House of Wisdom

The House of Wisdom, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad, was a major Abbasid-era public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad, founded either as a library for the collections of caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late 8th century or as an earlier private collection of caliph al-Mansur, before becoming a public academy and library under caliph al-Mamun in the early 9th century. It acted as one of the world's largest public libraries during the Islamic Golden Age and was destroyed in 1258 during the Mongol siege of Baghdad. Its historical portrayal as a major academic institution with specialized departments and organized scholarly debate has more recently been challenged by some historians, who argue the image was shaped by nineteenth and early twentieth century Orientalist scholarship rather than the primary sources, which date between the late eighth and thirteenth centuries.