BAGHDAD: CROSSROAD OF AN ANCIENT GLORY

The Arabs found themselves in possession of a glory and prosperity that had never been the lot of anyone else. Ibn Khaldun

Baghdad in the 10th century had at least 800,000 inhabitants and was, after Constantinople, the largest city in the world. Its palaces, mosques, schools and public buildings were the wonder of the world.

In our days, mentioning Iraq is often associated with violence and the context of war due to recent events. Modern Iraq corresponds to where historical Mesopotamia once stood, recognised as the cradle of civilisation, whose rich and complex history has influenced and shaped the whole of humanity since the Iron Age. We think that in Mesopotamia the first forms of writing were discovered, the first written law, the first wheel, the first boat as a means of transport, the oldest map dated 2300 BC, the concept of urbanization, the concept of time according to astronomical calculations, astrology, mathematics and the counting system.

But today we will talk about the city of Baghdad, the jewel city, once called the Round City:

In 762, Caliph al-Mansur (714-775) decided that the third Abbasid caliphate would need a new capital, and so it was erected (Madinat al-Salam or the City of Peace), which remained for the next 500 years one of the largest cities in the world and the cultural centre of the Islamic world.

According to a legend, the Muslim historian al-Tabari is said to have claimed that an ancient prophecy preserved by Christian monks stated that one day a great city would be built by a lord named Miklas. When Caliph Mansur heard this he was astounded as it was his nickname as a child.

A Jewish astrologer, the most knowledgeable there was, chose the most auspicious time for the foundation of the city itself.

During his power, over 100,000 workers, engineers, architects and carpenters erected the city of Baghdad in just four years, a city remembered for three main components

• its 6 km circular shape, whose form is thought to have been inspired by the father of geometry, the Greek mathematician Euclid

• the 3 concentric fortified walls 44 metres thick

• the 4 straight, artery-like streets that criss-crossed the city complex

• and 4 immense iron gates that led to the four corners of the world. (Damascus, Basra, Kufa and Khurasan)

Huge sums were spent on the construction of sumptuous buildings, mosques, barracks, bridges, aqueducts and fortifications whose bricks could weigh up to 200 kg, historians estimate that the entire project cost 18 million gold dinars.

Life in ancient Baghdad

Mansur created the most perfect city. The location in which Baghdad was built was personally chosen by the Caliph and was strategically favored by water channels connecting the two main rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The round city was completed in 766, in the centre of it stood the Golden Gate or Caliph's palace, a 360,000 square foot building made of stone and marble in which long tunnels ran that allowed the Caliph to travel on horseback, in the distance was visible the palace's majestic green dome topped by an equestrian statue, while next to it stood the great mosque.

Each circle of the city housed different realities, the first for example housing the palaces of the royals and their servants, kitchens, barracks and offices that dealt with matters of state.

The city later branched out beyond the original plan and ended up encompassing large parks, meeting places and ethnic enclaves such as the Christian quarter adorned with churches, convents and monasteries;

Baghdad reached the apex of its economic prosperity and intellectual life under its successors, Caliph al-Mahdi (775-785) and the respective Harun al-Rashid (786-809), Baghdad's glory, grandeur and enormous wealth were considered unique throughout the world at the time.

His administration managed to exploit the rivers for grain cultivation and a brilliant system of canals and reservoirs drained the surrounding marshes.

Harun himself is said to have thought of creating a canal from the Gulf of Suez to the Mediterranean Sea, 1000 years before realization, but was dissuaded from doing so for fear of facilitating the passage of hostile western forces.

In Baghdad there were many bazaars and covered shops along which all manner of craftsmen, marble workers from Antioch, papyrus makers from Cairo, potters from Basra and calligraphers from Pechin, plied their trade. The diet was traditionally well balanced, and food stalls sold lemon chicken, spit-roasted lamb with cardamom, small buns dipped in honey, and rose jam. 

There's were all kinds of spices, the meats were salted smoked or pickled, cereals stored in silos, and vegetables and fruit (such as peas, beans, carrots, onions, bananas, pomegranates, apples, pears and watermelons) were placed in airtight underground containers.

In Baghdad, there was a large sanitation department, many fountains, public baths, and unlike European cities of the time, the streets were regularly cleaned and waste was swept away.

Most households had water supplied from aqueducts and some had underground cooled rooms, wet curtains hung over windows to help cool the house. 

Long paths lined the Tigris and marble steps led down to the water's edge where riverboats of all kinds docked along the quay.

On the outskirts of the city were numerous suburbs with gardens and villas, some adorned with frescoes painted with lapis lazuli majolica panels and ceramic wall tiles,

Most houses were built with sun-dried or baked bricks, while poorer dwellings were of rammed earth cemented with mortar and clay.

Because of the scarcity of wood, the furniture, which included beds, tables and chairs, was largely unknown among the Arabs except for the sofa, which often stretched along the sides of the rooms, most people usually sat on cushions on the carpeted floor.

In Harun's time, large private houses had huge bathing rooms, and there were many hammam. 

Baghdad had a large civil service staff to run the city such as night watchmen, lamplighters, market inspectors, tax collectors and a regular police force.

People were also dedicated to sports and games such as horse racing, swimming in the river and camel races. In the evening, palaces and ships on the tiger lit up the darkness.

In general clothing, the common people wore trousers held up by a rope, shirts with wide sleeves, while the richer people wore dresses perfumed with rosewater and powdered musk and leather sandals. The richest ladies chose new clothes, used perfumes, wore jewellery, belts, silk veils and wore eyeliner make-up.

Baghdad was at the crossroads of trade routes on the Silk Road, where trade was conducted by land, river and sea, trade deals and typical products reached countries such as China, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Russia, Japan, Korea, Morocco and Scandinavia. Many merchants travelled through Asia, Europe and Africa to reach Baghdad, very often in long caravans as group travel was thought to deter raids by thieves. A journey could take months and the camels carrying the goods could tolerate the heat of the day and the cool of the evening.

According to historical sources, a caravan would start its journey before dawn and travel up to 12 hours a day. While other merchants travelled by sea in trading ships, vessels or warships,

They traveled From the Persian Gulf ports of Siraf and Basra. Those coming from China brought silk, porcelain, furs, musk, paper and ink. From India came spices, minerals and dyes, while Central Asia was a source of various textiles and precious stones.

Baghdad's markets overflowed with goods of all kinds and were divided according to specific themes, the streets were noisy and crowded with travellers and buyers. The most common goods were ivory, soap, honey, diamonds, glass and tiles. Craft industries also flourished, such as metalworking, glassblowing and leatherwork, workshops produced soaps, copper lamps, scissors, knives, terracotta pots and Syrian glass, which inspired the stained glass windows of European cathedrals after the advent of the Crusaders.

We can only imagine today the social and cultural interactions that animated the ancient city

Al-Mansur himself stated:

You are where you receive gifts from ships from the west across the Euphrates, where you receive goods from Egypt and Sham, and you still receive gifts from ships from China, India and Wasit across the Tigris.

In the 10th century, the area of Baghdad could have reached 7000 hectares, five times the size of Constantinople. Few cities boasted such size and wonder,

In its heyday, the city was home to 1.5 million people, its mild climate, status as capital of the Abbasid empire, and beating heart of the world of science attracted thousands of new inhabitants and visitors, in comparison Paris and London were considered villages.

Mansur is believed to have said: This is indeed the city I am going to found, where I will live and where my descendants will later reign.

To get an idea of how people lived in the newly built city, a well-known Arab historian and geographer Yakut al-Hamawi wrote:

The city of Baghdad formed two vast circles on the right and left banks of the Tigris, 12 miles in diameter.

The numerous suburbs, covered with Germini parks and beautiful promenades and abundantly supplied with rich bazaars and mosques and finely constructed baths stretched for a considerable distance on both sides of the river.

In the days of its prosperity, the population of Baghdad and its suburbs amounted to over two million!

The caliph's palace stood in the middle of a vast park several hours in circumference, which alongside a menagerie and an aviary included an enclosure for wild animals reserved for pursuit.

The palace gardens were exquisitely decorated and adorned with plants, flowers and trees, reservoirs and fountains were surrounded by carved figures.

On this side of the river stood the palaces of the great nobles.

Huge roads no less than 40 cubits wide ran through the city or from one end to the other, dividing it into blocks or quarters each under the control of an overseer or supervisor who looked after the cleanliness, hygiene and comfort of the inhabitants.

The city was almost inhabited by a small group of wealthy people and landowners who lived in great luxury, while most people worked seven days a week. Some of them were surgeons, healers, while people in the guise of astrologers, dream interpreters, hypnotists entertained the wealthier classes with their knowledge. The lives of scholars, mathematicians and poets, many of them from Persia, were greatly facilitated by the patronage of the sultan who welcomed them into the city's famous intellectual life.

The Muslim essayist Al-Jahiz was bewildered by the city and reported:

I have seen great cities including those known for their durable construction. I have seen many cities in the straits of Syria, in Byzantine territory. Other provinces, but I have never seen a city of greater height, more perfect circularity and more endowed with supreme merits or possessing more spacious gates or more perfect defences than the city of Abu Jafar al-Mansur.

The government financed scientists to translate the Greek works of Pythagoras, Aristotle into Arabic. 

The ancient theories formulated by the Greeks were tested in Baghdad using empirical methods, and the role of the scholar and especially the role of the interpreter was highly respected and well remunerated. The ancient rulers of Baghdad were so passionate about knowledge that they preferred ancient texts to the spoils of war, and often requested works from larger cities such as Constantinople to carry out studies, research and translations on them, one of which was Ptolemy's Almagest.

Harun al-Rashid's son, al-Mamun (813-833) encouraged the translation of ancient Greek works into Arabic, the so-called Translation Movements, which we must remember was a moment in history of the highest importance for the entire civilisation, in which the compendium of scientific and literary disciplines adopted by the Arabs and translated would be the notions that would be disseminated years later in medieval Europe.

Religious scholars, astronomers, witty poets and other craftsmen of Christian, Islamic and Jewish faiths thronged the city and coexisted peacefully in Baghdad's center of knowledge, known as the House of Wisdom.

Al-Mamun founded The House of Wisdom, an academic institute dedicated to translation, research and education, and it quickly became one of the most famous centers of learning, attracting scholars from all over the world of different cultures. It housed one of the largest libraries in the world at the time, an astronomical observatory and the first hospital, where a sophisticated and modern healthcare system was adopted at no cost. Al-Mamun himself inherited from his father a private text collection consisting of rare books and collections of poetry in Arabic and Persian.

In the House of Wisdom, teachers and students worked together to translate Greek, Persian, Syriac and Indian manuscripts, studying the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Pythagoras and Brahmagupta. The studied disciplines were logic, rhetoric, metaphysics, theology, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, biology, medicine and surgery.

In 1234, the College of Mustansiriyah was built on the eastern side of the Tigris; the complex was described by many sources as a large 2-storey structure with a large outdoor courtyard.

The poorest students were provided with accommodation, food, a monthly dinar, medical care and free tuition, while a sophisticated 12-door clock marked the hours of classes.

The historian Baghdadi Ibn al-Futi described the college's clock. 

On the outer wall of this counter was a circle on which was a depiction of the sky, and on it were many finely decorated bronze arches housing finely decorated doors.

Inside the circle were two models of falcons, made of gold, each inside a gold bowl.

Two bronze ball bearings were placed behind each falcon so that they were not visible to the observer.

At the expiration of an hour, the mouth of each falcon opened and ball bearings fell.

Each time a ball bearing fell, one of the doors inside the arches opened.

The doors had lasted but now became silver, when the ball-bearings fell from the bowls below they returned to their original positions.

Then the golden planets rise in the blue sky within this representation of the heavens at the same time as the true sun rises in the sky.

They move across the clock face mirroring the movement of the sun across the sky descending and disappearing with the setting of the sun.

When night comes there are planets that gradually emerge due to light shining from behind them.

The strength of the light emitted by the disks of the planets gradually increases and reaches its maximum intensity at the end of a full hour.

Then this process begins on the next planet and so on until the night ends and the sun begins to rise, in this way you can know the timing of the prayers.

In the college, there were small classes of at least 10 students and the curriculum that was studied included legal and religious linguistic subjects, but also arithmetic, the division of inheritance, topography, history, hygiene poetry, plant animal care and natural history.

Students were assigned a teacher, assistants and a librarian, pens for writing, paper and lamps.

In Baghdad there were many paper mills, Muslims learned the art of paper from the Chinese and turned it into an industry. The alternatives to paper at that time were fragile papyrus and expensive parchment. Paper was cheaper and the quantity available allowed for all the necessary works. 

Baghdad in the 13th century is thought to have had 36 libraries, whose volumes were organized into specific genres and categories.

In 1258 the golden age of Baghdad came to an abrupt end. The unstoppable Mongol advance at the hands of Genghis Khan's grandson, Hulegu, followed by an army of 150,000 men conquered and besieged Baghdad. In the end of 1257, Hulegu sent a message to Caliph Mustasim asking him to open the gates of Baghdad to the Mongols and their Christian allies from Georgia. The caliph did not comply with this warning and told him to back down. On 10 February he surrendered, and three days later the army marched in, surrounded the capital and massacred the caliph's army that had gathered for negotiations. Baghdad held out for 12 days but the Mongol army besieged the walls and collected mountains of silver, gold and jewelry. The caliph was executed and it is estimated that thousands of inhabitants were massacred. Mongol fury burnt the great libraries and an indecipherable amount of texts were thrown into the Tigris, the quantity was so enormous that horses could walk on them and the waters of the river turned black for months. 

This event was an enormous loss for the whole of humanity and we can only imagine how much knowledge was lost that day.

I want to leave you all with a question, how do you think we would understand the present if all of the knowledge accumulated by the wise men of Baghdad had come down to us intact?