Bagdad

Bagdad

Bagdad

 Baghdad, also spelled Bagdad, Arabic Baghdād, formerly Madīnat al-Salām (Arabic: “City of Peace”), city, capital of Iraq and capital of Baghdad governorate, central Iraq. Its location, on the Tigris River about 330 miles (530 km) from the headwaters of the Persian Gulf, is in the heart of ancient Mesopotamia. Baghdad is Iraq’s largest city and one of the most populous urban agglomerations of the Middle East.

Map of Bagdad

Map Bagdad, Iraq


 The city was founded in 762 as the capital of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty of caliphs, and for the next 500 years it was the most significant cultural centre of Arab and Islamic civilization and one of the greatest cities of the world.

Map

 It was conquered by the Mongolleader Hülegü in 1258, after which its importance waned. A provincial capital under the Ottoman Empire, Baghdad regained prominence only when it became the capital of Iraq in 1920; over the next half century, the city grew prodigiously and took on all the characteristics of a modern metropolis.

Boulvards of Bagdad, Iraq

Baghdad was heavily damaged by aerial bombardment during the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) and again by air and ground operations during the Iraq War, which began in 2003. During the interwar period the city’s services and infrastructuredeteriorated badly because of inattention and fiscal constraints resulting from economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations (UN). Pop. (2005 est.) 5,904,000.

The Tigris River flowing through Baghdad.

 Bagdad, Iraq 

Character of the city

Despite the sundry vicissitudes visited on the city in its history, Baghdad has maintained a mystique and allure equaled by few of the world’s cities. Many Muslims revere it as the seat of the last legitimate caliphate and others as the cosmopolitan centre of the Arab and Islamic worlds when they were at the height of their grandeur. Still others—including many in the West—know it primarily through print and film as the scene of many tales of The Thousand and One Nights adventures and other accounts found in a rich tradition of Middle Eastern storytelling. In more peaceful times, modern Baghdad has been a prosperous and sophisticated city whose rich cultural life can be measured by its many museums, universities, and institutes and by the myriad scholars and literati who traveled there and made it their home.

Baghdadis have an affinity for gardens and family recreation. Traditionally on weekends the city’s restaurants, cafés, and public parks have been filled with people. Restaurants serve the local delicacy masgūf, Tigris fish roasted over an open fire. Recreational centres include two islands in the Tigris that have swimming pools and cafés, the Lunar Amusement Park, and Al-Zawrāʾ Public Park and Zoo. Beginning in the early 1990s, traditional patterns of recreation for city residents were disrupted by war and economic hardship. Although a prosperous class of government and party officials and wealthy merchants continued to frequent private clubs, most residents spent their free time either at home or visiting close friends or relatives.

Landscape

City site

Baghdad is situated on the Tigris River at its closest point to the Euphrates, 25 miles (40 km) to the west. The Diyālā River joins the Tigris just southeast of the city and borders its eastern suburbs. (See Tigris-Euphrates river system.) The terrain surrounding Baghdad is a flat alluvial plain 112 feet (34 metres) above sea level. Historically, the city has been inundated by periodic floods from the Tigris’s tributaries to the north and east. These ended in 1956 with the completion of a dam on the Tigris at the town of Sāmarrāʾ, north of Baghdad, and the ending of the floods has permitted extensive expansion of the city to the east and west. To the north, urban expansion has absorbed the old townships of Al-Aʿẓamiyyah on the east bank and Al-Kāẓimiyyah on the west bank.

Climate

The climate is hot and dry in summer, cool and damp in winter. Spring and fall are brief but pleasant. Between May and September the average daily maximum temperature reaches the low 100s F (low 40s C), and the high may reach the low 120s F (high 40s C) at midday in July and August. Intense daytime heat is mitigated by low relative humidity (10 to 50 percent) and a temperature decline of 30 °F (17 °C) or more at night. In winter the average daytime temperature is in the mid-50s F (low 10s C), and the temperature occasionally drops below freezing. Precipitation is sparse (6 inches [150 mm] annually) and occurs mainly between December and April. There is no precipitation in summer. In spring and early summer the prevailing northwesterly winds (shamāl) bring sandstorms that frequently bathe the city in a dusty mist.

City layout

Districts

The city extends along both banks of the Tigris. The east-bank settlement is known as Ruṣāfah, the west-bank as Al-Karkh. A series of bridges, including one railroad trestle, link the two banks. From a built-up area of about 4 square miles (10 square km) at the beginning of the 20th century, Baghdad has expanded into a bustling metropolis with suburbs spreading north and south along the river and east and west onto the surrounding plains.


Central Baghdad, seen from the Ruṣāfah district looking south toward Al-Karkh, with the Ḥaydar Khānah mosque in the foreground

The older core of the city, a rectangle about 2 miles (3 km) long and 1 mile (1.6 km) wide, is located on the east bank. Its length extends between two former city gates, Al-Muʿaẓẓam Gate, now Al-Muʿaẓẓam Square, in the north and Al-Sharqī Gate, now Taḥrīr Square, in the south. From the Tigris the rectangle runs eastward to the inner bund, or dike, built by the Ottoman governor Nāẓim Pasha in 1910. Rashīd Street in downtown Baghdad is the heart of this area and contains the city’s financial district, many government buildings, and the copper, textile, and gold bazaars. South of Rashīd Street a commercial area with shops, cinemas, and business offices has spread along Saʿdūn Street. Parallel to Saʿdūn, Abū Nuwās Street on the riverfront was once the city’s showpiece and—as befits a thoroughfare named for a poet known for his libidinous verse—its entertainment centre. During the 1990s the street lost much of its old glamour, and its cafes, restaurants, and luxury hotels either closed or suffered from a loss of business. Its demise as a gathering place was principally the result of its location directly across the river from the main presidential palace, which led to it being placed off-limits to the public because of security concerns. Much of the street became an exclusive residential area for high-ranking officials.

Adjacent to these commercial districts are older, middle-class residential areas, such as Al-Sulaykh to the north, Al-Wāziriyyah to the west, and Al-Karrādah to the south, now densely settled. The University of Baghdad and a fashionable residential area are located on Al-Jādriyyah, a peninsula formed by a bend in the Tigris.

Since the late 1950s the city has expanded eastward beyond the bund. Planned middle-class neighbourhoods are located between the bund and the Army Canal, which connects the Tigris and Diyālā rivers. Beyond the canal, at the eastern edge of the city, is a sprawling low-income district of some two million rural Shīʿite migrants known alternately as Al-Thawrah (“Revolution”) quarter or, between 1982 and 2003, as Ṣaddām City.

On the west bank are a number of residential quarters, including Al-Karkh (an older quarter) and several upper middle-class districts with walled villas and green gardens. Chief among these is Al-Manṣūr, surrounding the racetrack, which provides boutiques, fast-food restaurants, and sidewalk cafés that appeal to its affluent professional residents. These areas were the most heavily developed sections of the city under the Baʿthist regime of Ṣaddām Ḥussein. Al-Karkh in particular was the centre of Baʿthist political offices and of regime security services. The main presidential palace was also located there. Al-Karkh was heavily bombed in 1991 and in 2003.

Architecture and monuments

The architecture of the city ranges from traditional two- or three-story brick houses to modern steel, glass, and concrete structures. The traditional Baghdad house, usually located on a crowded narrow street, has latticed windows and an open inner courtyard; a few fine specimens from the late Ottoman period are tucked away in traditional quarters of Al-Karkh, Ruṣāfah, and Al-Kāẓimiyyah. The typical modern middle-class dwelling is built of brick and mortar and has a garden and wall.

While no monuments survive from the early ʿAbbāsid period, examples of late ʿAbbāsid architecture include the ʿAbbāsid Palace (late 12th or early 13th century) and the Mustanṣiriyyahmadrasah (an Islamic law college built by the caliph al-Mustanṣir in 1233), both restored as museums, and the Sahrāwardī Mosque (1234). The Wasṭānī Gate, the only remnant of the medieval wall, has been converted into the Arms Museum.

Another group of buildings dates from the late 13th and 14th centuries (the Il-Khanid and Jalāyirid periods). These include the minaret of the caliph’s mosque (1289), the ʿAqūlī Mosque (1328), and two superb buildings constructed by the Jalāyirid governor Marjān ibn ʿAbd Allāh—the Marjān Mosque (1356), partly demolished in 1946, and the Marjān Khān (1359), a restored caravansary (inn). A number of mosques, bazaars, and public baths survive from the Ottoman period.

A cultural revival in the post-1958 period produced many modern monuments, the work of contemporary artists and sculptors. Among the best-known are Jawād Salīm’s Liberation Monument in Taḥrīr (“Liberation”) Square, depicting the struggle of the Iraqi people to achieve liberty before the 1958 revolution, and Muḥammad Ghānī’s “Murjāna Monument,” which depicts Murjāna, Ali Baba’s housekeeper in The Thousand and One Nights, pouring boiling oil on the 40 thieves.

Two monuments are dedicated to war dead. A large modernistic shield, built by Khālid al-Raḥḥāl in 1982, commemorates the Unknown Soldier. The Martyr’s Monument, a 150-foot (50-metre) split dome built in 1983, commemorates the casualties of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–90). The Victory Arches (1988), which consist of two enormous sets of crossed swords nearly 150 feet (50 metres) high and mounted on bases in the form of a man’s forearm, were erected to celebrate Iraq’s self-proclaimed victory in the Iran-Iraq War and were purportedly cast from metal taken from captured Iranian weapons. The arches and the Unknown Soldier’s monument are all located on a parade ground complex in Zawrāʾ Park, near Al-Karkh. Under the Baʿthist regime this was the site of numerous rallies and nationalist parades. The Martyr’s Monument is situated east of the Tigris River near the Army Canal.

People

Bomb explosion in war

The population of greater Baghdad grew tremendously after World War II. The vast majority of the population is Muslim and Arab. The Muslims are divided, however, between the two main sects of Islam, the Sunnites and the Shīʿites. Non-Arab ethnic and linguistic groups include Kurds, Armenians, and people of Indian, Afghan, or Turkish origin. A substantial Persian-speaking population departed for Iran in the 1970s and ’80s under pressure from the Baʿthist regime. There are several Eastern-rite Christian communities, notably the Chaldeans and Assyrians. There was once a vigorous and large Jewish community with ancient roots in Mesopotamia; however, ethnic persecution drove most Jews out of the country beginning in the 1950s, and by the end of the century virtually none remained.

The Western community, once substantial, has been reduced since 1958 and is limited mainly to businessmen, members of the diplomatic corps, and executives of foreign companies. Likewise the city once was home to a large community of foreign Arabs, including hundreds of thousands of Egyptians. Many left the country prior to the Persian Gulf War.

Traditionally, people of the same sect, ethnic or tribal group, or craft have lived together in separate quarters or neighbourhoods. Although oil wealth and massive migration from rural areas to the city have resulted in distribution based on socioeconomic stratification, traditional patterns have to a great extent remained, though in somewhat different form. Shīʿite migrants from southern war zones in the 1980s and ’90s settled almost exclusively in the eastern suburb of Ṣaddām City, and Sunnite supporters of the ruling regime—many from the region in and around the city of Tikrīt—settled in the Al-Karkh district.

As the city expanded physically, the government offered parcels of land for a minimal fee to various professional associations. Thus doctors, lawyers, army officers, and those of other occupational groups have tended to concentrate in new neighbourhoods, each with its own mosques, shops, and schools, creating a pattern of cities within the city. In the 1970s the government attempted to curb “horizontal” expansion, and a new phenomenon, high-rise apartments, appeared.

Economy

Most of Iraq’s manufacturing, finance, and commerce is concentrated in and around Baghdad. At least half of the country’s large-scale manufacturing and much of its smaller manufacturing is located in the Baghdad governorate. The exception is heavy industry (petroleum, iron, steel, and petrochemicals), which is situated near the oil fields in the north (Karkūk) and the south (in Al-Baṣrah and Al-Zubayr). Most economic activities are owned or controlled by the government, which both stimulates and monopolizes the country’s economic activities. War and economic sanctions contributed to the steady erosion of the city’s economic base beginning in the 1980s.

The government is the city’s principal employer. Hundreds of thousands of citizens work for the government, directly or indirectly, in the civil service, in government-run educational institutions, and in government-owned industrial and commercial enterprises.

Manufacturing

Modern manufacturing began in the 1920s and ’30s, spurred by the Law for the Encouragement of Industry in 1929. Early factory production centred on textiles (cotton ginning, spinning, and weaving), food processing, brick making, and cigarettes. Beginning in the 1950s, the government used increased oil revenues to develop manufacturing industries. Subsequently the city produced a wide variety of consumer and industrial goods, including processed foods and beverages, tobacco, textiles, clothes, leather goods, wood products, furniture, paper and printed material, bricks and cement, chemicals, plastics, electrical equipment, and metal and nonmetallic products.

Services

Despite the growth of modern manufacturing, however, a large portion of Baghdad’s labour force still works in traditional economic activities, such as retail trade, production of handmade consumer goods, auto and mechanical repairs, and personal services.

The main offices of the Central Bank of Iraq (founded in 1947), which has the sole right to issue currency, and the commercial Rafidain Bank (1941) are in Baghdad. Under the Baʿthist regime no foreign banks were allowed. The main offices of the government companies for commerce, trade, and industry are located in Baghdad, as are the branches of foreign companies operating in Iraq. The Baghdad Stock Exchange was opened in 1992.

Transportation

Baghdad is the hub of the country’s transportation system. Baghdad’s international airport (formerly Ṣaddām International) has served a number of international carriers, including Iraqi Airways (1945); it was closed throughout the 1990s because of UN sanctions. The major lines of the state-owned railway meet at Baghdad. These connect Baghdad with Al-Baṣrah and Umm Qaṣr near the Persian Gulf, with Karkūk and Arbīl in the northeast, with Mosul in the north, and with Al-Qāʾim near the Syrian border in the northwest.

Baghdad is also the centre of a regional road network, connecting the city by overland routes with Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Within the city, a network of expressways completed in the 1980s relieves traffic congestion and links the city centre with its suburbs. The main means of public transportation are the red double-deck bus (introduced by the British) and the public taxi.

Administration and society

Government

Baghdad is both a national and a provincial capital. The governor (muḥāfiẓ) of the Baghdad governorate traditionally has been responsible to the minister of interior, and the city has been administered by a mayor. As the seat of the national government, Baghdad also contained the offices of the president, the Council of Ministers, and the National Assembly. During the Iraq War, the civil and military administration of the occupying forces was headquartered there pending reestablishment of Iraq’s government.

Municipal services

Beginning in the 1950s, the government greatly expanded public services in Baghdad, providing low-cost housing for poor and middle-income families, as well as electricity, sewage, and medical facilities. The Persian Gulf War left large parts of the infrastructure—particularly the city’s power grid and communications systems—in shambles. During the 1990s reconstruction was hampered by a lack of spare parts, and power blackouts were common. As a result, water purification, which was powered by electricity, was difficult to maintain, and rates of infectious disease transmitted through waterborne pathogens increased. The conflict that began in 2003 was also destructive, in part because of the already fragile state of the city’s infrastructure.

Police and fire services have historically been good, although the police force has traditionally been highly politicized. Following the initial phase of the Iraq War, the restoration of order (especially a crackdown on looting) was hampered by the large number of police officials who had been closely tied to the Baʿthist regime and were either unable or unwilling to return to duty. At that same time, fire fighting was hampered by such problems as a lack of equipment and low water pressure for hoses.

Health

Baghdad has numerous hospitals, clinics, and dispensaries—many of them specialized—and has far and away the best health-care facilities in the country. A major medical complex, Madīnat al-Ṭibb (“Medical City”), is located along the Tigris near Wizāriyyah. Medical services suffered during the UN sanctions of the 1990s, and the best medical care was generally available only to members of the ruling party and its supporters. Reviving the city’s greatly degraded health-care system became a major task of U.S. administrators following the initial phase of the Iraq War.

Education

Public school facilities expanded rapidly beginning in the 1950s. Education is compulsory through primary school, and statistics showed nearly total compliance in Baghdad throughout the 1980s. During the 1990s many young students left school to seek employment.

The Baghdad governorate has more than 1,000 primary schools, several hundred intermediate and secondary schools, and a number of vocational schools, as well as numerous technical institutes and teachers’ training schools. Baghdad is the centre of higher education in Iraq. The University of Baghdad was established in 1957, although some of its faculties were founded much earlier. There are, in addition, three other institutions of higher learning: Al-Mustanṣiriyyah University (1963), the University of Technology (1975), and Al-Bakr Military Academy. Education is free up to and including the university level.

Cultural life

Baghdad has long been an active cultural centre for the Arab world, producing prominent sculptors, painters, poets, and writers. Iraqi poets, for example, pioneered the free-verse movement in Arabic.

Among the most important of Baghdad’s museums are the Iraq Museum (1923), containing important archaeological treasures from ancient Mesopotamian history; the National Museum of Modern Art (1962), containing a permanent collection of painting, sculpture, and ceramics by Iraqi artists; and the Museum of Iraqi Art Pioneers, holding the works of Iraqi artists who laid the foundation of the modern Iraqi art movement. Although the city’s museums largely were undamaged by fighting during the initial phase of the Iraq War, several were looted and vandalized in the civil discord that followed. A number of important artifacts and works of art were lost.

Several of the most important mosques and shrines in the Islamic world are found in Baghdad, including the shrine of the Shīʿite imams Mūsā al-Kāẓim and Muḥammad al-Jawād, in Al-Kāẓimiyyah; the shrine of the important Sunnite jurist Abū Ḥanīfah, in Al-Aʿẓamiyyah; and the shrine of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, founder of the Qādiriyyah Sufi order, in Ruṣāfah. All contain libraries and are centres of Muslim pilgrimage.

Under Baʿthist rule, all mass media were controlled by the government. Several major daily newspapers were published in Arabic, and a variety of political, cultural, and professional journals were published. Following the ouster of the Baʿthist government, state controls were removed, and a variety of new media organs appeared. English is the most widely used foreign language, but publications in European and Asian languages can be found. Radio Baghdad broadcasts to the entire country over several frequencies and in several languages. Baghdad’s first television station began operation in 1956.

The National Theatre was once one of the Arab world’s best-equipped, with a regular schedule of plays, concerts, musical productions, and cinema. Its schedule was curtailed greatly in the 1990s. The National Troupe for Popular Arts presents Iraqi dance and folklore. Cinema is an important source of popular entertainment in Baghdad. The Baghdad International Fair, held annually in October, includes industrial displays, theatrical productions, and other cultural activities.

History

Foundation and early growth

Archaeological evidence shows that the site of Baghdad was occupied by various peoples long before the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637 ce, and several ancient empires had capitals located in the vicinity. (See Babylon; Seleucia on the Tigris; Ctesiphon.) The true founding of the city, however, dates to 762, when the site, located between present-day Al-Kāẓimiyyah and Al-Karkh and occupied by a Persian village called Baghdad, was selected by al-Manṣūr, the second caliph of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty, for his capital. His city, Madīnat al-Salām (“City of Peace”), was built within circular walls and called “the Round City.” More a government complex than a residential city, it was about 3,000 yards (2,700 metres) in diameter and had three concentric walls. Its four equal quarters were used mainly to house the caliph’s retinue. Four main roads led from the caliph’s palace and the grand mosque at the centre to various parts of the empire.

The limited size of this city resulted in rapid expansion outside its walls. Merchants built bazaars and houses around the southern gate and formed Al-Karkh district. From the northeast gate the Khurāsān road was joined by a bridge of boats to the east bank of the Tigris. There, around the palace of al-Manṣūr’s heir apparent, al-Mahdī, grew up the three suburbs of Ruṣāfah, Al-Shammāsiyyah, and Al-Mukharrim, the forerunners of the modern city. By 946 the seat of the caliphate was fully established on the east bank, and Ruṣāfah grew to rival the Round City.

Baghdad reached the zenith of its economic prosperity and intellectual life in the 8th and early 9th centuries under al-Mahdī (who reigned from 775 to 785) and his successor, Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809). The glory of Baghdad in this period is reflected in stories in The Thousand and One Nights. It was then considered the richest city in the world. Its wharves were lined with ships from China, India, and East Africa. The caliph al-Maʾmūn (813–833) encouraged the translation of ancient Greek works into Arabic, founded hospitals and an observatory, and attracted poets and artisans to his capital.

From the mid-9th century onward the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate was gradually weakened by internal strife, by crop failure caused by neglect of the irrigation system, and finally, in the 10th century, by the intrusion of nomadic elements. A civil war between Hārūn al-Rashīd’s two sons resulted in destruction of much of the Round City. Between 836 and 892 the caliphs abandoned Baghdad for Sāmarrāʾ in the north, and the city was taken over by the unruly Turks they had imported as bodyguards. When the caliphs returned to Baghdad, they made their capital on the east bank. Invasions and rule by alien elements (the Būyid dynasty from 945 to 1055 and the Turkish Seljūq dynasty from 1055 to 1152) left parts of the city in ruins.

Centuries of decline

This long, slow decline was merely a prelude to the devastating attacks from which Baghdad would not recover until the 20th century. In 1258 Hülegü, the grandson of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, overran Mesopotamia, sacked Baghdad, killed the caliph, and massacred hundreds of thousands of residents. He destroyed many of the surrounding dikes and headworks, making restoration of the irrigation system nearly impossible and thereby destroying Baghdad’s potential for future prosperity.

Thereafter Baghdad became a provincial capital, first of the Mongol emperors of Iran, the Il-Khanid dynasty (1258–1339), and then of their vassals, the Jalāyirids (1339–1410). In 1401 the city underwent yet another sack, by Timur (Tamerlane), after which it fell under the sway of two successive Turkmen dynasties, the Ak Koyunlu and the Kara Koyunlu (1410–1508), both of which did little to restore its fortunes.

In 1508 Baghdad was temporarily incorporated into the new Persian (Iranian) empire created by the shah Ismāʿīl I of the Ṣafavid dynasty. In 1534 the Sunnite Ottoman Empire under the sultan Süleyman I took the city. Despite repeated Persian attacks, it remained under Ottoman rule until World War I, except for a brief period (1623–38) when it was again held by the Persians.

Beginnings of modernization

In the 19th century European influence grew in Baghdad with the establishment of French religious orders and increased European trade. In 1798 a permanent British diplomatic residency was established there, and the British residents soon acquired a power and prestige second only to that of the governor.

Prosperity began to be restored to Baghdad with the opening of steamship travel on the Tigris in the 1860s. Between 1860 and 1914 several energetic, reforming Ottoman governors improved the city, especially Midhat Paşa. During his tenure(1869–72) he destroyed the city walls, reformed the administration, started a newspaper, and set up a modern printing press. The telegraph, military factories, and modern hospitals and schools were also established, along with a municipal council.