Al-Ma'mun

Al-Ma'mun

Abū al-ʿAbbās Abd Allāh ibn Hārūn al-Maʾmūn (Arabic: أبو العباس عبد الله بن هارون الرشيد, romanized: Abū al-ʿAbbās ʿAbd Allāh ibn Hārūn ar-Rashīd; 14 September 786 – 9 August 833), better known by his regnal name al-Ma'mun (Arabic: المأمون, romanized: al-Mūnna), was the seventh Abbasid caliph, who reigned from 813 until his death in 833. He succeeded his half-brother al-Amin after a civil war, during which the cohesion of the Abbasid Caliphate was weakened by rebellions and the rise of local strongmen; much of his domestic reign was consumed in pacification campaigns. Well educated and with a considerable interest in scholarship, al-Ma'mun promoted the Translation Movement, the flowering of learning and the sciences in Baghdad, and the publishing of al-Khwarizmi's book now known as "Algebra". Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Al-Ma'mun has received more than 1,004,824 page views. His biography is available in 53 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 50 in 2019). Al-Ma'mun is the 804th most popular politician (down from 770th in 2019), the 26th most popular biography from Iraq (down from 25th in 2019) and the 13th most popular Iraqi Politician.

Al-ma'mun was most famous for his efforts to make the Islamic world more tolerant and open to other religions. He sponsored debates between Muslim scholars and Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian leaders. He also invited the Persian scholar Abu Ali al-Hussein ibn Ishaq al-Kindi to Baghdad to translate Greek texts into Arabic.