Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden Age was a period of scientific, economic, and cultural flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century.

This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786 to 809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom, which saw scholars from all over the Muslim world flock to Baghdad, the world's largest city at the time, to translate the known world's classical knowledge into Arabic and Persian. However not only confined to Baghdad, but across multiple urban centers of the medieval Islamic world, including Umayyad Andalusia such as Cordoba, Fatimid Cairo, and other major cities integrated into shared intellectual and commercial networks. The period is traditionally said to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the siege of Baghdad in 1258.

There are a few alternative timelines. Some scholars extend the end date of the golden age to around 1350, including the Timurid Renaissance within it, while others place the end of the Islamic Golden Age as late as the end of 15th to 16th centuries, including the rise of the Islamic gunpowder empires.