The house of wisdom

Searching the web and various library catalogues I realized that my research scope is perhaps a little broad. So I went to the library and did some general research to try and narrow my subject down. At Swinburne library I found two items on the history of libraries , including an accessibly written book titled "Library: and unquiet history". It had a very succinct paragraph, that I've quoted below, on the history of libraries:

"When the armies of Muhammad swept north out of the Arabian peninsula's in the seventh century, they conquered a Persia that retained the splendour of its ancient culture. The treasures of the Persian libraries - which through centuries of conflict with Greece had filled up with not only Persian texts but with the science and philosophy of the Hellenic world- were opened up to the translators. Now under the calligraphers hands, Greek science followed Persian poetry into Arabic. Thus began an epoch of Muslim library building that would last a thousand years, eventually delivering a shared Greek heritage to the hands of an upstart Europe"

It's interesting that western media portrays the Arab world as primitive, yet we owe much of our book culture to Islam!

It is generally believed that the Islamic golden age mid-8th to the mid-13th century, with the Muslim conquer of Spain dated 711 AD, so I will keep my research to that time period.



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References

Battles, M 2003, Library: an unquiet history, W.W. Norton & Co., New York.

Infokpt 2009, Muslim's contribution to science, July 25, viewed 6 May 2010.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Jtk8HJ-Tg&feature)

Lerner, F 2000, Libraries through the ages, Continuum Publishing Co., New York.