It’s astonishing to think there were 36 libraries in Baghdad alone when the Mongols ransacked the city in 1258. The libraries were based in mosques called dar al-kutub (the house of books) and were a hive of intellectual activity.

These lending libraries with their cataloguing and book classification systems, were the product of a culture with a profound love of the written word. The first Islamic book was the Quran in the 7th Century, then came books on science, technology, the arts and other subjects in the 8th Century. Private book collections and libraries were a natural result.

And these weren’t just any old libraries. The medieval historian, al-Muqaddasi, described the 10th Century library complexes in Shiraz, Iran as “…buildings surrounded by gardens with lakes and waterways …topped with domes, and comprised an upper and a lower storey with a total …of 360 rooms… In each department, catalogues were placed on a shelf… the rooms were furnished with carpets”.

Discover more about some of the Libraries in England! both Manchester Central Library and Bristol Central Library have both been nominated as English icons. Would you vote for them?