The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Baghdad

Baghdad has been the principal city of Iraq since the eighth century. The origin and meaning of the city’s name are unknown. At least one settlement by this name existed in ancient times. In 762, it was chosen by Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur, second Abbasid caliph, as the site of the dynasty’s new capital, evidently because of its arable land and its proximity to trade routes and because—unlike the other places where the Abbasids had tried to establish a capital—its inhabitants were not hostile or otherwise dangerous to the dynasty. Mansur’s city-complex consisted of concentric circles formed by fortified walls. The space between the first and second walls was divided into lots distributed among his allies and clients. The inner circle contained Mansur’s palace, the great mosque, and government offices. The soldiery was housed outside the walls to the northwest, and the bulk of the population, along with many of the markets, was accommodated in Karkh to the south. The caliph’s city was thus an extension of his private domain. It served both to seclude him and to emphasize his centrality. The doors of the main gates were brought from the Umayyad city of Wasit and a Pharaonic site in Syria, thus symbolizing both the appropriation of the land and of the past. The city’s official name was “the city of peace” (madīnat al-salām), perhaps reflecting the doctrine that allegiance to the imam—in this case, the Abbasid caliph—guaranteed bliss in the hereafter. The division into quadrants, the central dome, and other features may have had cosmological implications, though modern arguments to this effect are circumstantial.

Also known as the Round City, Baghdad served only intermittently as the seat of government. Mansur’s successors and their dependents built new residences outside it to the northeast as well as across the river in al-Rusafah. Later caliphs left the city altogether. From 813 to 819, ‘Abdallah al-Ma’mun, who had overthrown his predecessor in a destructive civil war, governed the empire from distant Marv, in what is now Turkmenistan. In 836, the caliph Abu Ishaq al-Mu‘tasim transferred the seat of government to Samarra in order to accommodate his army of mostly Central Asian slave soldiers. In 892, Abu al-Abbas al-Mu‘tamid returned the government to Baghdad. Under the Buyid and Seljuq emirates, which governed Iran and Iraq in the 10th and 11th centuries, the caliphs continued to live there, often under virtual house arrest. Secluded from view, they became objects of popular veneration. Sunni rulers customarily affirmed their allegiance to the caliph in Baghdad even after the caliph had ceased to exercise real authority. This state of affairs constitutes the background to the theories of the sultanate espoused by Mawardi (d. 1058) and Abu Ya‘la b. al-Farra’ (d. 1066).

During the two centuries that followed its foundation, Baghdad was the center of commercial and intellectual life in southwest Asia. It inherited the traditions of Medina, Kufa, and Basra in such fields as Arabic grammar, hadith, theology, and law and attracted representatives of numerous sects and schools, including Jewish and Christian as well as Muslim sects. The city itself was the subject of at least two ethical debates: one on the legality of its capture by the Muslims and the other on the permissibility of pronouncing its name, which was thought to mean “gift of the idol” in Persian. It was the birthplace of activist Hanbalism (the rigorist Sunni movement led by admirers of the hadith scholar Ahmad b. Hanbal, d. 855) and the site of frequent altercations between Sunnis and Shi‘is, especially in the tenth century.

In 1258, the Mongols sacked the city and massacred many of its inhabitants, including the caliph Abu Ahmad al-Musta‘sim. The city was never again to house a caliph, though a nominal Abbasid line persisted in Cairo until 1517. After a century of Turkoman rule (1410–1508) and a brief period of Safavid control, the city came under the sovereignty of the Ottomans (1534). It remained in Ottoman hands until World War I, after which Iraq came under a British mandate.

Since 1932, Baghdad has served as the capital of the modern nation of Iraq. Although the early Islamic-period structures, built of perishable mud brick, have completely disappeared, modern Baghdad contains numerous memorials that recall the Islamic and pre-Islamic past. Many Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, associate the city with the golden age of Arab-Islamic culture. After the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003) and the civil conflicts between Sunni and Shi‘i factions that ensued, the city became an especially poignant symbol of tarnished glory.

See also city; Iraq