The House of Wisdom, founded by the caliph al-Mamun, became the
world’s center of learning. Whereas Alexandria had been the previous
intellectual capital, with Greek and Roman manuscripts written on locally
sourced papyrus, Baghdad become the new chaperone of philosophical and
scientific inquiry, with conversion of all documents into Arabic, scribed on
locally manufactured paper.^23 One of the early assimilations that occurred
at the House of Wisdom was the adoption of Hindu numerals (1–9) as well
as the base-ten system and the concept of “zero.” An Arabic system of
expressing abstract formulas (to the consternation of high school students
everywhere) was introduced by al-Khwarizmi, which he termed al jabr, or
algebra. The Abbasid Muslims incorporated the world’s catalog of
knowledge, including alchemy, mathematics, science, and law. As Islamic
libraries flourished and dwarfed European libraries, the scientific and
cultural stagnation of the Western Middle Ages ground on.
The earliest figure in the Arab tradition was Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq as ̣-Ṣabāḥ
al-Kindī (known as al-Kindi, or in Latin, Alkindus), born in Basra (present
day southern Iraq) of noble Arabic descent, and called the “philosopher of
the Arabs.” Al-Kindi was a polymath and was critical in translating
Aristotle, the Neo-Platonists, and Greek scientists and mathematicians.
One of the most important medieval physicians was a Persian-born
scholar named al-Razi (Latin: Rhazes), who was trained in Baghdad. Not
confined to translating, Rhazes described smallpox and measles, and
critically, was the first to seriously challenge the authority and infallibility
of Galen. For instance, Rhazes postulated that fever was merely a defense
mechanism and not an issue of humoral imbalance. His contribution was
stunning; he was a “thinker explicitly questioning, and empirically testing,
the widely accepted theories of an ancient giant, while making original
contributions to a field.”^24
Another Persian-born Arabic speaker was ibn Sina (known as Avicenna,
980–1037 C.E.), widely considered the greatest physician since
Hippocrates. Avicenna claimed to have memorized the Koran by age ten,
and was a polymath, writing prodigiously on philosophical, scientific, and
medical topics. He famously published The Canon of Medicine, a
compilation of medical knowledge in a massive multivolume work that
was later translated into Latin and would be a classic in the West for
centuries. The Canon of Medicine was the main textbook throughout
European medical schools (Montpellier, Bologna, Paris), even into the