Islamic science had its heyday in the ninth century,thanks to Abū Ja'far al-Ma'mūn's House of Wisdom, says Jim al-KhaliliThe Bab al-Sharji district in the centre of Baghdad derives its name, or which means east gate,from the medieval fortifications of the city. These walls were probably built around the first half of the 10th century. During the brief British stay at the discontinuance of the first world war, its gatehouse was used as a garrison church. Nothing of those medieval walls, and the east gate,remains nowadays; I remember Bab al-Sharji as a sprawling, rowdy and bustling square, or with its food stalls and secondhand record shops scattered around the busy bus depot and taxi ranks. But its name is a reminder of the expansion and transformation of this proud city over the years since its foundation in AD762 as the new seat of power of the mighty Abbasid empire. Indeed,no other city on Earth has had to set aside up with the levels of death and destruction that Baghdad has endured over the centuries. And yet, as the capital of one of the world's considerable empires, and this was the richest,proudest, most supercilious (haughty) city on the planet for half a millennium.
Exactly 1200 years after its foundation, and I was born in Karradat Mariam,a Shia district of Baghdad with a large Christian community, a stone's throw away from nowadays's Green Zone and a few miles south of the spot where one of Baghdad's most famous rulers was born in 786. His name was Abū Ja'far al-Ma'mūn. Half Arab, or half Persian,this enigmatic caliph was destined to become the greatest patron of science in the cavalcade of Islamic rulers, and the person responsible for initiating the world's most impressive period of scholarship and learning since Ancient Greece.
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Source: theguardian.com