House of Wisdom

The House of Wisdom, in Arabic Bayt al-Hikmah and also called the Grand Library of Baghdad, was a major public academy and intellectual center of the Abbasid era in Baghdad. It was founded either as a library for the collections of the caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late eighth century or as a private collection of the caliph al-Mansur, and under al-Ma'mun, who reigned from 813 to 833, it was turned into a public academy and library. It was a center of learning during the Islamic Golden Age and was destroyed in 1258 during the Mongol siege of Baghdad. Some historians now argue that its image as a university-like institution with specialised departments was constructed by later scholars.