Baghdad's Golden Century

The Abbasids and the World's Greatest Library

von Marcus Russell O'Brien

190 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

For five centuries, the Abbasid Caliphate stood at the center of a remarkable transformation in the medieval world. At its heart was Baghdad-a city built from the ground up to embody imperial ambition, intellectual curiosity, and political power. Founded by al-Mansur in 762, Baghdad grew into one of the largest and most sophisticated cities on earth.Baghdad's Golden Century takes readers inside the rise, brilliance, and eventual unraveling of the Abbasid world. It explores the revolution that brought the Abbasids to power, the construction of the legendary Round City, the extraordinary influence of the Barmakid family, and the celebrated reign of Harun al-Rashid. It then follows the intellectual revolution that transformed Baghdad into a center of global scholarship.At the House of Wisdom, scholars and translators brought together Greek philosophy and science, Persian traditions, and Indian mathematics and astronomy. Their work helped shape fields ranging from algebra and astronomy to medicine, while Baghdad's paper industry and expanding trade networks helped carry knowledge far beyond the Islamic world.But the golden age was never permanent. Political rivalries, civil war, military factions, provincial independence, and the gradual erosion of caliphal authority hollowed out the empire from within. By the time Hulagu Khan's Mongol army reached Baghdad in 1258, the caliphate had already lost much of its former political power.This is the story of how an empire turned conquest into scholarship-and how one of history's greatest centers of civilization slowly lost the power that built it.

• ISBN: 9798192434000
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 13.08.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp