🕌 In the Abbasid Caliphate, Al-Ma'mun, born in 786, received governance over the core eastern region of Khorasan after his father's death. Al-Amin, born of a noble mother, took the throne as Emperor (Caliph) and ruled the capital, Baghdad.
When the Emperor Al-Amin attempted to strip Al-Ma'mun of his succession rights, a civil war broke out.
However, Al-Ma'mun, who had grown powerful based on the strong military power and funds of the East, counterattacked and captured Baghdad, and his brother Al-Amin was executed.
Al-Ma'mun won, but he bore the political stigma of being "the one who killed his brother to ascend the throne."
It took him six years to enter Baghdad.
He had to adopt a political reconciliation route with the resisting nobles and citizens of Baghdad.
Along with the reconstruction of Baghdad destroyed by the civil war, Al-Ma'mun adopted a doctrine that emphasized 'Reason and Logic'.
As part of this, he began to gather wisdom. He created a state institution that collected, translated, verified, and reconstructed all scattered wisdom, including Greek philosophy, Indian mathematics, and Persian administrative knowledge.
The result was the 'House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah)'.
He erected independent buildings, built observatories, expanded translation bureaus, and summoned scholars from all over the world.
He collected vast materials—Plato's dialogues, Aristotle's philosophy, Euclid's geometry, Ptolemy's astronomy, Galen's medical texts, Byzantine diplomatic documents, and even Chinese paper-making techniques—paying enormous amounts of gold.
At the 'House of Wisdom', 400,000 to 1,000,000 books were collected and translated.
Al-Ma'mun appointed Christian scholars as key figures in the House of Wisdom, transcending religion. A Persian mathematician coined the word 'Algebra'. It became the etymology of the modern Algorithm.
He built an observatory and ordered scholars to "observe the stars directly," and he recorded observations with them. He even dispatched an expedition to measure the circumference of the Earth, and the result was within a 4% margin of error.
And Al-Ma'mun died during a war. He left behind the 'House of Wisdom'.
On this day, February 10, 1258, the 'House of Wisdom' was destroyed by the Mongol invasion.
The Mongol army threw hundreds of thousands of collected books into the river bottom to make a 'bridge of books' to cross the river. Ink spread from that enormous amount of books, and "the Tigris River flowed black for days."
It wasn't just ink that spread in the river. Because of the blood of 1 million slaughtered people, a black (ink) and red (blood) river flowed.
Aristotle's lost books, ancient Persian history books, and Sanskrit original translations disappeared just like that.
Currently, not a single brick of the 'House of Wisdom' remains. However, the 'House of Wisdom' left behind the etymologies of words such as Algorithm, Zero (0), Alcohol, Alchemy, Average, Syrup, Soda, Cotton, Sugar, Mattress, Sofa, and the names of countless stars.
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