Here’s How Indigenous Assyrian Knowledge Helped Usher in a Golden Age
Pictured: Thirteenth century illustration, drawn by Yaḥyā ibn Maḥmūd al-Wāsiṭī, depicting intellects at the Bayt al-Ḥikmah “House of Wisdom”.
The period from 750–1250 CE witnessed astonishing levels of cultural, economic, and scientific development in the Middle East. While the earlier Umayyad Caliphate is noteworthy for its rapid territorial expansion; it is their successors— the ʿAbbāsids —that are remembered for their ushering of what we know today as the “Islamic Golden Age”.
Under the ʿAbbāsids, the city of Baghdād, also known as Madīnat al-Salām “City of Peace”, was founded and transformed into an administrative, commercial, intellectual, and religious centre. The ambitious ʿAbbāsids’ and their appetite for knowledge established and generously endowed hospitals, libraries (such as the Bayt al-Ḥikmah “House of Wisdom”), observatories, and translation centres.
Inspired by the great library at Alexandria, Egypt; the House of Wisdom at Baghdād, for instance, served as an important repository of classical knowledge and thus cemented the ʿAbbāsid capital as a powerhouse of learning. This library attracted various scholars, polymaths, and thinkers from all ethnicities and religions— Indigenous Assyrians included.
The Assyrians inherited their understanding of indigenous knowledge from their ancestors through a process of inter-generational transmission. In fact, a century prior to the founding of Baghdād, Mār Sēwērā of Naṣībin (c. 575–666/7), a Syriac Christian bishop and scholar, argued that it was his ancestors— the Assyrians and Babylonians —who were the cultivators of wisdom and sciences.
“The [Assyrians and] Babylonians were Syriacs, I believe no one will deny, so those who say (i.e., the Greeks) that it is in no way possible for Syriacs to know about these matters (i.e., astronomy) are much mistaken.”
— Mār Sēwērā of Naṣībin
It was here at Baghdād that such knowledge, particularly those relating to astronomy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, optics, philosophy, and science were translated by the Assyrians— among many others —from Classical Syriac into Classical Arabic. The transmission of such knowledge to the Islamic world not only heralded a golden age but would also later lay the foundation for the European renaissance.
During this formative period, Baghdād’s court circles often engaged with the Assyrians and demonstrated a genuine sense of admiration for their contributions and work, particularly those regarding mathematical, philosophical, and scientific subjects. Such knowledge not only allowed Islamic intellects to advance on, but to correct, where necessary, the assertions of their predecessors.
“The kings of the Assyrians, who are considered as the first monarchs in astronomical tables (observations) and chronology... who are the cultivators of the earth, who have dug canals, planted trees, converted waste lands into fields, and made roads.”
— al-Masʿūdī (c. 896–956)
In 1258, the city of Baghdād along with its centres of learning fell to the Mongols. The Mongols, an ethnic group from Central Asia, destroyed the House of Wisdom and hurled its vast stores of manuscripts, amassed over the course of five centuries, into the Tigris River.
Just like the Library at Alexandria, the House of Wisdom too perished in a moment of rage.
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Most of the viziers and personal physicians of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs were of Christian or Assyrian ancestry.
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Josef W. Meri, Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, vol. II (Taylor & Francis, 2006).
Building Knowledge Societies in the Arab Region: Arabic Language as a Gateway to Knowledge (Paris: UNESCO, 2022), 30.
Kemal Gürüz, Higher Education and International Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy (New York: State University of New York, 2011), 151.
BnF Syriaque 346, fol. 169v
Aloys Sprenger, El-Masʿūdī’s Historical Encyclopeaedia, entitled “Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems” (London: Harrison and Co., 1841), 463.
