The Time When the House of Wisdom Was Drowned
The story of how Mongols blackened the river Tigris by dumping an entire ancient library into it
Also known as Khizanat-al-Hikma or the ‘Storehouse of Wisdom’, this great library in Bagdad was initially a private library that belonged to the Abbasid Caliphs in the late 8th century. Much later, during Al-Ma’mun’s reign, this personal library was opened to the general public to encourage educational activities.
The manuscripts present in this place were derived or translated from other ancient texts available originally in other languages. The scholars worked on the preserved texts and furthered those works through more discoveries.
Ancient works in Pahlavi, Syriac, Greek, and Sanskrit were translated into Arabic and documented. For hundreds of years, this place was known as the hub of educational research and intellectual center in humanities and sciences and remained unrivalled in the world.
Five centuries later, the Mongols pillaged this land and looted not only people but also the most valuable treasures — the books that the House of Wisdom held — and dumped them all in the river Tigris. The number of books thrown away in the river can be gauged because the river ran black for half a year because of the ink from the thousands…
