<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable . Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources . Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted . (October 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable . Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources . Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted . (October 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The House of Wisdom (Arabic: بيت الحكمة ‎; Bayt al - Hikma) refers either to a major Abbasid public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad or to a large private library belonging to the Abbasid Caliphs during the Islamic Golden Age . The House of Wisdom is the subject of an active dispute over its functions and existence as a formal academy, an issue complicated by a lack of physical evidence following the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate and a reliance on corroboration of literary sources to construct a narrative . The House of Wisdom was founded either as a library for the collections of the Caliph Harun al - Rashid in the late 8th century and later turned into a public academy during the reign of Al - Ma'mun or was a private collection created by Al - Mansur (reign 754--775) to house rare books and collections of poetry in both Arabic and Persian . Regardless, the House of Wisdom existed as a part of the major Translation Movement taking place during the Abbasid Era, translating works from Greek and Syriac to Arabic, but it is unlikely that The House of Wisdom existed as the sole center of such work, as major translation efforts arose in Cairo and Damascus even earlier than the proposed establishment of the House of Wisdom . This translation movement lent momentum to a great deal of original research occurring in the Islamicate world, which had access to texts from Greek, Persian and Indian sources, as opposed to the "Bookshelf Thesis" that reduces the contributions of Islamicate scholars to mere translation and preservation of Greek texts . </P> <P> The House of Wisdom was made possible by the consistent flow of Persian, Arab, and other scholars of the Islamicate world to Baghdad, owing to the city's position as capital of the Abbasid Caliphate . This is evidenced by the large number of scholars known to have studied in Baghdad between the 8th and 13th centuries, such as Al - Jahiz, Al - Kindi, and Al - Ghazali among others, all of whom would have contributed to a vibrant academic community in Baghdad, producing a great number of notable works, regardless of the existence of a formal academy . The fields to which scholars associated with the House of Wisdom contributed include, but are not limited to philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and optics . The early name of the library, Khizanat al - Hikma (literally, "Storehouse of Wisdom"), derives from its function as a place for the preservation of rare books and poetry, a primary function of the House of Wisdom until its destruction . The House of Wisdom and its contents were destroyed in the Siege of Baghdad (1258), leaving very little in the way of archaeological evidence for the House of Wisdom, such that most knowledge about it is derived from the works of contemporary scholars of the era such as Al - Tabari and Ibn al - Nadim . </P>

What was the purpose of the house of wisdom
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