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.

Harun al-Rashid

Harun al-Rashid (c.763 - 24 March 809) was the fifth ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate, his reign considered the start of Islam's Golden Age. He is mentioned in many of the tales from the 1001 Nights, which attests to his historical impact.

His full name was Abu Ja'far Harun ibn Muhammad al-Mahdi, but was usually shortened. The "al-Rashid" epithet means "the just" or "the upright." As a very young man, he was nominally in charge of several expeditions against the Byzantine Empire (older generals probably made the decisions), but was given credit, and named governor of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia. He left the day-to-day administration of these to his tutor, Ja'far ibn Yahya.

His father, al-Mahdi, died in 785, and his older brother al-Hadi died of unknown causes in 786, making Harun a young caliph. He made Ja'far ibn Yahya his vizier. Ja'far was of the powerful Iranian Barmakid family, and brought in many Barmakids to administer the kingdom.

Harun was a great supporter of art and culture. His father had founded Baghdad, and Harun probably founded the extensive library called the House of Wisdom. He also was more tolerant of previous dissenters, releasing from captivity many of the Umayyads imprisoned by his brother when the Abbasids took over.

He also fostered relations with the west. An embassy from the court of Charlemagne came in 799 to Baghdad to open friendly relations. Harun sent gifts to Charlemagne, including a clock that had different animated figurines and chimes at the hours, which Charlemagne thought magical. He also sent an elephant.

Like Charlemagne (and Arthur), Harun's reputation took on a legendary status and he entered into the literature and culture as a figure in many stories. He appears in a score of tales from the 1001 Nights, including The Three Apples and the Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and His Son Badr.

Harun did make a few strategic errors. He allowed local administrators of the countries under him to exercise more autonomy than was usual in exchange for large annual payments to the caliph. This enriched Harun's coffers, allowing him to make great advances in supporting art and culture, but de-centralized the power, making the caliph's position weaker. Also, he divided the kingdom between his two sons, who fought each other once Harun was dead.

While he was alive, though, he accomplished great things for his people, one of which was the aforementioned House of Wisdom. Let's see what that was all about next time.

A Murder Mystery, Part 2

This illustration and the post that follows will make more sense if you read Part 1.

So Caliph Harun al-Rashid has given his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, three days to find the slave who took the apple or face execution. Once again Ja'far, the most reluctant of detectives, cowers in his home rather than confront an obviously impossible task.

On the third day, he bids his family goodbye, knowing he will never return. When he hugs his youngest daughter, he feels a round lump in her pocket. It is the apple! The girl says she got it from their slave, Rayhan. Ja'far realizes the culprit who caused a terrible calamity was his own household slave!

Ja'far takes Rayhan to Caliph al-Rashid and pleads for the slave to be forgiven, telling the caliph the "Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and His Son Badr al-Dín Hasan." The caliph is amazed by the tale and pardons the slave.

Harun al-Rashid has one more magnanimous deed: he forgives the young man who murdered his own wife, gives him one of his own slaves to replace her, and showers him with gifts.

The Tale of the Three Apples, also known as the Tale of the Murdered Woman, is a quintessential murder mystery in that suspense is drawn out by a series of events that take unraveling over time. What makes it unusual, however, is that the character designated to solve the crime does little or nothing to do so, and actively avoids even trying to help. It is also interesting that, given that the fragments and manuscripts of the 1001 Nights have various collections of tales, this one is found in every version.

What, however, is "Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and His Son Badr al-Dín Hasan" (besides a tale even more complex than the one we just finished?) and how did it help change the caliph's mind about punishing the slave? Well, that is a story for tomorrow.

A Murder Mystery, Part 1

One of the stories that is found in every fragment/manuscript of the 1001 Nights is called by two different titles: "The Three Apples" or "The Tale of the Murdered Woman." It's worth sharing, but is long and complex enough that, like Scheherazade, I will leave you waiting for the conclusion.

During the time of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, a fisherman discovers a large locked chest by the Tigris River which he sells to the caliph. Breaking it open, the al-Rashid finds the cut-up body of a young woman. Shocked by the crime in his domain, he gives his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, three days to find the murderer; if he cannot find the murderer, Ja'far will be executed.

Although heavily motivated, Ja'far knows it will be impossible to carry out the caliph's orders, and so he hides away at home for the three days before presenting himself to al-Rashid. Just before he is about to be executed, however, two men appear—a young and handsome man and an older man—both confessing to the crime and each calling the other a liar. Finally, the young man proves himself the killer by accurately describing the chest, and he explains.

The young man was her husband, and the old man her father who tried to save his son-in-law by taking the blame. The woman was a faultless wife and mother with three children, but one day she fell ill and requested a special kind of apple. Her husband left Baghdad for a two-week journey to get it from an orchard; he took three. Returning home with them, he found his wife too ill to eat, so he left the apples with her and went to his work.

While at his shop, he sees a slave walk by with an apple that bears a remarkable resemblance to the apples he left with his wife. The slave tells him that he got the apple from his girlfriend. Returning home, the husband asks his wife where the apples are, and discovers that she only has two. He kills her for her infidelity, then cuts up the body and stuffs the parts into a heavy chest which he leaves by the Tigris. Coming back from the river, one of his children tells him that he took an apple and then it was taken by a slave. The husband realizes that his wife was not unfaithful. He tells Caliph Harun al-Rashid that he deserves death.

The caliph sympathizes with the young man. He tells his vizier Ja'far to find the slave who took the apple. If he cannot find the slave within three days, Ja'far will be put to death.

...and with that familiar phrase, I will leave you until tomorrow.

1001 Nights

Yesterday I mentioned that you would know who Jaʿfar ibn Yaḥyā al-Barmakī, an Abbasid vizier, was, even if you did not recognize the name. You have probably heard a story about him. It is fictional, but here it is:

He was powerful ruler who, learning that his sister-in-law had been unfaithful to his brother, decides that all women are destined to be unfaithful. He has his wife killed, and proceeds to marry a virgin, only to have her killed the next morning. He continue this practice, marrying virgins each day and having them executed the next morning. The person whose job it is to find virgins for the ruler eventually runs out of virgins except for his own daughter. He reluctantly offers his daughter to the ruler, who marries her.

That night, the young bride tells her new husband a story, but she does not tell him how the story ends. His curiosity forces him to keep her alive the next day, because she promises to finish the story. The second night, she finished the story but starts a new one, also refusing to tell him the ending. A pattern starts, of consecutive nights of story-telling that must be completed the next day, and last for 1001 nights. The daughter's name, according to the legend, was Scheherazade.

This legend and the stories told were collected during Islam's Golden Age, and are called 1001 Nights; an English language edition in the early 1700s called it simply Arabian Nights. From this collection we get the tales of Aladdin and the magic lamp, of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, and of Sinbad the Sailor—except that they were not part of the original: they were added by the creator of the first French translation, who got them from a Syrian writer visiting Paris.

The collection is first mentioned in a 9th century fragment, and then in 947CE in a discussion of legends from Arabic, Greek, and Iranian tales. In 987, Ibn al-Nadīm (the biographer who talks about Jabir ibn Hayyan, and who connects him with the ruler at the center of the 1001 Nights) says the author who began collecting the tales died when only 480 were complete.

Characters include the historical Barmaki (see the above link) and Harun al-Rashid, jinn, sorcerers, and ghouls. Story elements include comedy, romance, tragedies, burlesques and erotica, and historical tales. The tales mentioned above that were added have drawn attention away from the fantastical ideas found in the originals:

• a quest for immortality that lads to the Garden of Eden
• travel across the cosmos
• an underwater society that is the opposite of society on land
• a flying mechanical horse that can go to outer space
• an expedition across the Sahara to find a brass container used by Solomon to trap a jinn
• mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, jinns

The oldest manuscripts and fragments have different collections of the tales, but there are a handful that appear in all versions. I will share one or two of these next time.

Abul-Abbas

The Royal Frankish Annals cover the era from Charlemagne's grandfather to his son. In it we find that Caliph Harun al-Rashid gave an elephant to Charlemagne. This was the result of Charlemagne sending his emissary, Isaac the Jew (Isaac Judaeus), to open relations with the Abbasid rulers. Harun al-Rashid sent Isaac back with an elephant, named Abul-Abbas.

So how do you get an elephant from Syria to France? With great difficulty. From Baghdad Isaac took Abul-Abbas to Egypt, and then along the north coast of Africa to Tunisia. The going was slow, and Charlemagne received messages from Harun al-Rashid and from Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab (governor of Africa, whom Isaac would have met in Tunisia) referring to Isaac's mission. Charlemagne ordered a man to Italy, to commission some ships in Genoa to travel to Africa to find Isaac and the elephant and bring them home.

Isaac and Abul-Abbas landed in Genoa in October 801, stayed for the winter, and when the weather turned they crossed the Alps. Isaac reached Charlemagne's court at Aachen on 20 July 802.

Abul-Abbas must have been a lot to maintain, but having the largest land animal anyone had ever seen in your menagerie would have been a great point of pride for Charlemagne. Elephants have long lifespans, and Charlemagne might have had his new pet for a long time, but on an expedition to Denmark in 810, after crossing the Rhine, Abul-Abbas died suddenly while Charlemagne camped at "Lippeham."

We don't know what the records mean by Lippeham, but on the conjecture that it has something to do with the Lippe River, it might be the city of Wesel. We will never know for sure, but there's a story that a colossal bone was found in the Lippe in 1750.

Much of what we know of Isaac the Jew has been revealed in the tale of Abul-Abbas. There was another "Isaac Judaeus," however, in the medieval records: one of the foremost Jewish physicians of his day. Let's take a look at him next time.

(The illustration here is of Abul-Abbas from 12th century Spain; the fresco is 80" high and 53" wide.)

Medieval Zoos

Collections of animals for private amusement or public display have existed for a long time. There is a current trend toward calling them "conservation parks" to move away from the connotations of 20th century zoos that housed animals with no regard to their natural habitats. "Zoo" itself was a shortened form of "zoological garden" or "zoological park" which were common in the 19th century. An early modern zoo, the London Zoo, opened in 1828 as the "Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London." References to collections of animals earlier than the 19th century often use the term "menagerie" from the French ménage, "members of a household."

Pre-medieval evidence of menageries abounds in carved stone walls from Egypt and Mesopotamia, where we learn that rulers sent expeditions to collect giraffes, elephants, bears, dolphins, and birds. A Middle Assyrian Emperor had a collection of animals in the 11th century BCE. King Solomon had a menagerie, as did Nebuchadnezzar. Alexander the Great collected different animals from his expeditions and sent them back to Greece. The Romans kept various animals—bears and bulls for example—for entertainment in the Colosseum. (The illustration here is from Villard de Honnecourt.) Cortes destroyed a collection of animals maintained by Montezuma in 1520.

Caliph Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant as a gift to Charlemagne. Charlemagne created three menageries, and they included monkeys, lions, bears, camels, and falcons along with other exotic birds. Henry I of England had lions, leopards, and camels at his Woodstock palace. As early as 1204, "Bad" King John kept a collection of different animals at the Tower of London. The Tower had three leopards added when Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II sent them as a wedding gift to Henry III. The king of Norway sent a "white bear" (could they have subdued and sent a polar bear?) in 1251, and the king of France sent an elephant in 1254.

Clearly the desire to see exotic animals from distant lands (and the prestige of owning them) was of great interest for as long as human beings had the time and resources to collect and maintain them.

About Charlemagne's elephant, though...we've all heard about Hannibal trying to bring elephants over the alps to attack Rome. Bringing elephants to Europe predated Charlemagne by a millennium. What did it take to give an elephant to Charlemagne, and what happened to it? His name was Abul-Abbas, and I'll tell you about him next time.