The history of Medieval Baghdad epitomizes the grandeur and eventual demise of a cultural epicenter. Emerging as the Abbasid Caliphate's capital in the 8th century, Baghdad burgeoned into a thriving...
The Abbasid Caliphate was an Arabic dynasty that ruled over much of the Muslim world for over 500 years. It rose from bloody beginnings to become the center of the Muslim world during the Islamic...
In the 8th century Middle East, the Abbasid Caliphate rose to power, overseeing an era later hailed as Islam's golden age. However, internal strife marked its decline. Caliph Harun al-Rashid's well-...
In the 8th-century Middle East, the rise of the Abbasids marked a significant chapter in Islamic history. Seizing control of the vast Islamic Caliphate , the Abbasids held sway for five centuries,...
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq but whereas the country of Iraq was founded only in 1958, the city of Baghdad had been established about 1200 years before by the Abbasids . Baghdad was built...
The word ‘Islam’ means ‘submission or surrender to the will of God’. Islam is one of the major world religions, and with over 1 billion adherents, is the second largest religion in the world today...
Adding to the list of names among the greatest libraries of the past, the Bayt al-Hikmah (translated as ‘The House of Wisdom’) was established in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire, around...
For the 10 th century holy man and jurist Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, the violent, orgiastic, drunken spectacle put on by mourning Vikings in Bulgaria must have been shocking. In Ibn Fadlan’s Muslim tradition...