Summary
This work gives a brief overview of the book culture of the Arabs in the Middle Ages, with the special reference to the work of the famous House of Wisdom in Baghdad. The first part of the work defines the types of libraries that existed in the medieval Arab society, primarily through their cultural significance and their impact on culture in general. The second part describes the culture of book and reading and its development through time, from the fall of the Middle Eastern part of the Byzantine Empire under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, through its development within the Abbasid Caliphate and its culmination in the 13th century, when its last remnants, in this part of the world, were destroyed by the Mongols. The text also describes work of libraries and functions of librarians. Important part of the work deals with the description of the process of creating books which was almost identical to the process of their production in the medieval West. During the reign of the Arabs, the new way of making books was established, due to the Chinese invention of paper which was almost unknown in Europe as a writing material, until the 12th century. Certainly, the most important legacy of the Arabs is the fact that, in a way, they saved antique cultural tradition for the West, and together with the culture of the Byzantium, made the birth of the Renaissance possible.

Keywords:
House of Wisdom, translation movement, Umayyad dynasty, Abbasid Caliphate, Harun al-Rashid, Al-Mamun, mosque libraries

Full text