The Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden Age (c. 750–1258 CE) was one of the most extraordinary periods of intellectual achievement in human history. Centered in Baghdad, Cairo, Córdoba, and other great cities of the Islamic world, this era saw Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars working within the framework of Islamic civilization to produce advances in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, optics, philosophy, and literature that were unmatched anywhere in the world.

The Golden Age was made possible by several factors. The Abbasid Caliphate's vast territory connected the intellectual traditions of Greece, Persia, India, and China. The Arabic language provided a common medium of scholarly communication. Islamic theology's emphasis on seeking knowledge ("Seek knowledge, even unto China," the Prophet is reported to have said) provided cultural legitimacy for scientific inquiry. And the wealth generated by trans-continental trade funded libraries, observatories, hospitals, and the translation movement that rendered the world's accumulated knowledge into Arabic.

The achievements were staggering: algebra and algorithms (al-Khwarizmi), optics (Ibn al-Haytham), medical encyclopedias (Ibn Sina), philosophical commentaries on Aristotle (Averroes), and astronomical observations that corrected Ptolemy. When these works were translated into Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries, they ignited the European intellectual revival that led to the Renaissance. The Islamic Golden Age's end — conventionally dated to the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 — was gradual rather than sudden, but its contributions to human knowledge are permanent.