The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural and intellectual growth between the 8th and 13th centuries, with some scholars saying it continued into the 16th century. Arab scholars translated ancient works into their native languages, established academic institutions, and made fundamental discoveries in various fields. The era is difficult to summarize, but it led to the founding of hundreds or thousands of modern disciplines and industries.
The Islamic Golden Age, also known as the Islamic Renaissance, is a period of cultural and intellectual growth and activity that persists throughout the Islamic world (from Morocco and Spain in the west to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east) between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. , although some scholars say it continued well into the 16th century. This era began when the Abbasid Caliphate, followers of the tradition of Muhammad, moved their capital from Damascus in Turkey to Baghdad in Iraq.
The leaders of the Abbasid Caliphate were lovers of knowledge and encouraged the establishment of numerous academic and public institutions to promote such knowledge. In a “House of Wisdom,” Arab scholars translated ancient Iraqi, Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Greek, Byzantine, and North African works into their native languages and preserved them for posterity. Around this time, the secret art of papermaking, obtained from Chinese captives in 751, became known to followers of Islam, who later built large paper mills in their capital cities. Unlike the Chinese, who preferred to use brushes to write, the Arabs used pens.
Some institutions established during the Islamic Golden Age include the public hospital, psychiatric hospital, public libraries, degree-granting universities, and astronomical observatory as a research institution. Today, Al Karaouine University in Fez, Morocco is considered the oldest degree-awarding university in the world, founded in 859. The first full-fledged university, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, was founded in 975. These universities were populated by eclectics, scholars who excelled in a variety of secular and religious subjects. The Islamic Golden Age had a high level of literacy and education.
In the 10th century, major Islamic cities such as Baghdad, Tripoli, Cairo and Cordoba had huge libraries with between 10 and 600,000 million books, many of which were destroyed in the following centuries. The body of knowledge generated in this period surpasses the combined works of ancient Greece and Rome and represents the earliest scientific works in history. During this period, fundamental discoveries were made in optics, mechanics, physics, agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy and thousands of other fields. Improvements in agriculture and industrial growth increased the size of the population that could be supported by a fixed number of farmers.
The wide range of achievements during the Islamic Golden Age is difficult to summarize in a short article, during which hundreds or thousands of modern disciplines and industries were initially founded. The background of the Islamic Golden Age is depicted today in fictional works such as Arabian Nights, which consists of over a thousand stories circulating at the time combined into a unitary work. The image of a huge gold-domed mosque or palace is representative of the era.
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