Tag Archives: al-Razi

The House of Wisdom, founded by the caliph al-Mamun, became the world’s centre of learning. Whereas Alexandria had been the previous intellectual capital, with Greek and Roman manuscripts written on locally sourced papyrus, Baghdad become the new chaperone of philosophical and scientific inquiry, with conversion of all documents into Arabic, scribed on locally manufactured paper. One of the early assimilations that occurred at the House of Wisdom was the adoption of Hindu numerals (1–9) as well as the base-ten system and the concept of “zero.” An Arabic system of expressing abstract formulas (to the consternation of high school students everywhere) was introduced by al-Khwarizmi, which he termed al jabr, or algebra.