While Europe slept through its Dark Ages, a brilliant empire built the world's greatest center of knowledge. This is the epic story of the ABBASID CALIPHATE and its Golden Age—a 500-year renaissance where science, philosophy, and art flourished under the banner of Islam.

Witness the revolution that toppled the Umayyads and established a new capital of dreams: Baghdad, the legendary "Round City." Enter the House of Wisdom, a university without equal, where scholars preserved Greek philosophy, invented algebra, and mapped the stars. Experience the cultural explosion that gave us The Thousand and One Nights, and witness the cataclysmic day when the Mongol Storm extinguished history's greatest beacon of learning.