The school consisted of calligraphers, illustrators, transcribers and translators, who collaborated to produce illuminated manuscripts derived from non-Arabic sources.

The Baghdad School, also known as the Arab school, was a relatively short-lived yet influential school of Islamic art developed during the late 12th century in the capital Baghdad of the ruling Abbasid Caliphate.

The frontispiece to a book, “The Epistles of the Sincere Brethren,” dated 1287, demonstrates that the main stylistic elements of the Baghdad school survived to the last.

The Abbasid artist, Yahya Al-Wasiti, who probably lived in Baghdad in the late Abassid era (12th to 13th-centuries), was one of the pre-eminent exponents of the Baghdad school.

The Greek materia medica, in particular herbals and bestiaries, which described the characteristics and medicinal uses of various plants and animals found in the Mediterranean world, were among the books transcribed.

The House of Wisdom (Arabic: بيت الحكمة‎; Bayt al-Hikma) was a major intellectual center during the Islamic Golden Age.

Early examples of Baghdad-school miniatures are illustrations from an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’ medical treatise, De materia medica, dated 1224

Yet other examples of work in the style of the Baghdad School include the illustrations in Kalila wa Dimna (Fables of Bidpai), (1222);

The Brethren of Purity (Arabic: اخوان‌الصفا‎ ikhwãn al-safã; also The Brethren of Sincerity) were a secret society of Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq, in the 8th century CE.