Al-Hikma University (Baghdad)

Al-Hikma University

Established	1956; 61 years ago (1956)
Religious affiliation	originally Jesuit (Roman Catholic)
Location	Baghdad, Iraq
Website	Al Hikma

Al-Hikma University (Arabic: جامعة الحكمة‎‎) was a university in Baghdad founded in 1956 by members of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus. It was located in Zaafarania on the southern outskirts of Baghdad. The university was seized by the government of Iraq and its student body was transferred to the University of Baghdad. Over its lifetime, around 1900 students graduated from the university.

Four American Jesuits were sent to Iraq in 1932 at the request of Pope Pius XI, upon the urging of the Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, as the Kingdom of Iraq prepared for its independence from Great Britain. There they founded Baghdad College, which soon became known as an institution of academic excellence.

In 1952 the decision was made to provide a university-level facility for the city. The buildings were designed and built by the Jesuits on a 195-acre campus. When it opened in The University's initial student body numbered 45 students, but, by the time that the university was closed, it was admitting about 150 each year, and there were 656 students in total.

In 1960, the construction of a new library building for Al-Hikma University commenced. It was funded by the Ford Foundation (Qubain 1966), but the Foundation expected the University to find the money for furnishing it. The building was completed in 1962, when the collection was around 20,000 volumes. Although the library was not architecturally commendable, it was reported to have attracted some imitators. The Library had a collection of 327 manuscripts, a private collection donated in 1965, which were catalogued with support funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation (Qazanchi 1970). In the late 1960s, Gurgis Awad (Librarian of the Iraqi Museum) donated his private collection to the Al-Hikma University Library (Zado 1990).