Bayt al-Ḥikma
Bayt al-Ḥikma, or The House of Wisdom, was a famed, but obscure institution established in Baghdad in the 8th century.
According to the traditional understanding of this institution, it was a library, and possibly later an academy, fundamental to the production of translation literature and the Abbasids’ intellectual enterprise. It is often associated with the “Golden Age” caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd as its greatest patron, with an expansion several decades later under the caliph al-Ma’mūn. It is likewise associated with Ḥunayn ibn Ishāq, a Christian polymath often seen as the head and icon of the great translation movement of the Abbasids.
It was instrumental to establishing Arabic as the language of education and culture. It served as a meeting place for intellectuals to exchange information, for polyglots to translate books, and for scholars to study old books and write new ones. All the great works were translated, from Aristotle to Galen. Al-Kindī pioneered Arab philosophy at the Bayt, while al-Khwārizmī invented al-gebra—as well as the numeral zero, what one Christian historian referred to as “dangerous Saracen magic.” Or so it goes, at least.
Little is actually known for certain about Bayt al-Ḥikma. There are few contemporaneous references to the institution, and much of what has been described of it by later generations was likely idealized and exaggerated. Recent scholarship has persuasively called into question the historicity of these accounts. Dmitri Gutas, most famously, has suggested it may have been a storehouse for books carried over from Sassanian imperial practice, though it does seem to have employed a librarian in some capacity. While his suggestion seems both plausible and perhaps even likely, we must be careful to refrain from saying with certainty what the institution was and did with so little useful testimony.
Regardless of what it was and what happened there, the Bayt al-Ḥikma remains a well-known icon of Arab intellectualism to this day.
The Blog: Bayt Ḥikma
Bayt Ḥikma differs linguistically from Bayt al-Ḥikma in that it is indefinite: a house of wisdom, i.e. a model of the House of Wisdom of legend. It is a place to gather for cross-cultural intellectual exchange and a source for information.
I struggled for some time over a proper title for this blog, even putting off blogging for nearly a year until the perfect title would come to me. I wanted something original that would reflect the topics I will be dealing with, yet recognizable and memorable for the reader. I toyed with a few things here or there, but nothing was perfect.
But Bayt Ḥikma followed what I wanted out of a blog name, except for originality. It’s recognizable to nearly anybody acquainted in the slightest with early Islamic or Arab history. Yet that also has the advantage of making the name more memorable. But the name also invokes a number of associations that the reader should also associate with this blog:
- It is Arabic.
Though the blog covers a variety of topics within Semitic languages and literatures, the author is an Arabist in specialty. This angle is worth noting because Arabists remain underrepresented in the field, which continues to be dominated either by Hebraicists or those interested in the Judaeo-Christian roots of modern European society. Most of what is found in this blog will fall in the Common Era, which is overwhelmingly (though far from exclusively!) dominated by Arabic language.
- It is a crossroads in language, linguistics, history, culture, and religion.
The blog will cover a broad range of topics that nevertheless find their home at one center: the Middle East and its environs. In terms of language, it will discuss Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, Classical Ethiopic (Ge‘ez), and others. It will discuss language contact and synchronic language variation. It will discuss inter-religious dialogue and relations. It will discuss transitional periods in society and civilization. It will include excerpted translations or summaries of literature across cultures and across time.
- It is a storehouse of information.
As already made clear, the range of topics in this blog will be broad. Like a poorly organized bookshelf, the topic will differ from post to post. Nonetheless, the reader will enjoy a wide range of information, and should be able to navigate by topic at their pleasure through tags.
- It is a bridge between late antiquity and the early Islamic period, as well as between the ancient Semitic period and the modern.
The establishment of the Abbasid empire and its capital in Baghdad represented a fundamental shift away from the Levant to Mesopotamia and opened borders across the Near East. This enabled a flowering of Semitic cultural expression across the board, including among minority groups who were suppressed by either the dominant Greek or Persian cultures. According to traditional interpretations of the Bayt al-Ḥikma, the Bayt itself lied at the center of this flowering. Likewise, specialists in the Near East tend to divide their fields between the time before Islam and the time after its nascence. Those who focus on the time before Islam tend to specialize in Biblical studies, Northwest Semitics, and Assyriology. Those who focus on the Islamic period tend to specialize in Islamic studies and Arabic.
The advantage of working across this divide is manifold. In recent years, for example, astounding progress has been made in understanding ancient inscriptions that seem most closely related to Arabic and its contemporary cousin Ge‘ez, but were written before the dawn of Islam. This has not only informed our understanding of thousands of inscriptions, but also both the history and modern manifestation of the Arabic language. Moreover, combining the study of both the late antique period and the early Islamic period has significantly informed our understanding of the rise and spread of Islam, the history of Christianity, and even contact linguistics. This blog will hopefully contribute informally to lifting the artificial wall that has long prevailed between the ancient and Islamic eras.
The Blogger
I am a doctoral candidate dealing with the study of Semitic languages and literatures. Though students and experts in this field tend to be interested in the access Semitic languages give to religious studies or area studies in some form, my interests lie primarily in the linguistic expression of these populations and in the relationships between the languages. Nonetheless, the history, literature, and cultural expression of the Middle East and its surrounding areas are important dimensions, and thus serve as secondary, but important interests for me. Within linguistics, I am most interested in questions of language change (both diachronic and synchronic), but also in questions of sociolinguistic expression and dialectal variation.
For me, this blog serves as an informal outlet to explore these interests apart from my normal work and research. It also allows me space to experiment and play with new ideas that I would not normally bring up in an academic environment, whether because my breadth of knowledge in the topic is too little or because I myself do not buy the argument I am making. Or, in other words, this blog is just for fun!
The Audience
The audience will vary by post. Scholars of Semitics should feel at home, of course. For the most part, who the intended audience is will determine transliteration practices of each post. When assumed that only specialists in a language, or students/scholars of Semitics, would be interested in a post, I may not bother with transliteration. On topics where vocalization may be relevant to the discussion, transliteration will be provided. Likewise, if the intended audience includes linguists, Biblical studies, or other interests outside the field of Semitics, transliteration will be provided. Transliteration will always be available upon request from readers.
Bayt Ḥikma 