Persian poet Saadi, who influenced thinkers such as French Enlightenment writer-philosopher Voltaire, was among the stalwarts who studied in Baghdad at iconic educational institutes such as Nizamiya College and Mustansiriya University, known for their structured teachings and diverse student body, during the Islamic Golden Age
Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited Baghdad in 1327 and found the Abbasid Empire’s capital and the hub of scholarship, culture, and trade at the peak of the Islamic Golden Age (eighth-14th century), a pale shadow of its former self. The city continued to suffer from the Mongol invasion. Baghdad’s economy was in tatters a century after an estimated 150,000 Mongol soldiers under Genghis Khan’s grandson, Hulagu, entered the city in February 1258 after besieging it for a month. The Mongols overwhelmed Baghdad in just seven days.
The invasion remains etched in the collective Arab memory because of its sheer brutality. The Mongols destroyed Baghdad’s famed hospitals, libraries, palaces, and educational institutions, save the one built in 1227, which exists to date—al-Mustansiriya University— and is among the world’s oldest universities. Abbasid Caliph Al-Mustansir founded al-Mustansiriya to compete with Baghdad’s other major centre of learning, Nizamiya College.
Blue-domed Mustansiriya University stood out to Ibn Battuta, described as perhaps the greatest explorer of all time, as he walked among the ruins of Baghdad’s glorious past. He reported its structured teaching methods, students from distant places like Yemen and Syria, the diverse intellectual community it fostered, academic rigour, established status, and enabling atmosphere. Ibn Batuta called Mustansiriya, made from sun-baked and kiln-fired mud, his favourite among Baghdad’s learning centres.
Mustansiriya and Nizamiya: The Ivy Leagues of the Islamic World
Ibn Battuta wrote about proverbial phrases commemorating the great beauty and grandeur of the 11th-century Nizamiya College, which was located on the banks of the Tigris. It was associated with stalwarts like philosopher Ghazali, who taught there. Ghazali harmonised mysticism with Islamic orthodoxy and studied Arabic philosophers, or the falasifa, at Nizâmiya. He responded to Aristotelianism by writing Incoherence of the Philosophers, which has been described as ‘a masterwork of philosophical literature’.
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Thirteenth-century Persian poet Saadi, who wrote the iconic Gulistan wa Bustan (The Rose Garden and the Fruit Garden), was among Nizamiya alumni. Born Abu Mohammad Moshrefoldin Mosleh ebn Abdollah ebn Mosharraf, Saadi influenced thinkers such as French Enlightenment writer-philosopher Voltaire and American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Voltaire lauded Saadi’s humanist ethos and borrowed his narrative style for the philosophical fiction Zadig, whose protagonist mirrored the Persian poet’s wit and moral clarity.
Emerson wrote a poem praising Saadi as ‘the cheerer of men’s hearts’ and for the universal appeal of his ‘benevolent wisdom’. In his introduction to Francis Gladwin’s translation of the Gulistan, Emerson wrote that Saadi speaks to all nations through his Persian dialect. He compared Saadi with Ancient Greek poet Homer, English playwright William Shakespeare, Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, and French Renaissance philosophers Michel de Montaigne, calling the Persian poet perpetually modern.
Voltaire, Emerson, Obama: Saadi’s Global Footprint
In 2009, the then United States President Barack Obama quoted Saadi’s poem Bani A’dam, highlighting the connectedness of humanity rooted in the Muslim tradition. A Persian carpet at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York is embroidered with Bani Adam verses about the unity of mankind.
In its description of the rug from the famous carpet production Seirafian family, the UN said Saadi (1210–1292) is recognised for his social and moral thoughts. Iran presented the rug to the UN in 2005, honouring the ‘Dialogue among Civilizations‘ which began in 2001. Artist Mohammad Seirafian, who designed the rug using fine materials processed traditionally in plant bark and leaves for colour dyes to ensure it becomes more attractive as it gets older, selected the poem for the carpet inscription:
All human beings are members of one frame
Since all, at first, from the same essence came
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs cannot at rest remain
If thou feel not for other’s misery
A human being is no name for thee
Al-Farabi and the Baghdad School of Political Philosophy
Baghdad’s institutes of learning were its centrepieces during the Islamic Golden Age, which drew influential philosophers and intellectuals, such as Sadi, Ghazali, and al-Farabi (878-950). A philosopher and one of the preeminent thinkers of the age, Farabi moved to Baghdad from Central Asia. He sought to address questions Muslims grappled with through his study of Greek philosophy. Al-Fārābī argued that human reason was superior to revelation. He sought to address the state’s correct ordering and blamed the philosopher-government separation for political upheavals.
Pioneering Islamic jurists Imam Abu Hanifa (699–767), Imam Malik ibn Anas (715–95), Imam Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi (767–820), and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855) also studied, taught, and founded eponymous schools of Islamic law in Baghdad. The Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, and Maliki schools differed in methodologies and philosophies but agreed on the larger issues defining Islamic practices, maintaining a balance between religion and politics.
The Hanafi law has been the traditional doctrine of the Sunnis in the region, although the Hanbali school held sway over Baghdad by the 10th century. It remains the largest of the four schools. The shrine of its founder, Abu Hanifa, in Baghdad’s Adhamiya is a major pilgrimage site. Ottoman Sultan Suleiman restored it as the Ottomans favoured the Hanafi school. He built a dome, mosque, and a hospice attached to the shrine.
Hanifa, who declined a judge’s position, was also one of the four overseers of Baghdad’s construction in charge of brick-making and hiring labourers. He devised a time-saving method of measuring bricks by the stack with a cane, improving on a prevailing practice.
From Ottoman Neglect to Post-War Revival
Baghdad became a backwater under the Ottomans, who also shifted Mustansiriya’s formidable library to the empire’s Istanbul in the 16th century, triggering its decay. Mustansiriya’s restoration work started in 1944 after centuries of neglect. In 2013, a fresh conservation effort gained pace with Baghdad’s nomination as the Arab world’s cultural capital. The Iraqi government planned to spruce it up as Baghdad was mostly at peace after the American invasion and the civil war that followed.
Mustansiriya University, which has a tapering gateway of inscriptions and geometric themes, survived the Mongol onslaught, floods, and other manmade and natural calamities. Much of the Abbasid-era buildings succumbed to invasions or faded away.
Mustansiriya endured for over eight centuries in a narrow strip along the Tigris. It remains among the roughly dozen structures in Baghdad dating back to the Abbasid period. Mustansiriya escaped British urban renewal projects and recent upheavals as a symbol of the region’s great heritage.
Baghdad’s forgotten past shaped thinkers from Saadi to Ghazali, and its institutions laid the groundwork for global thought, law, and literature. It nurtured a legacy where faith and reason coexisted, scholars debated ideas freely, and where poetry, philosophy, and jurisprudence flourished. As the world grapples with cultural erasure and intellectual homogenization, the Islamic Golden Age reminds us that curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge are not Western inventions but are deeply rooted in the cradle of civilization.
