Result · What Era Should You Have Lived In?

The Baghdad golden age

Ninth century, Abbasid dynasty: Galen, Ptolemy and Euclid were being translated into Arabic on an industrial scale, and al-Khwarizmi wrote the treatise that gave us both "algorithm" and "algebra". Your instinct — gathering, translating and connecting knowledge that doesn't talk to itself — was a recognised, paid profession there. What it would have cost you: that openness depended entirely on the caliph of the moment. Under al-Ma'mun you could debate the nature of the Qur'an; a generation later, holding the same rationalist position could land you in prison, which is exactly what happened to the jurist Ibn Hanbal, imprisoned and flogged for refusing the official doctrine. Your intellectual freedom lasted exactly one reign.