The Islamic Golden Age: an introductory timeline

When was the Islamic Golden Age?

Three accounts, three spans. The Library of Congress guide gives roughly the ninth to fourteenth centuries CE, and adds that the establishment of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in 832 CE is sometimes used as the beginning event 1. The KAUST museum gives 650 to 1650 for its Golden Age of Islam exhibit on science and technology 2. The Met writes that the first three centuries of Abbasid rule were a golden age in which Baghdad and Samarra were the cultural and commercial capitals of the Islamic world 3.

Each account measures something different: scholarship, science and technology, and the art and capitals of one dynasty. This page picks none of the three spans.

A timeline of places, works and institutions

This is a selection, not a full history. Dates are Common Era dates as the named work gives them; we converted none, and a question mark in a source stays in the table.

What do the sources say made the scholarship possible?

The National Library of Medicine calls Baghdad a seedbed of medical learning, cross-fertilised by Persian-Mesopotamian, Byzantine-Greek and Indian traditions. It says that under enlightened caliphs the city drew Muslim, Jewish and Christian scribes and scholars who cooperated on making texts available, helped by the recent introduction of paper 6.

For science in general, the KAUST museum lists twelve reasons for the flourishing of Islamic science and technology. They include the support of leaders and rich patrons, travel for pilgrimage, trade, exploration and research, paper-making and book production, the translation of ancient scholars' work, and learning institutions such as mosques, madrasahs, teaching hospitals and houses of wisdom 2. The exhibit page shows no sources for its list. The two accounts cover different subjects, medicine and science in general, so they are set side by side here, not merged.

Was the work only a preservation of earlier knowledge?

The Library of Congress guide says it was once held as fact that knowledge passed from the ancient Greeks to Renaissance Europe through Islamic scholars' translation and preservation of Greek texts, a view it says has become less prevalent. It says the scholars translated and preserved earlier texts, expanded and enriched them, and introduced works of their own 1. Three examples show both threads in the sources.

Mathematics

MacTutor says al-Khwarizmi's algebra treatise gives us the word algebra, and that the word algorithm derives from his name 5. It reports that the Arabic text of his work on Hindu-Arabic numerals is lost and the surviving Latin translation is much changed, quotes G. J. Toomer that the decimal place-value system was a fairly recent arrival from India, and says experts disagree about whether he knew Euclid's Elements 5.

Medicine

Winchester College's record says the Canon of Medicine summarised the medical knowledge of the Islamic world in Ibn Sina's time, which included Graeco-Roman work translated into Arabic and Syriac in earlier centuries. It says Gerard of Cremona translated the Canon into Latin and that it was a standard text of the medical curriculum until the late 17th century 7. This is a history lesson, not medical advice.

Optics

The University of Oklahoma record says Ibn al-Haytham's experimental work in optics built on the foundation laid by Apollonius and Ptolemy, and provided a basis for later investigations by Witelo and Kepler. It notes that he is known in Latin Europe as Alhazen 8.

Where do the sources differ?

Was the Islamic Golden Age only in Baghdad?

The Met describes the Umayyads of Cordoba, with their own emirate from 756 and caliphate from 929, as openly rejecting Abbasid political authority 4. The National Library of Medicine says Arabic medicine flowed westwards to Damascus, Cairo, Kairouan, Palermo and Cordoba 6. The Max Planck Institute describes an observatory complex in northwest Iran 10.

Cooperation across communities appears too: the National Library of Medicine describes Muslim, Jewish and Christian scribes and scholars working together in Baghdad 6. The word Islamic in the label therefore does not tell you the faith of each scribe or scholar a source mentions.

Did everything end in 1258?

The Met dates the sack of Baghdad to 1258, says it brought the revival's burst of artistic vitality, centred on the arts of the book, to a temporary halt, and says the end of the Abbasid caliphate marked the end of the universal Arab-Muslim empire 3. Its Ilkhanid essay, which is about art, says the Mongol conquests initially brought devastation and affected the balance of artistic production, then an environment of cultural exchange, and that Baghdad became an important centre once again among the arts of the book 9.

At Maragha, the Max Planck page says the observatory was founded in 1259 and originally conceived to produce updated astronomical tables for use in astrological prognostication, as the needs of the court might occasion. It says the project grew to include new instruments, new observations of the planets and a complex hosting mathematicians, philosophers, theologians, jurists and poets 10. None of the sources we read says all learning stopped in 1258.

How do you read a date in a source correctly?

A work's date and the date of a surviving copy are different things. Winchester College dates the writing of the Canon to the first quarter of the 11th century, but its manuscript is a 15th-century copy of the Latin translation, probably made in the Netherlands 7. The University of Oklahoma lists its optics volume as a Basel edition of 1572, while Ibn al-Haytham is an 11th-century scholar 8. The National Library of Medicine dates its copy of part of al-Razi's Hawi to 30 November 1094 and gives his own dates as 865? to 925? 6.

Ask these questions of any timeline:

• Is the date for the original work, a copy, a translation or a printed edition?
• Is a claim about one city being stretched to cover every region?
• Is a "first" or "invented" label sourced, or only repeated?
• Is the span a stated choice by a named institution?