians to describe the project, such as the Treasury of the Books of Wisdom and simply the Treasury of Wisdom. Experts affiliated with this imperial institution staffed the caliph’s observatory as well and took part in scientific experiments at his behest. But the House of Wisdom also played an important role in the cultivation of Abbasid literary works.34
Meanwhile, Prof. Jim al-Khalili, in his lively, engaging and fascinating book, mentions that “far more likely in my view is that the library, or repository of books (Khizanat), that was set up by the early caliphs was indeed distinct from al-Ma’mun academy and that the medieval Arabic historians know this”.35
So, it is amazing that the mythical image of the House of Wisdom developed over the years and through generations of scholars and writers, became well established to the extent that the bare reality stands as an unwelcomed stranger and the myth as a household acquittance.
Notes
1. Katib Jelebi, a Mustafa ben Abdallah, Lexicon bibliographicum et encyclopædicum: ad codicum Vindobonensium Parisiensium et Berolinensis,edited by Gustavus Fluegel, Tomus septimus, London, 1858, 711.
2. Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-fihrist, edited by Gustav Flügel, Vol. 2, Leipzig, F.C.W. Vogel, 1871, p. 108.
3. Heinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und ihre werke, Abhandle zur Geschichte den Wisseneschaften Heft.
4. Moritz Steinschneider, “Die arabischen Uebersetzungen aus dem Griechischen”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50, 1896, p. 201.
5. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, Die Academien Der Araber und Ihre Lehrer, Göttingen, 1837.
6. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, Vol. I, Weimar, Emil Felber Verlag, 1898, p. 202.
7. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, Vol. I, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1937, pp. 220–221.
8. Carl Brockelmann, “Der Islam von seinen Anfängen bis auf die Gegenwart”, in Ullsteins Weltgeschichte. Die Entwicklung der Menschheit in Staat und Gessellschaft, in Kultur und Geistesleben vol. III: Geschichte des Orients, edited by Pflugk-Harttung, Julius von, published by Berlin, Ullstein Verlag, 1910, p. 114; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der İslamischen Völker und Staaten, Institut für Geschischte und Kultur des Nahen Orients an der Universitat München, Verlag von R. Oldenbourg, München, 1939, pp. 114–115.
9. James E. McClellan III, Science Reorganized, Columbia University Press, 1983, pp. 68–74
10. Khalil Totah, The Contribution of the Arabs to Education, New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1926, pp. 26–29.
11. Khalil Totah, Al-Tarbiya Ťınd Al-Arab, Jerusalem 1933. Totah in the Arabic version places Bayt al-Hikma as an institution of high learning after the completion of primary and secondary education!
12. Khalid Totah, The Contribution, p. 28.
13. Ahmad Ferid Rifa’i, ‘Asr al-Ma’mun, Cairo, 1928.
14. Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 373, 394.
15. The book of the Ten Treatises on the Eye ascribed to Huain Ibn Ishaq, translated by Max Meyerhof, Cairo, Government Press, 1928, p. XIX.
16. Ibid., p. XXII.
17. Max Meyerhof, von Alexandrien nach Bagdad, pp. 16–17.
18. Ibn Juljul, p. 65; al-Qifti, pp. 380–391; Ibn Abi Usaybia, Uyun al-enba’ fi tabaqat al- atibba’, edited by Nizar Rıza, Beirut, Mektebet al-Hayat, p. 246.
19. Ibn Juljul, p. 69; al-Qifti, pp. 171–177; Ibn Abi Usaybia, 246.
20. Ibn Abi Usaybia, p. 260.
21. P. Hitti, History of Arabs, London, MacMillan, 1937, p. 310. Also see similar statement on page 410.
22. Ibid., pp. 373–375.
23. P. Hitti’s book 9th edition 1968, 10th edition 1970 and reprinted many times until 2002.
24. P. Hitti, al-Arab, Beirut, 1946, pp. 118–119.
25. Youssef Eche, Les bibliothèques arabes publiques et semi-publiques en Mésopotamie, en Syrie et en Égypte au Moyen Age, Damascus, Institute Français de Damas, 1967, pp. 23–24.
26. Ibid., p. 34.
27. Ibid., p. 56.
28. Khedr Ahmed Attallah, Bayt al-Hikma fi ‘Asr al-’Abbasyyin, Cairo, Dar Al Fikr Al-Araby, n.d.
29. Mustafa Demirci, Beytü’l-Hikme, İnsan Yayınları, 2016.
30. See (the Book of collection of Papers delivered on the 1200th Anniversary of the Foundation of Bayt al-Hikma) Bayt al-Hikma al-Abbasi: A’rakat al-Madi ve Ru’yat al-Hadır, Baghdad, Bayt al-Hikma Institution Publishing, 2001, p. 21.
31. Ibid., p. 3.
32. Ibid., p. 13.
33. Moneed Rafe’ Zou’bi, Mohd Hazim Shah, Science Institutionalization in Early Islam, DAR Publisher, The University of Jordan, 2015.
34. Jonathan Lyons, The House of Wisdom, Newark, P. Bloomsbury Press, 2009, p. 63.
35. Jim Al-Khalili, The House of Wisdom, London, Penguin Books, 2010, p. 70.