Who is harun rashid

The celebrated mathematician al Khwarizmi d. Al Khwarizmi is best known for the recurring method of solving mathematical problems, which is used even today and is called algorithms. He studied for a while in Baghdad and is also reported to have traveled to India.

He wrote several books on geography and astronomy and cooperated in the measurement of the distance of an arc across the globe. It was the intellectual explosion created at the time of Harun and Mamun that propelled science into the forefront of knowledge and made Islamic civilization the beacon of learning for five hundred years.

The work done by the translation schools of Baghdad made possible the later works of the physician al Razi d. The age of Harun and Mamun was also an age of contradictions.

Indeed, no other period in Islamic history illustrates with such clarity the schizophrenic attitude of Muslims towards their own history, as does the age of Harun and Mamun.

On the one hand, Muslims take pride in its accomplishments. On the other, they reject the values on which those achievements were based.

Muslims exude great pride in the scientists and philosophers of the era, especially in their dialectic with the West. But they reject the intellectual foundation on which these scientists and philosophers based their work. The age of Harun and Mamun was the age of reason. Mamun, in particular, took the rationalists in full embrace.

In simplified terms, this is the error one falls into when a hierarchy of knowledge is built wherein reason is placed above revelation.

In the process, they fell flat on their face. Instead of owning up to their errors and correcting them, they became defensive and became increasingly oppressive in forcing their views on others. Though in Western countries he is remembered for the presents he sent to Charlemagne—notably the famous elephant, Abul Abbas—he was first and foremost a successful soldier who made war on the Byzantines.

His empire was shaken by religious and social insurrections, and he did not shrink from annihilating the Barmecides, a powerful family whose wealth and influence he finally found unbearable. One son, al-Amin, was to become caliph and another son, al-Mamun, was to have control of certain provinces and of a section of the army.

The seat of the Christian Empire was Byzantium Constantinople. Rashid took a personal interest in the campaigns against the Byzantines. He led expeditions against them in , , and In the Byzantine empress Irene made peace and agreed to pay a large sum of money. Her successor, the emperor Nicephorus, later denounced this treaty. In he was forced to make an even more humiliating treaty, which required paying annual tribute to Baghdad.

Though it is not mentioned in Arabic sources, there seem to have been diplomatic contacts between Rashid and Charlemagne c. Rashid recognized Charlemagne as protector of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.

Rashid died at Tus in eastern Persia in , during an expedition to restore order there. Nicholson thought he was an "irascible [irritable; readily angered] tyrant, whose fitful amiability [good-naturedness] and real taste for music and letters hardly entitle him to be described either as a great monarch or a good man.

Despite all its violence and cruelty and its readiness to have human beings executed and tortured, the court of Harun al-Rashid undoubtedly had something which later ages admire. It was far from being without a conscience, and in the quality of its living there were elements of grandeur and a nobility of style; and the tone of this life was set by Rashid and the Barmakids.

Edited by John Howe. New York: New Amsterdam, It provided for one son, al-Amin, to become caliph and for another son, al-Mamun, to have control of certain provinces and of a section of the army. Harun took a personal interest in the campaigns against the Byzantines, leading expeditions in , , and In the empress Irene made peace and agreed to pay a large sum of money. The emperor Nicephorus denounced this treaty but was forced to make an even more humiliating one in Cyprus was occupied in Though not mentioned in Arabic sources, there seem to have been diplomatic contacts between Harun and Charlemagne, in which the latter was recognized as protector of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.

Harun died at Tus in eastern Persia on March 24, , during an expedition to restore order there. Although the poet, thinking of some of the stories of the Arabian Nights, could speak of "the good Haroun Alraschid, " the scholar R.

Nicholson thought he was rather "a perfidious and irascible tyrant, whose fitful amiability and real taste for music and letters hardly entitle him to be described either as a great monarch or a good man. Yet with all its violence and cruelty and its readiness to have human beings executed and tortured, the court of Harun al-Rashid undoubtedly had something which later ages admire.