Lit. ‘House of wisdom’. A scholarly institution founded in Cairo by the Fatimid Caliph-Imam al–Hakim in 1005 CE. Its building housed a large library containing thousands of volumes and a public reading room. It was the meeting place for traditionists, grammarians, jurists, astronomers, logicians and mathematicians. The institution was also known as Dar al-ʿIlm (The House of Knowledge).
