View of Baghdad with the Tigris River (photo: public domain)
Baghdad is well-known today as the capital of Iraq, but the city is over one thousand years old. Part of what makes this history so fascinating is that no traces of the city’s original foundation survive, and yet there are a number of detailed descriptions of it preserved in textual sources written between the 9th and 14th centuries. Despite our lack of archaeological evidence, it is certainly clear that the city’s foundation made a lasting impression, and that during the first two centuries of its existence, Baghdad was the cultural and economic capital of the Islamic world, and played a role in the broader medieval world as a node for the trade of goods and ideas between Asia, Africa, and Europe. This essay focuses on what we know about Baghdad’s foundation and what it may have looked like.
A map of the Abbasid Caliphate around 850 C.E., with Baghdad circled in red (map: Cattette, CC BY 4.0)
The story begins in the year 750, when the Abbasid family rose to power. They vanquished the Umayyads (a dynasty of rulers who took power in 661) and took control of the vast territories under Muslim rule—inheriting all but the western regions of Andalus (modern-day Andalucía in Spain) and the Maghrib (modern-day Morocco and Algeria). While the earlier Umayyads had ruled from Syria, the Abbasids’ political movement gained traction in Iran and Iraq, and Iraq became the permanent base of their rule.
Building a new capital
The Abbasid capital shifted between several sites during the first decade of the dynasty’s rule, and it was Mansur, the second caliph, who eventually chose the site of Baghdad, located in central Iraq on the banks of the Tigris River. Construction on the new capital city started in the year 762. The Arab geographer al-Ya‘qubi, who probably lived until at least 908, famously described Mansur’s new city in the opening chapter of his book, Kitab al-Buldan (The Book of Countries). In his description, he emphasized the advantageous location of Baghdad in relation to the region’s major waterways, offering clues as to why Mansur may have chosen this particular location:
The two great rivers, The Tigris and the Euphrates, flow along its borders, so that goods and provisions come to it by land and by water with such ease that every object of trade which can be exported from the east or west, whether from Islamic or non-Islamic lands, makes its way there. So many goods are imported to it from India, Sind, China, Tibet, the country of the Turks, Daylam, the country of the Khazars, Ethiopia, and other countries that there may be more of a commodity there than in the country from which it was exported.[1]
The Silk Roads (trade routes across Asia, and into Europe) with Baghdad circled (UNESCO)
While Ya‘qubi’s words overflow with pride, the passage contains truth. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were indeed important routes for the transportation of goods, which arrived from the south and east via the Persian Gulf, and from the north and west via Anatolia and the Mediterranean coast.
Aside from that, the alluvial soil deposited by the rivers made the surrounding lands extremely fertile for agriculture, as long as their waters could be controlled through systems of canals and levees. Thus, as both a breadbasket and an emporium, Iraq was a natural seat for an empire. In addition, this very region had been home to numerous political powers before the rise of Islam, including the Sasanians, the Seleucids, and the Babylonians, all of whom maintained capital cities within 100 kilometers of where Baghdad would be founded.
Ctesiphon was an important capital of the Parthian (247 B.C.E.–224 C.E.) and Sasanian (224–651 C.E.) empires, and is famous for the late Sasanian palace called the Taq-i Kisra (inset image: Nick Maroulis, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 and map adapted from this video from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
It is noteworthy that despite the proximity of these ancient capitals, the Abbasids did not choose to inhabit the sites of previous imperial seats, but rather to found anew. While sources state that there was an extant settlement called Baghdad from which the medieval metropolis took its name, this would have been no more than a village.
The concept of building an imperial capital on new ground separates the Abbasids’ strategy from that of their predecessors, the Umayyads, who ruled from the ancient cities of Damascus and Jerusalem, building themselves into the urban fabric of these centuries-old foundations. It may be the case that the environment of lower Iraq (where Baghdad is located), which lent itself to brick architecture rather than stone construction, made the successive occupation of buildings over long periods of time less attractive and the strategy of building anew more feasible (while fired brick is extremely durable, it is expensive to produce and was reserved for the most important buildings). Otherwise, the most common building material in central Mesopotamia was mud brick, an impermanent medium that requires regular maintenance.
What did this new foundation look like? As stated earlier, while no traces of Mansur’s buildings or urban fortifications have survived above ground, the literary record preserves a number of detailed descriptions. The abundance of literature is possibly due to the dramatic impression made by the administrative section of the city constructed under Mansur, which the sources tell us was built from scratch in a short time and took the form of a gigantic, double-walled, round enclosure. While these accounts must be approached with some caution, they give a general idea of the ideas behind the city plan, all of which speak to Mansur’s intent to build a grand and unrivaled imperial center in Iraq.
An administrative complex, “Madinat al-Salam” (City of Peace)
Returning again to Ya‘qubi, we learn that Mansur’s first foundation was an administrative complex called at the time “Madinat al-Salam” (City of Peace). This structure was surrounded by a moat and two defensive walls: an outer rampart with towers and battlements and an inner enclosure wall. Ya‘qubi describes the form of the enclosure as “mudawwara,” which most scholars have interpreted as meaning circular, and others as rounded. We learn further that four gates, positioned equidistantly around the perimeter, pierced these walls. These gates were named after the cities and regions in the Muslim Empire that they faced. The Kufa and Basra Gates, named after cities in southern Iraq, opened on the southwestern and southeastern quadrants of the surrounding walls. The Gates of Sham (the Arabic name for greater Syria) opened on the northwestern quadrant, and The Gate of Khurasan (a province in the area of today’s eastern Iran and parts of Afghanistan) opened on the northeastern quadrant. From the four gates, four arterial streets led toward the center, each flanked by arcades and covered by a baked brick ceiling with light wells. At the end of these arcaded avenues, one passed through another monumental gate and vestibule, and entered into a large open space in which sat the imperial palace and congregational mosque.
This description, and those of other sources that came later, were detailed enough to allow for a number of tentative reconstructions by historians and architects, such as this early plan of Madinat al-Salam and environs offered in a 1900 book on the subject by Guy LeStrange.
Map of the “Round City” of Mansur (Madinat al-Mansur al-Mudawwara) and Environs, 150–300 A.H. (photo: Archnet, from Guy LeStrange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate: From Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900)
As LeStrange’s map depicts, the sources describe numerous neighborhoods outside the walls of Madinat al-Salam. These thriving districts, containing markets, residences, gardens, and palaces, are just as important to consider as Mansur’s administrative zone, although they have received less attention from historians. To the south lay the market district of Karkh, and to the north the residential quarter of Harbiyya, in which part of Mansur’s imperial army was quartered. While nothing remains of these areas from the early period, one could look at residential quarters excavated at nearby sites dating to the 8th and 9th centuries for an idea of the forms that urban homes would have taken. At Samarra, hundreds of houses dating to the 9th century have been either excavated or identified from aerial surveys, and allow us to reconstruct a typical floorplan: many homes would have been arranged around one or more courtyards, onto which one or more iwans (recessed halls) opened. Domestic architectural decorations included wall paintings and carved stucco revetments.
House XII: ground plan, excavation of Samarra (Iraq), drawing (Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Although Madinat al-Salam was the focus of Mansur’s initial building project, it actually faded in importance relatively quickly, leading to the development of other parts of the town resulting in a shift of gravity away from the round enclosure. One decade after its foundation, Mansur moved his residence to the riverside palace of al-Khuld, located just northeast of Madinat al-Salam. Mansur’s son Mahdi reigned from a palace in the neighborhood of Rusafa on the east side of the Tigris across from al-Khuld. South of Rusafa on the east side of the river was a quarter known as Mukharrim, and the area between them became an important urban node, known as Bab al-Taq (Gate of the Archway), referring to the monumental arched entrance of a nearby palace. The Bab al-Taq area connected to the west side of town via a bridge, likely composed of pontoons: a technique of floating bridge construction used to span the massive channel of the Tigris that was still in use in the early 20th century.
Pontoon bridge, A. Kerim, Maude Bridge, Baghdad, c. 1923, photogravure, 10 x 16 cm (Harvard Fine Arts Library, Cambridge)
Whereas the first fifty years after Baghdad’s foundation saw the expansion of the city under the influence of the Abbasid court, most of the 9th century witnessed a lack of architectural patronage from the court. Caliph Harun al-Rashid actually left Baghdad in 796 to reside at Raqqa on the Euphrates, outside which he developed an extensive royal suburb. Then, in 836, the caliph al-Mu‘tasim and the following seven caliphs ruled from Samarra. This is not to say that the city saw no growth during this period, just that it must have developed more organically, without the strong influence of caliphal building projects.
When the caliphs once again adopted Baghdad as a primary residence around 892, they occupied a palace that had belonged to the caliph Ma’mun on the east bank of the Tigris, south of the Mukharrim quarter. Over the next three centuries, the Abbasid caliphs greatly expanded and modified this palace. Unfortunately, nothing remains of the east-bank Abbasid palaces of the 10th through 12th centuries either, except for vivid but vague descriptions of the spaces, which included numerous reception halls, pavilions, and gardens, as well as a congregational mosque and residential quarter. A famous description of a visit from a Byzantine embassy that occurred in the second decade of the 10th century offers a tantalizing vision of pavilions outfitted in luxury textiles, courtyards arranged with furnishings for caliphal audiences, and fleets of boats along the Tigris. [2] Thus, we should understand this palace not as one building but as a walled campus of buildings—a palatine quarter of sorts—located along the river, that underwent renovations, expansions, and modifications throughout the years, reflecting the changing needs of the court.
Again, the architecture of Samarra may help us imagine the form of this later Abbasid palace-complex, as the ruins of several earlier imperial palaces have survived there. The palace known as Balkuwara, built for the Abbasid prince al-Mu‘tazz at the order of his father, the caliph al-Mutawakkil, is a good example. It is arranged on an axis oriented toward the river, where a series of courtyards eventually leads onto a complex of iwans, which in turn leads onto a riverfront garden.
Balkuwara Palace plan
In 1258, the Mongols conquered Baghdad and Iraq, bringing an end to the Abbasid caliphate.
While Baghdad remained an important regional center throughout the following centuries, it did not attract the same level of economic resources as it did as the capital of the Abbasid empire. It evolved according to local needs, with some areas falling out of use and others expanding and being rebuilt as necessary. The inevitable evolution of large cities over long timespans, the changing political orientation of the region after the 13th century, and the fragility of mud-brick architecture all contributed to the disappearance of early Abbasid Baghdad.
