Baghdad

Panoramic view of the River Tigris flowing through Baghdad, 2016

Baghdad (Arabic: بَغْدَاد, Baghdād) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris river. In 762 AD, Baghdad was chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became its most notable major development project. Within a short time, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual centre of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Centre of Learning".

Quotes

I have seen the greatest of cities that are known for their perfection and refinement, in the lands of Syria and the Greeks and other countries, but I have never seen a city like Baghdad whose roofs are so high, a city which is so round or more noble, the gates of which are wider and the walls better. It is as if the city were cast into a mould and poured out.
- Abu ‘Uthman ‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz, quoted in Baghdad: The City in Verse (2013), p. 6

Baghdad is the metropolis of the world ... Outside it there is only desert.
- Abu Ishaq al-Zajjaj, quoted in Baghdad: The City in Verse (2013), p. 6

Baghdad among the lands is like a master among slaves.
- Al-Maqdisi al-Bashshari, quoted in Baghdad: The City in Verse (2013), p. 7
- See also: Sahib ibn Abbad

This old city still serves as the Abbasid capital ... but most of its substance is gone. Only the name remains. ... The city is but a trace of a vanished encampment, a shadow of a passing ghost.
- Ibn Jubayr, writing in 1184, quoted in "The Glory That Was Baghdad", The Wilson Quarterly, 27, 2 (2003), p. 28

Two people, one city, different times; connected by a memoir. Can love exist in a city destined for decades of misery?
- Ahmad Ardalan, The Gardener of Baghdad (2014)

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.
- Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (Translated by Haakon M. Chevalier, 1942), Ch. 11

That it should be Baghdad, thought Victoria, was just her luck! Nevertheless, difficult though it might be, she intended to get to Baghdad somehow or other. Victoria walked purposefully along Tottenham Court Road evolving ways and means. Baghdad. What went on in Baghdad? According to Edward: ‘Culture.’ Could she, in some way, play up culture? Unesco? Unesco was always sending people here, there and everywhere, sometimes to the most delectable places. But these were usually, Victoria reflected, superior young women with university degrees who had got into the racket early on.
Victoria, deciding that first things came first, finally bent her steps to a travel agency, and there made her inquiries. There was no difficulty, it seemed, in travelling to Baghdad. You could go by air, by long sea to Basrah, by train to Marseilles and by boat to Beirut and across the desert by car. You could go via Egypt. You could go all the way by train if you were determined to do so, but visas were at present difficult and uncertain and were apt to have actually expired by the time you received them. Baghdad was in the sterling area and money therefore presented no difficulties. Not, that is to say, in the clerk’s meaning of the word. What it all boiled down to was that there was no difficulty whatsoever in getting to Baghdad so long as you had between sixty and a hundred pounds in cash.
- Agatha Christie, They Came to Baghdad (1951), Ch. 4

When the war finally started, we were ready. On January 16, 1991, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw reported to the world, “The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated . . .” As predicted, Iraqi power and communications systems were destroyed by stealth fighter jets and cruise missiles. Every media company based in Baghdad—except CNN—lost power and transmission capabilities. Only CNN broadcast live to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. All channels turned to us for exclusive coverage; there was no place else. Back then CNN was the only global 24/7 news channel. That live coverage of war—the first time it had been televised worldwide—transformed the media landscape. CNN became required viewing for informed citizens and heads of state, the one truly global news source. That has changed now, with multiple cable networks and news breaking on social media. But without the investment in journalism from visionary owners such as Turner, today’s networks focus more on commentary than newsgathering.
- Tom Johnson, “Desert Storm: The first war televised live around the world (and around the clock)”, Atlanta Magazine, (March 18, 2015).

Between Muhammad’s death and the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate in 750, Arab armies appeared everywhere from central Asia, through the Middle East and north Africa, throughout the Visigothic Iberian Peninsula, and even into southern France. They imposed Islamic governments and introduced new ways of living, trading, learning, thinking, building, and praying. The capital of the vast caliphate they established would be Damascus itself, crowned with its Great Mosque—one of the masterpieces of medieval architecture anywhere in the world. In Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was built on top of the site of the old Jewish Second Temple—and its gleaming dome became an iconic landmark on that city’s famous skyline. Elsewhere, great new cities like Cairo, Kairouan (Tunisia), and Baghdad grew out of Arab military garrison towns, while other settlements like Merv (Turkmenistan), Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Lisbon, and Córdoba were renewed as major mercantile and trading cities.
- Dan Jones, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021).

It is not solely by weapons that ISIS imposes its control. More important is the terror it has instilled in millions in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and, increasingly, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, Jordan’s panic-driven decision to execute two jihadists in response to the burning of its captured pilot is another sign of the terror Daesh has instilled in Arab governments and much of the public. In the short run, terror is a very effective means of psychological control of unarmed and largely defenseless populations. Even in areas far from Daesh’s reach, growing numbers of preachers, writers, politicians and even sheiks and emirs, terrorized by unprecedented savagery, are hedging their bets. Today, Daesh is a menacing presence not only in Baghdad but in Arab capitals from Cairo to Muscat — an evil ghost capable of launching attacks in the Sinai and organizing deadly raids on Jordanian and Saudi borders. ISIS enjoys yet another advantage: It has a clear strategy of making areas beyond its control unsafe. No one thinks Daesh can seize Baghdad, but few Baghdadis feel they’re living anything close to a normal life. Daesh’s message is clear: No one is safe anywhere, including in non-Muslim lands, until the whole world is brought under “proper Islamic rule.”
- Amir Taheri, How ISIS is winning: The long reach of terror, New York Post (February 5, 2015).

Iraq War

Baghdad is determined to force the Mongols of our age to commit suicide at its gates.
- Saddam Hussein, quoted in The Independent (18 January 2003)

Baghdad is safe, protected. There are no American infidels in Baghdad.
- Mohammed al-Sahhaf, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph (13 April 2003)

Historiography

In 762, to symbolize and propel the new order, Al-Mansur decided to build the grand new capital of Baghdad as a massive round city. The caliph assembled an elite team of the empire’s top engineers, architects, and visionaries—notably including Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews, such as Mashallah Ibnul-Athari.
- Mohamad Jebara, The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy (2024)

As the Qur’an itself had quoted Moses to declare (and as Muhammad had cited in his final letter to the assassin Musailimah): “The earth belongs to the Loving Divine, who allots it to whomever He wills; yet the most lasting legacy will be the enduring impact of those who have action-based hope.” Tellingly, when Al-Mansur inaugurated his new capital, the cornerstone of Baghdad featured that very verse etched for all to see.
- Mohamad Jebara, The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy (2024)

In 771, a traveller arrived in the city [Baghdad] with a copy of a work of Hindu astronomy called the Siddhanta (The Opening of the Universe), by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta. Unlike Euclid, Brahmagupta did not set out his mathematical propositions clearly with proofs, but obscured them (as was traditional in Indian mathematics) under a veil of poetry — beautiful, but extremely difficult to unravel. Al-Mansur gave his court astrologer, al-Fazari, the Herculean task of translating the Siddhanta, which introduced Baghdad to the concept of 'positional notation' – the way we write numbers to this day, using the digits 1 to 9, in columns of units, tens, hundreds and so on. The possibilities that this system opened up were limitless; when it was eventually adopted, it transformed the entire discipline of mathematics by allowing calculations that would have been impossible with the old Roman-numeral system. Positional notation was already known in Syria and had been admired by Severus Sebokht, who wrote about the 'nine sings' of Indian mathematicians in 662.
- Violet Moller, The Map of Knowledge: How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found (2019)

Arabian Nights

Then I journeyed through many regions and saw many a city intending for Baghdad, that I might seek audience, in the House of Peace, with the Commander of the Faithful and tell him all that had befallen me.
- "The Second Kalandar's Tale", in Richard Francis Burton, The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night, Vol. 1 (1885), p. 138
- Burton’s note ("House of Peace"): Every city in the East has its specific title: this was given to Baghdad either on account of its superior police or simply because it was the Capital of the Caliphate. The Tigris was also called the "River of Peace (or Security)."

Orientalism

Reported in: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places, Vols. XXI–XXIII (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1876–1879)

Thou, too, art fallen, Bagdad! City of Peace,
    Thou too hast had thy day;
And loathsome Ignorance and brute Servitude
    Pollute thy dwellings now,
Erst for the mighty and the wise renowned.
O, yet illustrious for remembered fame,—
Thy founder the Victorious,—and the pomp
Of Haroun, for whose name by blood defiled,
Yahia’s, and the blameless Barmecides’,
Genius hath wrought salvation,—and the years
When Science with the good Al-Maimon dwelt;
So one day may the Crescent from thy mosques
Be plucked by Wisdom, when the enlightened arm
Of Europe conquers to redeem the East!
Then Pomp and Pleasure dwelt within her walls;
The merchants of the East and of the West
    Met in her arched bazaars;
    All day the active poor
Showered a cool comfort o’er her thronging streets;
  Labour was busy in her looms;
    Through all her open gates
Long troops of laden camels lined the roads,
And Tigris bore upon his tameless stream
Armenian harvests to her multitudes.
- Robert Southey, from Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Book V

Jaffàr, the Barmecide, the good Vizier,
The poor man’s hope, the friend without a peer,
Jaffàr was dead, slain by a doom unjust;
And guilty Hàroun, sullen with mistrust
Of what the good and e’en the bad might say,
Ordained that no man living from that day
Should dare to speak his name on pain of death.
All Araby and Persia held their breath.
All but the brave Mondeer. He, proud to show
How far for love a grateful soul could go,
And facing death for very scorn and grief
(For his great heart wanted a great relief),
Stood forth in Bagdad, daily, in the square
Where once had stood a happy house; and there
Harangued the tremblers at the scymitar
On all they owed to the divine Jaffàr.
“Bring me this man,” the caliph cried. The man
Was brought,—was gazed upon. The mutes began
To bind his arms. “Welcome, brave cords!” cried he;
“From bonds far worse Jaffàr delivered me;
From wants, from shames, from loveless household fears;
Made a man’s eyes friends with delicious tears;
Restored me,—loved me,—put me on a par
With his great self. How can I pay Jaffàr?”
Hàroun, who felt that on a soul like this
The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss,
Now deigned to smile, as one great lord of fate
Might smile upon another half as great.
He said, “Let worth grow frenzied, if it will;
The caliph’s judgment shall be master still.
Go; and since gifts thus move thee, take this gem,
The richest in the Tartar’s diadem,
And hold the giver as thou deemest fit.”
“Gifts!” cried the friend. He took; and holding it
High towards the heavens, as though to meet his star,
Exclaimed, “This, too, I owe to thee, Jaffàr!”
- Leigh Hunt, "Jaffàr"
- Stories in Verse (1855), p. 234

When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free
In the silken sail of infancy,
The tide of time flowed back with me,
  The forward-flowing tide of time;
And many a sheeny summer-morn,
Adown the Tigris I was borne,
By Bagdat’s shrines of fretted gold,
High-walléd gardens green and old;
True Mussulman was I and sworn,
  For it was in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Anight my shallop, rustling through
The low and blooméd foliage, drove
The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove
The citron-shadows in the blue:
By garden porches on the brim,
The costly doors flung open wide,
Gold glittering through lamplight dim,
And broidered sofas on each side;
  In sooth it was a goodly time,
  For it was in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Often, where clear stemmed platans guard
The outlet, did I turn away
The boat-head down a broad canal
From the main river sluiced, where all
The sloping of the moonlit sward
Was damask-work, and deep inlay
Of braided blooms unmown, which crept
Adown to where the water slept.
  A goodly place, a goodly time,
  For it was in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
A motion from the river won
Ridged the smooth level, bearing on
My shallop through the star-strown calm,
Until another night in night
I entered, from the clearer light,
Imbowered vaults of pillared palm,
Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb
Heavenward, were stayed beneath the dome
  Of hollow boughs. A goodly time,
  For it was in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Still onward; and the clear canal
Is rounded to as clear a lake.
From the green rivage many a fall
Of diamond rillets musical,
Through little crystal arches low
Down from the central fountain’s flow
Fallen silver-chiming, seemed to shake
The sparkling flints beneath the prow,
  A goodly place, a goodly time,
  For it was in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Above through many a bowery turn
A walk with vary-coloured shells
Wandered engrained. On either side
All round about the fragrant marge
From fluted vase, and brazen urn
In order, Eastern flowers large,
Some dropping low their crimson bells
Half-closed, and others studded wide
  With disks and tiars, fed the time
  With odour in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Far off, and where the lemon grove
In closest coverture upsprung,
The living airs of middle night
Died round the bulbul as he sung;
Not he: but something which possessed
The darkness of the world, delight,
Life, anguish, death, immortal love,
Ceasing not, mingled, unrepressed,
  Apart from place, withholding time,
  But flattering the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Black the garden-bowers and grots
Slumbered; the solemn palms were ranged
Above, unwooed of summer wind:
A sudden splendour from behind
Flushed all the leaves with rich gold-green,
And, flowing rapidly between
Their interspaces, counterchanged
The level lake with diamond plots
  Of dark and bright. A lovely time,
  For it was in the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead,
Distinct with vivid stars inlaid,
Grew darker from that under-flame:
So, leaping lightly from the boat,
With silver anchor left afloat,
In marvel whence that glory came
Upon me, as in sleep I sank
In cool soft turf upon the bank,
  Entrancéd with that place and time,
  So worthy of the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Thence through the garden I was drawn,—
A realm of pleasance, many a mound,
And many a shadow-checkered lawn
Full of the city’s stilly sound,
And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round
The stately cedar, tamarisks,
Thick rosaries of scented thorn,
Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks,
  Graven with emblems of the time,
  In honour of the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
With dazéd vision unawares
From the long alley’s latticed shade
Emerged, I came upon the great
Pavilion of the Caliphat.
Right to the carven cedarn doors,
Flung inward over spangled floors,
Broad-baséd nights of marble stairs
Ran up with golden balustrade,
  After the fashion of the time,
  And humour of the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
The fourscore windows all alight
As with the quintessence of flame,
A million tapers flaring bright
From twisted silvers looked to shame
The hollow-vaulted dark, and streamed
Upon the moonéd domes aloof
In inmost Bagdat, till there seemed
Hundreds of crescents on the roof
  Of night new-risen, that marvellous time
  To celebrate the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Then stole I up, and trancédly
Gazed on the Persian girl alone,
Serene with argent-lidded eyes
Amorous, and lashes like to rays
Of darkness, and a brow of pearl
Tresséd with redolent ebony,
In many a dark delicious curl,
Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone;
  The sweetest lady of the time,
  Well worthy of the golden prime
    Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Six columns, three on either side,
Pure silver, underpropt a rich
Throne of the massive ore, from which
Down-drooped, in many a floating fold,
Engarlanded and diapered
With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold.
Thereon, his deep eye laughter-stirred
With merriment of kingly pride,
  Sole star of all that place and time.
  I saw him in his golden prime,
    The good Haroun Alraschid!
- Alfred Tennyson, "Recollections of the Arabian Nights"
- Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (London: E. Wilson, 1830); Works (London: Macmillan, 1891)

Still on we press, and now the ruddy beam
To amber turns swift Tigris’ arrowy stream,
Shines on famed Bagdad’s walls, and bathes with fire
Each gilded dome, and crescent-mounted spire.
Romantic Bagdad! name to childhood dear,
Awaking terror’s thrill and pity’s tear;
For there the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,
And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid knelt;
Prince of the Thousand Tales! whose glorious reign
So brightly shines in fancy’s fair domain!
Whose noble deeds still Arab minstrels sing,
Who rivalled all but Gallia’s knightly king.
Yonder where fountains gush and yew-trees weep,
Watch o’er his harem-queen doth Azrael keep;
Yes, morn’s rich hues illume that sacred pile,
Like beams shed down by some blest angel’s smile,—
Where fair Zobeida, shrined in odor, lies:
Her soul long since in starry Paradise.
- Nicholas Michell, from Ruins of Many Lands (1849)

External links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Baghdad