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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zehe0499, Flunkrock.
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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2021 and 18 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jforest5.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 22:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Songtim03, Dinh0414, Lexilvillarreal, TheRogueGeographer.
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the first sentence of the history section is 'The preservation and development of human knowledge was a cherished tradition of the Eastern Christianity.[4]'. I dont think that the citation given for this sentence actually says this. The citation says: “It was in the Near and Middle East and North Africa that the old traditions of teaching and learning continued, and where Muslim scholars were carefully preserving ancient texts and knowledge of the ancient Greek language.”
So the citation refers to the continuation of 'old traditions of teaching and learning' without explicitly identifying those traditions with eastern Christianity. In fact the citation refers to 'ancient texts and knowledge of the ancient Greek language' and the citation is from a book on Pythagoras and his legacy (Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe by Kitty Ferguson) so I don't really get how someone got Eastern Christianity from this.
I think this first sentence should either be removed or changed to more accurately reflect the citation eg 'The preservation and development of human knowledge was a cherished tradition of the Greek thinking', because otherwise this sentence is just shifting credit for the House of Wisdom, a major intellectual centre of the Islamic golden age, to Christianity - which feels like POV pushing to me.
I'm gonna remove the sentence in the meantime because I think its misleading but feel free to replace/improve it if it can be more accurately reflect the reference as I think having a more general sentence before getting into the denser history makes the section read well. Best 212.56.121.8 ( talk) 23:27, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
Could anyone expand on this, or point me to good sources for this sort of thing? Thanks!
ManicParroT 19:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Article] by Owen Gingerich -- ragesoss 18:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I removed this:
... because obviously, most of the text is referring to the Bayt al-Hikmah in Baghdad. I googled for something in Mawarannahr, but only founds info from copies of the wikipedia article. So I'll take it out until someone comes up with a better source for this. In the meanwhile, no info is better than wrong info. flammif e r talk 03:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
A recent edit by user oneeyedboxer changed "house" to "adobe" throughout the article. I think that "abode" was the intended change.
While "House of Wisdom" seems the correct translation to me, we'll need a person with a thorough knowledge of Arabic to translate or make changes. Since the semantic difference between "House" and "Abode" is very slight, I think it ought to stay "House" until an expert deems otherwise.
"House of Wisdom" also sounds better. It's less pompous, more eloquent, easier to understand, and sounds grander. "Abode" is a vaguer term for "a place of residence," but it can also mean "a sojourn."
My two cents, Auranor ( talk) 19:17, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
The article mentions 'enormous quantities' of books in the House of Wisdom. Have any scholars provided a figure or an estimate of the actual number? This would be a nice addition to the article. KBurchfiel ( talk) 03:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
There was NO such "Bait al Hikma" - those are alllll legends here.
Dimitri Gutas (an Arabist and Graekist scholar, Yale University) meticuously researched that - only to point out that there are only 2 mentions (!) of such a "bait" and one is only very, very brief.
My friends - go and read literature first before writing legends as facts - a problem that haunts Wikipedia in this area espacially.
Try D. Gutas "Greek Thought, Arabic Culture" for a starter ...
Udix — Preceding unsigned comment added by Udix2 ( talk • contribs) 10:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
Can we have a source for this claim?
It sounds very dubious, given that they would all need to have been copied by hand. Wardog ( talk) 20:57, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, I am trying to improve this article. As it was asked before, does anyone know of a source for the claim that "The activities of the library was supported by a large number of stationery shops. These shops doubled as bookshops, the largest of which, al-Nakim, sold thousands of books every day"?
I wasn't able to find references to this. If no one knows where this comes from, I guess I will remove the sentence. Thanks! Maxisi ( talk) 07:49, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The same institution was also found in Ottoman times for a similar purpose. I don't know much about it and don't have time for that know, but somebody can research and include it here. Thanks. rinduzahid( talk) 23:01, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
the first 'algorithm' could be argued to be Euclid's method of finding factors, or it could be alot of other things. the first mechanical calculating device... atinkythera, or maybe some old chinese stuff,, who knows. and on and on. its all open to debate and hangs on the definitions of phrases. most secondary sources in history books would not use phrases like 'the first'. but they realize that new old texts are found all the time and our view of the past changes over time. it would be far, far more encyclopedic to just leave the word 'first' out of these articles. just because something wasnt first doesnt mean it wasnt important or valuable. its basically POVism Decora ( talk) 01:15, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
This is the text that has been deleted twice.
=== Decline under Al-Mutawakkil === The House of Wisdom flourished under al-Ma'mun's successors al-Mu'tasim (r. 833–842) and his son al-Wathiq (r. 842 – 847), but considerably declined under the reign of al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861). [1] Although al Ma'mun, al Mu'tasim, and al Wathiq followed the sect of Mu'tazili, which supported mind-broadness and scientific inquiry, al-Mutawakkil endorsed a more literal interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith. [1] The caliph was not interested in science and moved away from rationalism, seeing the spread of Greek philosophy as anti-Islamic. [1]
It's source is Jim Al-Khalili who with the removal of the above is still used about 26 times in the article. He doesn't suddenly become an unreliable source because an editor disagrees with him. The statements can be attributed to him and/or material arguing against him can be added to the article, but we shouldn't be removing it just because an editor disagrees. Doug Weller talk 18:00, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
From a Muslim viewpoint, this can easily be seen to be a POV issue. Mu'tazilism is a widely discredited doctrine in modern Islam, not least because of al-Ma'mun's notorious inquisition ( mihna) against dissenters. His most famous victim was Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder of the school of jurisprudence that bears his name, who was jailed and tortured for publicly disputing Mu'tazili doctrine concerning the origin of the Qur'an and the authority of the caliphate to decide matters of religion. The paragraph above paints a picture of free inquiry stifled by obscurantism, when in fact it was a conflict between scientific freedom on the one hand and religious freedom on the other. Perhaps the paragraph could be reworded to provide a more balanced view of Mu'tazilism and al-Mutawakkil's reasons for abandoning it? Or if al-Khalili's original is hopelessly POV, at least mark it as his opinion, rather than established fact. Texas Dervish ( talk) 16:38, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
This article is full of myths about the Bayt al-Hikma which were disproven more than a decade ago. Modern historians do not believe that the Bayt al-Hikma was anything other than a library established by al-Mansur (not Harun al-Rashid!) and that it had no special relationship to the Translation Movement. The scholar whose work disproved the old myths was Dimitri Gutas in Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) London: Routledge, 1998. Gutas' position is accepted by modern scholars and appears as such in the New Cambridge History of Islam.
"The following of Iranian cultural patterns continued under Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170-93/786-809), who is credited with the establishment of the Bayt al-Hikma, often hailed as a scientific academy and the centre of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement. The data about this institution as reported in Arabic historical sources such as Abū Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī’s (d. 311/923) Tarīkh (Annals), Ibn al-Nadīm’s Kitāb al-fihrist (Catalogue) and later books does not, however, support such an interpretation. These sources, enriched by poetry, suggest that the Bayt al-Hikma was a library where rare books on history, poetry and strange alphabets were collected and which was established when al-Mansūr structured the administration of his court and empire along the lines of Sasanian tradition."
- Sonja Brentjes with Robert G. Morrison, "The Sciences in Islamic societies," in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol 4. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 569.
Notice how of the two main sources for this article (Al-Khalili and Lyons), neither is an actual professional historian. This is just shameful. Make sure you use proper sources written by actual experts when you write articles.
Chamboz ( talk) 03:29, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
The full scope and function of the Bayt al-Ḥikmah under the ʿAbbāsids remain controversial. Nothing has survived of ʿAbbāsid Baghdad, making any physical reconstruction of its structures and institutions impossible, while the literary record of the activities at the Bayt al-Ḥikmah is subject to wide interpretation. As a result, scholars are divided over the Bayt al-Ḥikmah, in particular over its role in the widespread translation of Greek, Syriac, and other learned traditions into Arabic and the remarkable rise of Islamic experimental science and philosophy that accompanied it.
Thank you. Even if we can't take the bibliography as evidence, it's pretty clear that his opinion is in the minority nowadays. For instance here's a quote from Khaled El-Rouayheb, a historian of Islamic science:
"Even when Ljubovic does cite recent work in English, one sometimes suspects that he has not read the works carefully. For instance, he repeats the outdated idea that the caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813-33) set up a "library-academy" called Bayt al-Hikma for translations into Arabic from Greek, Syriac, and Persian (p. 11). Here he adds a footnote referring to Dimitri Gutas's seminal work Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London: Routledge, 1998), despite the fact that Gutas devotes considerable space in that work (pp. 53-60) to refuting the idea that al-Ma'mun set up a "library-academy" called Bayt al-Hikma."
Review of The Works in Logic by Bosniac Authors in Arabic by Amir Ljubovic. Journal of the American Oriental Society 129 (2009), 698.
I changed to Rachid because the ref of Brentjes vol 4 doesn't contain her name there.. She wrote Rachid as also Balty Guesdon confirms it. More later
Here is the book https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Cambridge_History_of_Islam_Volum.html?id=bNeaBAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y . I am Checking what she writes there.
The sources regarding al-Mansur are not reliable as stated. So we should stay with Rachid. Still need to add ref from Balty Guesdon that Rachid had it for "private" use. P 133. Up to some others to improve that part with good ref. (I cleaned up the several signatures to have a cleaner text) 2A02:A03F:1607:E100:7073:81F9:1696:B40B ( talk) 16:55, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
"The following of Iranian cultural patterns continued under Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170-93/786-809), who is credited with the establishment of the Bayt al-Hikma, often hailed as a scientific academy and the centre of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement. The data about this institution as reported in Arabic historical sources such as Abū Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī’s (d. 311/923) Tarīkh (Annals), Ibn al-Nadīm’s Kitāb al-fihrist (Catalogue) and later books does not, however, support such an interpretation. These sources, enriched by poetry, suggest that the Bayt al-Hikma was a library where rare books on history, poetry and strange alphabets were collected and which was established when al-Mansūr structured the administration of his court and empire along the lines of Sasanian tradition."
The idea that it was established by Harun al-Rashid (or that it even functioned the way historians had assumed until that point) was disproven by Dimitri Gutas in Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) London: Routledge, 1998. Relevant pages are 53-60. Chamboz ( talk) 19:16, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
Charles Burnett after 2002
https://books.google.be/books/content?id=g46euaF7HAsC&hl=nl&pg=PA16&img=1&zoom=3&ots=7fmUUk71tW&sig=ACfU3U0AAsL-w2scmKa6hexEtOqK3I8RBQ&w=1280 in The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History: The early, medieval, and Reformation eras
Voorkant
Robert Benedetto, James O. Duke
Westminster John Knox Press, 2008 - 691 pagina's
2A02:A03F:1607:E100:7073:81F9:1696:B40B (
talk)
23:21, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
This page is still a mess and I welcome any efforts to clean it up. The basic problem is that the main sources for the page (al-Khalili, Lyons) are popular books that retell the 'Rise-Decline' myth, and insist on treating the HoW as something like a modern research university. There are serious issues about whether the HoW existed at all, whether it was any more than a library for literature and poetry, whether any translation work was done there, and whether any work that would now be judged scientific was done or stored there (see in particular the book by Gutas (1998) 53-60, and Sonja Brentjes with Robert G. Morrison, "The Sciences in Islamic societies," in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol 4. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 569, referenced above). There is now a brief indication of these problems in the introduction to the article and a section on 'Dispute', but the rest of the article largely spins the old triumphalist stories. The issue here is emphatically NOT whether figures like al-Kwarizmi and the Banu Musa did important scientific work -- they clearly did. But we do the real achievements of Islamic science a disservice by pressing them into later Western patterns (e.g. turning the HoW into a translation center and research institute), because when Islamic science clearly fails to conform to later Western standards (e.g. in NOT separating science and religion) it will be discounted as unscientific (see, for example, almost everything written on Islam by Toby Huff). The fundamental problem here is to separate what is actually known about the supposed HoW from later myth making and the imposition of Western ideals of science. Perhaps a rewrite should start by explaining those issues, using earlier drafts of the page as examples. Voxcanis ( talk) 11:55, 9 May 2018
Skepticalgiraffe ( talk) 03:28, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
why often or always link the discovery of Muslims with Greece, Indian, chinese etc ? you have to prove in detail not only such claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shatree ( talk • contribs) 18:07, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/the-house-of-wisdom-is-a-myth/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.29.81.232 ( talk) 08:51, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
Hello! I can't help but notice that the name of al-Kindi came twice in the list of notable people. The first one has an article attached to it, the second one doesn't. I checked the first one and it is same as the second one. So, I removed the second one. Ifteebd10 ( talk) 08:40, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
The subsection "Al-Ma'mun" contains a seemingly unprofessional tone and needs to be cleaned up---for example, it says virtually the same sentence twice in the same paragraph, that Al-Ma'mun would often prefer scientific texts as spoils of war over riches. Quahog-with-a-fiddle ( talk) 16:04, 16 March 2023 (UTC)