Baghdad – The Once Capital of the Muslim World
n 634 CE., the newly-created Muslim empire expanded into the region of Iraq, which at the time was part of the Persian Empire. Muslim armies, under the command of Khalid ibn Waleed, moved into the region and defeated the Persians. They offered the mostly-Christian residents two choices: embrace Islam, or pay a jizyah tax to be protected by the new government and excluded from military service.
The Caliph Omar ibn Al-Khattab Radiyallahu-Anhum ordered the foundation of two cities to protect the new territory: Kufah (the new capital of the region) and Basrah (the new port city).
Baghdad only came into importance in later years. The city’s roots date back to ancient Babylon, a settlement as far back as 1800 BCE. However, its fame as a center for commerce and scholarship began in the 8th century CE.
Meaning of the Name “Baghdad”
The origin of the name “Baghdad” is under some dispute. Some say it comes from an Aramaic phrase that means “sheep enclosure” (not very poetic . . .). Others contend that the word comes from ancient Persian: “bagh” meaning God, and “dad” meaning gift: “The gift of God….” During at least one point in history, it certainly seemed so.
The Capital of the Muslim World
In about 762 CE, the Abbasid dynasty took over the rule of the vast Muslim world and moved the capital to the newly-founded city of Baghdad. Over the next five centuries, the city would become the world’s center of education and culture. This period of glory has become known as the “Golden Age” of Islamic civilization, a time when scholars of the Muslim world made important contributions in both the sciences and humanities: medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, literature, and more. Under Abbasid rule, Baghdad became a city of museums, hospitals, libraries, and mosques.
Most of the famous Muslim scholars from the 9th to 13th centuries had their educational roots in Baghdad. One of the most famous centers of learning was Bayt al-Hikmah (the House of Wisdom), which attracted scholars from all over the world, from many cultures and religions. Here, teachers and students worked together to translate Greek manuscripts, preserving them for all time. They studied the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Euclid, and Pythagoras. The House of Wisdom was home to, among others, the most famous mathematician of the time: Al-Khawarizmi, the “father” of algebra (this branch of mathematics is actually named after his book “Kitab al-Jabr”).
While Europe festered in the Dark Ages, Baghdad was thus at the heart of a vibrant and diverse civilization. It was known as the world’s richest and most intellectual city of the time and was second in size only to Constantinople.
After 500 years of rule, however, the Abbasid dynasty slowly began to lose its vitality and relevance over the vast Muslim world. The reasons were partly natural (vast flooding and fires), and partly human-made (rivalry between Shia and Sunni Muslims, internal security problems).
The city of Baghdad was finally trashed by the Mongols in 1258 CE., effectively ending the era of the Abbasids. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers reportedly ran red with the blood of thousands of scholars (a reported 100,000 of Baghdad’s million residents were massacred). Many of the libraries, irrigation canals, and great historical treasures were looted and forever ruined. The city began a long period of decline and became host to numerous wars and battles that continue to this day.
In 1508 Baghdad became part of the new Persian (Iranian) empire, but very quickly the Sunnite Ottoman empire took over the city and held it virtually uninterrupted until World War 1.
In the words of Artz:
Baghdad, in the tenth century had at least 800,000 inhabitants and was, after Constantinople, the largest city in the world. The Tigris River and a system of canals gave the city access to the sea, and its trade and manufacture brought an enormous accumulation of wealth. Its palaces, mosques, schools, and public buildings were the wonder of the world.[1]
The city of Baghdad was founded under the second Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur (ruled 754-775). After a lengthy research along the course of the Tigris as far north as Mosul, he decided to construct a palace complex at the junction of the Tigris and the Sarat canal. It appears that al-Mansur decided on this particular location because of strategic and geographic advantages.[2] The Sarat was deep enough to accommodate commercial traffic, so that the caliph was able to utilise two major river systems, which the Sarat connected: The Tigris and the Euphrates.[3]
The first major structure to be erected was the famous round city, called madinat al-salam (City of Peace). Thousands, if not tens of thousands of workers, the skilled and unskilled, the artisans from outlying districts, and the military required housing, services and an industrial complex for the production of construction materials. Baghdad therefore acquired a quality of permanence even before the Round City was completed.[4] The Round City had four equidistant gates lying one Arab mile apart from each other and from every gate went a high road.[5] The four gates of the Round City were:
1. The Basrah Gate to the SE, opening on the suburbs along the Tigris bank were the various branches of the Isa canal flowed out;
2. The Kufah Gate to the SW, opening on the high road going south, which was the pilgrim road to Mecca;
3. The Syrian Gate to the NW where the high road branched left to Anbar on the Euphrates, and right to the Towns on the western Tigris bank north of Baghdad, and
4. The Khurasan Gate leading to the main bridge of boats for crossing the river.[6]
Great suburbs were in time built on these four roads, and these before long came to be incorporated in the circuit of the great metropolis.[7] In time the urban area grew around the original walls of the Round City and developed into a sprawling complex of interdependent elements, each containing its own markets, mosques and cemeteries.[8]
Throughout the history of the city, movement across the Tigris was funnelled onto a series of pontoon bridges that could be cut from their moorings, whilst the other canals similarly served as natural barriers in time of attack.[9] The river links with Baghdad had another role. Ibn Rustah writing in the 9th century speaks of ‘sea going ships sailing from India came up the Tigris from Basra, and thence could attain to Madain (formerly Sasanid Ctesiphon), for sailing on they came out above Fam as-Silh into the Tigris reach of Baghdad.’[10]
During the five centuries of the Abbasid caliphate, the plan of Baghdad with its suburbs changed considerably; in 836, the seat of the Caliphate was removed to Samarra, but in 892 Samarra was abandoned, and the caliph re-established his court in the old capital, and for the next four centuries, down to the invasion of the Mongols (1258), the caliphs permanently established their residence on the east bank.[11]
In the tenth century, the surface area of Baghdad could have reached 7,000 ha, which was five times larger than tenth century Constantinople.[12] The population of Baghdad might have been 200 people per ha,[13] which gives a total of 1.400,000 people, which fits with other figures from other sources.
Baghdad, besides its size and opulence, its role as the centre of the caliphate, was also the capital of Islamic learning and science for a period, escaping the ravages of the Crusades (1095-1291), but was extinguished in February 1258 by the Mongol onslaught on it. This splendour and the manner it was ended are looked at in turn.
The Splendour of Baghdad: Its scholarly institutions:
Harun al-Rashid became Caliph in 786, his rule marking the zenith of growth of Baghdad. In the following century, the 9th, the city achieved its greater strides in civilisation. The sources speak of magnificent residences, exquisitely appointed and featuring unusual elements, including a zoological garden and fantastic mechanical devices.[14] The city’s scholarly glory can be easily appreciated by looking at any work dealing with the medieval era, especially in the centuries that followed the 8th, to become aware of the countless numbers of scholars connected in one form or another with Baghdad.[15]
The city was also marked by an innovative spirit in crafts and industries. Paper, originally, was brought by the Muslims from China. From an art, the Muslims developed it into a major industry.[16] Paper mills were built in Baghdad in 793. By 950 water power was used in the fibre pounding process in Baghdad.[17] From Baghdad, the industry progressed west to Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and eventually Muslim Spain.
In the ninth century, the potters of Baghdad distinguished themselves by making lustered pottery: the decoration was painted in a metallic oxide upon the glazed coating of the clay, and the vessel was then submitted to a smoky and subdued second firing, which reduced the pigment to a thin layer of metal, and gave the glaze an iridescent glow.[18] Lovely monochromes were produced in this manner, and still lovelier polychromes in gold, green, brown, yellow, and red, in a hundred almost fluid tints. The luster technique was applied also to the ancient Mesopotamian art of decorative tiles.[19] The rich colours of these squares, and their harmonious combinations, gave unique splendour to the portals or mihrabs of a hundred mosques, and to many a palace wall.[20]
The intellectual fervour in Baghdad at the height of its glory is best expressed by one symbol: the library. In the thirteenth century before the Mongols devastated the city, Baghdad had thirty-six public libraries and over a hundred book-dealers, some of whom were also publishers employing a corps of copyists.[23] Including amongst such libraries were Al-Mamun’s Bayt al Hikma (House of Wisdom), founded in the 8th century, the Nizamiyyah College Library, carrying the name of its founder, the Seljuk minister, Nizam al-Mulk (murdered 1092); the Mustansiriyah school library, the library of Muhammad ibn al Hussain of Haditha, containing a collection of rare manuscripts kept under lock.[24] The Mustansiriya college library was a fine one, in which rare scientific manuscripts were kept.[25] Students were allowed to make copies of them, and they were supplied with pens and paper for that purpose.[26] There were also one hundred book-dealers.[27] We also hear of a private library in Baghdad, as early as the ninth century, that required a hundred and twenty camels to move it from one place to another.[28] This could be the very library of the scholar of Baghdad who refused to accept a position elsewhere because it would take four hundred camels to transport his books; the catalogue of this private library filled ten volumes, which is the more astonishing when it is realized that the library of the king of France in 1300 had only about four hundred titles.[29]
The Destruction of Baghdad
Baghdad stayed away from the Crusades conflict, the Abbasid Caliph resolutely refraining from any too militant attitude. As the fighting took place in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, Baghdad was hence spared the woes that afflicted other places. Tragedy came to Baghdad much later in the mid 13th century, from another direction, from the east. Baghdad fell to the Mongols in February 1258. The massacre of its million or so inhabitants, and the disastrous impact this had on the civilisation of Islam is recognised by older Western historical sources, in particular. Thomas Arnold comments:
Muslim civilisation has never recovered from the destructions which the Mongols inflicted upon it…. Under the command of Hulagu, they appeared before the walls of Baghdad, and after a brief siege the last Caliph of the Abbasid house, Mustasim, had to surrender, and was put to death together with most of the members of his family; 800,000 of the inhabitants were brought out in batches from the city to be massacred, and the greater part of the city itself was destroyed by fire.[175]
Glubb’s outline of the capture of the city is as follows:
On 10th February (1258), the Khalif Mustasim gave himself up. Hulagu ordered him to instruct the whole population to gather on the plain outside the walls, where they also were shot, slashed and hacked to death in heaps, regardless of age or sex. Not until 13th February did the Mongols enter the city. For a week, they had been waiting on the walls, not a man daring to leave his unit to plunder. Such iron discipline, unknown in the Middle Ages, goes far to account for their invincibility. The city was then systematically looted, destroyed and burnt. Eight hundred thousand persons are said to have been killed. The Khalif Mustasim was sewn up in a sack and trampled to death under the feet of Mongol horses.”[176]
Glubb concludes:
For five hundred years, Baghdad had been a city of palaces, mosques, libraries and colleges. Its universities and hospitals were the most up to date in the world. Nothing now remained but heaps of rubble and a stench of decaying human flesh.”[177]
