The Obituary
The Abbasids seized the caliphate in 750, toppling the Umayyads and moving the centre of the Islamic world east to a new capital: Baghdad. For the next century the city was the intellectual capital of the planet, where scholars at the House of Wisdom translated Aristotle, advanced algebra, and recorded medicine while much of Europe languished. Political power frayed over time as regional dynasties and Turkic soldiers eclipsed the caliphs. The end was violent: in 1258 Hulagu Khan’s Mongols stormed Baghdad, executed the caliph, and destroyed its libraries. A powerless shadow caliphate lingered in Cairo until 1517.
Worth remembering
- Baghdad's House of Wisdom translated and preserved Greek, Persian, and Indian science during the Islamic Golden Age.
- At its founding it stretched from North Africa to Central Asia, the largest empire of its day.
Sources
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.