In 762 a caliph founded a round city on the Tigris and made it the capital of the world. For five centuries Baghdad was where the planet's knowledge was collected, translated, argued over, and improved — the House of Wisdom, where scholars were paid their weight in gold. More or less literally.
Baghdad ★ Basra Talas Khorasan Chang'an Greatest extent — stylized map 750 The revolution 786 Harun al-Rashid 833 The House of Wisdom 1258 Baghdad falls Rise · zenith · fall The rise In 750 the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in a revolution that shifted Islam's center of gravity east — from Arab Syria to cosmopolitan Iraq. The new dynasty leaned on Persian administrators and Khorasani soldiers; the caliphate became less an Arab kingdom and more a universal empire, open to talent from every people it ruled.
