Charlemagne and the Arabic World

At the end of yesterday's post on the Auld Alliance I mentioned that France (or the Franks) had formed earlier alliances, some of them seemingly more unusual than that with Scotland. If the cultures of the French and the Scots were different, imagine the cultural divide between the Franks of the 8th and 9th centuries and the Abbasid Caliphate.

In the Life of Charlemagne written by Einhard, and a few other Latin/Frankish sources, we find references to the Carolingians reaching out to the Abbasids. The Franks had clashed with the predecessors of the Abbasids, the Umayyad Caliphate, most notably at the Battle of Tours in 732. The Umayyads were finally expelled from Gaul by Pepin the Short.

After the collapse of the Umayyads and the rise of the Abbasids, Pepin reached out to Caliph al-Mansur. The Carolingians were powerful enough in Western Europe at that time that the Abbasids were open to the possibilities of an alliance; Umayyads still existed on the Iberian Peninsula, posing a potential threat to the southern border of the Carolingians and the western border of the Abbasids.

A Carolingian embassy visited Baghdad in 765 and returned with gifts after three years, followed by an Abbasid embassy to France in 768. Arabic coins from that era are found throughout the Carolingian world, and Arabic gold was exchanged for materials like timber and iron; also, slaves went eastward.

The alliance included a request from the Abbasids in 777 for military aid against the Umayyads in Cordoba. Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees into Iberia in 778 with a large force, joining in Zaragoza with the Abbasid forces of Sulaymaniyah al-Arabi in an attempt to reconquer the peninsula. This was unsuccessful, and on Charlemagne's return to the north he was ambushed disastrously by Basques at Roncevaux.

Charlemagne did not give up on an alliance, however, and had a strong relationship with Harun al-Rashid, who gifted Charlemagne an elephant, recorded in the Royal Frankish Annals as Abul-Abbas. A few embassies went back and forth between the courts of Charlemagne and al-Rashid. (The illustration is of al-Rashid receiving a Frankish embassy.)

A few centuries later, France saw value in another alliance to the east, with the Mongol Empire. The reason and the result will be tomorrow's topic.

The House of Wisdom

Established during the Golden Age of Islam in the newly founded capital of Baghdad, the Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) had a simple goal: to become the premier center for learning and culture in the Islamic world. It was a library that had rooms for reading, classrooms for lecturing, departments that handled translations, binding, cartography, et cetera. It may have been founded by Caliph al-Mansur, but it just as likely it was created by his son, Harun al-Rashid.

Because Baghdad was the capital, there was a constant flow of scholars seeking and bringing knowledge, and traders bringing in books from all over. Some of the greatest scholars and philosophers in the Islamic world came from Baghdad, including al-Kindi.

Under al-Rashid, the House of Wisdom began a translation movement, gathering manuscripts in Chinese, Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, and Syriac to turn them into Arabic. Astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy were important, but so was poetry. Under his son, al-Ma'Mun, the House of Wisdom expanded due to increased financial support, and translators not only made a good living but were considered to be of high social status. al-Ma'Mun was said to appreciate science more than the spoils of war. There is a story that al-Ma'Mun had a dream in which he and Aristotle discussed what is good. The caliph would regularly visit the House and engage in philosophical debates.

Not just a center for learning, the House also trained architects, engineers, medics, and civil servants. al-Ma'Mun organized scholars to map the world, to accurately determine the size of the world, and he was personally involved in excavations of the pyramids at Giza. He built the first astronomical observatories in Baghdad and funded major research projects. Al-Ma'Mun was the first ruler to fund what is sometimes called "big science."

Long before there were formal universities, the House of Wisdom was a place where all learning was encouraged and taught. Tomorrow, sadly, we will see how it was all destroyed.