Baghdad

• 1. Introduction

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  Baghdad sits on the banks of the Tigris in the heart of Iraq, a city of eight million people that has been continuously inhabited since at least the Neo-Babylonian period. Its name is pre-Islamic and its meaning contested, but modern scholars lean toward a Persian compound meaning "bestowed by God." That same duality of age and argument runs through everything about this place. What draws a curious listener in is a simple question: how does a city go from founding a house that held the largest collection of books in the world to being nearly erased by the Mongols, from being called the "Las Vegas of the 1980s" to suffering some of the highest rates of terrorist attacks on earth, all within the span of a single geography? How does Baghdad keep becoming and unbecoming itself? Those questions are what this documentary will try to answer.

• 2. A City Designed by Astrologers

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  On the 30th of July 762, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur commissioned Baghdad's construction after the fall of the Umayyad dynasty. He did not choose his architects at random. Two designers were hired: Naubakht, a Zoroastrian who calculated that the founding date would be astrologically auspicious, and Mashallah, a Jew from Khorasan, Iran. Together they determined that construction should begin under the sign of Leo the lion, associated with fire, productivity, and expansion.

  Al-Mansur had personal reasons to love the site. The historian al-Tabari recorded a prophecy from Christian monks about a leader named Miklas who would build a great city there, and Al-Mansur, who had once been called Miklas, took it as a sign. He declared the location would be the home of his dynasty.

  The city that rose from that decision was unlike anything in Europe at the time. Its core was a circular walled compound roughly two kilometers wide, later called the Round City, with parks, gardens, villas, and promenades radiating outward. It had public baths, fountains, and a sanitation system. Bricks were made to a uniform measure of 18 inches square, and Abu Hanifah personally supervised their production. The Golden Gate Palace at the center stood beneath a green dome that rose 48 meters. Only the caliph was permitted to approach its esplanade on horseback.

  The outer walls stood up to 44 meters thick and 30 meters high, reinforced by a second wall, towers, and a moat. Four gates were named after major destinations: Kufa, Basra, Khurasan, and Syria, each separated by 2.4 kilometers, with iron doors so massive they required several men to open. The whole structure took four years to build, from 764 to 768, with over 100,000 workers involved. Al-Mansur recruited engineers and artisans from across the known world to make it happen.

• 3. The House of Wisdom

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  Within a generation of its founding, Baghdad had become the intellectual center of the medieval world. The translation movement that made this possible began under Al-Mansur himself, the second caliph, and reached its peak under the seventh, Al-Ma'mun, who ruled from 813 to 833.

  The institution most associated with this era was Bayt al-Hikmah, the House of Wisdom, which by the middle of the 9th century held the largest selection of books anywhere on earth. The scholars who worked there were not exclusively Arab. The scholarship drew Persians, Syriacs, Nestorians, Jews, Arab Christians, and others from across the region. The mathematician al-Khwarizmi worked in Baghdad during this period. So did the translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq and the philosopher Al-Kindi. Al-Jahiz shaped Mu'tazili theology in the city, and al-Tabari completed his landmark work on Quranic interpretation there.

  Four great libraries grew up alongside the House of Wisdom. The earliest belonged to Al-Ma'mun himself. A second was established by Sabur ibn Ardashir in 991 or 993 for the literary men and scholars who gathered at his academy, but it was plundered and burned by the Seljuks less than seventy years after it was built. The Nizamiyya, founded by the Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk, survived even the Mongol arrival in 1258. The last great caliph-built library, the Mustansiriyya, was founded by al-Mustansir, the second-to-last Abbasid caliph, who died in 1242.

  Baghdad was also lively in ways that pure scholarship does not capture. Cabarets, chess halls, live plays, concerts, and acrobatics all flourished in the city. Professional storytellers known as al-Qaskhun drew crowds in the streets, and historians believe many of the tales that became the Arabian Nights were set in Baghdad during this period. By the time the city's population peaked, estimates place it above one million inhabitants, making Baghdad likely the largest city in the world from shortly after its founding until the 930s, when it tied with Cordoba.

• 4. Siege, Sack, and Succession

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  On the 10th of February 1258, Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, led the Mongol forces that captured Baghdad. The caliph Al-Musta'sim was killed. The canals and dykes that fed the city's irrigation system were destroyed. Many quarters burned. The sack ended the Abbasid Caliphate, and historians have argued ever since that it marked the close of the Islamic Golden Age.

  Baghdad's decline did not arrive with a single blow. The city had already endured sieges in 812, 865, 946, and 1157. Its capital status had briefly shifted to Samarra during two separate periods between 808 and 892. Iranian Buwayhids had dominated the caliphate politically from 945 to 1055, and the Seljuk leader Tughril Beg had taken the city in 1055, expelling the Buyid Shi'a rulers. The Seljuks then governed as sultans in the name of the Abbasid caliphs while seeing themselves as protectors of the dynasty.

  After the Mongols, the city changed hands repeatedly. In August 1393, the Central Asian conqueror Timur, known as Tamerlane, marched to Baghdad in only eight days from Shiraz. In 1401, his forces returned and showed little restraint. He ordered each of his soldiers to bring back two severed human heads. The city then passed through the Jalayirid, Kara Koyunlu, Ak Koyunlu, and Safavid dynasties before the Ottomans seized it in 1534.

  Plague and cholera compounded the political violence. At times, two-thirds of the city's population was wiped out by disease. By the 19th century, the Nuttall Encyclopedia recorded Baghdad's population at just 185,000, a fraction of what it had held at its medieval peak.

• 5. A Jewish Capital Within a Capital

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  By the 19th century, Baghdad had become one of the foremost centers of Jewish learning in the world. In 1884, there were 30,000 Jews in Baghdad. By 1900, the number had grown to about 50,000, comprising over a quarter of the city's total population at that time. Large-scale Jewish immigration from Kurdistan fed this growth throughout the period.

  The city produced scholars of lasting influence. Joseph Hayyim ben Eliahu Mazal-Tov, known as the Ben Ish Chai, lived from 1834 to 1909. Rabbi Abdallah Somekh lived from 1813 to 1889. A large yeshiva in the city trained up to sixty rabbis at a time. Baghdadi Jews also built a successful trade diaspora, with communities established in China, India, and Singapore.

  In 1948, Jews in Baghdad numbered approximately 150,000, constituting 33% of the city's population. Persecution forced most to leave. Even so, up to 100,000 remained after 1948, and a majority of the 15,000 Iraqi Jews still present during Saddam Hussein's rule lived in Baghdad.

  The violence that accelerated the community's decline came in waves. On the 1st and the 2nd of June 1941, during a power vacuum following a failed pro-German coup, Jewish residents were attacked in what became known as the Farhud. Over 180 Jews were killed and 1,000 injured. Nine hundred Jewish homes were destroyed and hundreds of Jewish properties were ransacked. Between 1950 and 1951, a series of bombings targeted Jews; historian Avi Shlaim has argued that Israel was behind the bombings.

  By 2003, roughly 1,500 Jews remained in Iraq, most in Baghdad. After the war, that number fell sharply. An estimated 160 Jews still live in the city today, concentrated in the old quarters of Bataween and Shorja. The Meir Taweig Synagogue is now the only active synagogue in all of Iraq. The Great Synagogue of Baghdad, once the oldest in the country, has been converted into a museum.

• 6. War, Boom, and the Insurgency Years

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  During the 1970s, a sharp rise in petroleum prices drove a period of prosperity in Baghdad. New oil pipelines, highways, and modern sewage systems were built across the city. Master plans commissioned in 1967 and 1973 were delivered by the Polish planning office Miastoprojekt-Krakow. The city acquired a reputation vivid enough to earn comparisons, however loosely, to Nuremberg and later to Las Vegas.

  The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s reversed much of this. Money was diverted to the military, and Iran launched missiles and rockets at the city, some striking close to Al-Rashid Street and the Jewish Quarter. A nuclear reactor near Baghdad was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. Conference centers and hotels were built anyway, including the Palestine Hotel, Al-Mansour Hotel, and Ishtar Hotel, in preparation for a Non-Aligned Movement summit that was ultimately moved to New Delhi.

  During the Gulf War, on the 13th of February 1991, an aerial bombing attack in the Amiriya neighborhood killed at least 408 civilians. After the war, another uprising followed in 1999 after Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr was assassinated in Najaf. The Republican Guard suppressed protests in Shia neighborhoods, leaving between 27 and 100 people dead.

  On the 9th of April 2003, U.S. forces captured Baghdad. A statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled at Firdos Square in a widely televised moment. The insurgency that followed divided the city along sectarian lines. Mansour district, formerly home to wealthy Sunnis, became a stronghold for Sunni insurgents. Sadr City, Kadhimiyah, and West Rasheed became bases for Shia militias including Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi. On the 2nd of March 2004, bombings during Ashura killed at least 80 to 100 people and injured 200 more. Over 965 people died in a bridge disaster on Al-Aimmah Bridge.

  On the 3rd of January 2020, Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad Airport, drawing the city back into global headlines. Reconstruction has been ongoing since the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in 2017. In July 2024, an international consortium of German, French, Spanish, and Turkish companies was awarded a $17.5 billion contract to build Baghdad's metro, with completion estimated for May 2029.

• 7. Streets, Books, and Coffeehouses

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  Al-Rashid Street has long served as Baghdad's cultural spine. It was an artistic and intellectual center for generations of Baghdadis. The Crescent Theatre on that street hosted the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum during her visit in 1932. The Chakmakji Company recorded the music of various Arab singers there. The ancient Haydar-Khana Mosque stands on the same street, alongside cafes including al-Zahawi and the Brazilian Cafe.

  Nearby, Mutanabbi Street takes its name from a 10th-century Iraqi poet. It is the historic heart of Baghdad's book trade, lined with bookstores and outdoor stalls. Locals have described it as the soul of Baghdad's literary and intellectual community. The street connects to the Qushla, a public square that developed as an Ottoman military barracks and became a place for poetry readings in gazebos. Its iconic clock tower was a gift from George V. The entire area has been submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Tentative list.

  Baghdad joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a City of Literature in December 2015. The city is also known for its coffeehouses, and its dialect of Arabic carries traces of nomadic influences, which scholars attribute to the repopulation of the city by rural residents after the medieval sackings. Famous Arab poets and singers including Nizar Qabbani, Fairuz, and Ilham al-Madfai have performed in the city.

  Al-Shaheed Monument, opened in 1983, was designed by the Iraqi architect Saman Kamal and the sculptor Ismail Fatah Al Turk to honor soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq War. Whatever its original political intent, it has since come to be seen by many Iraqis as a memorial for all of the country's dead. The Masjid Al-Kadhimain contains the tombs of the seventh and ninth Twelver Shi'ite Imams, Musa al-Kadhim and Muhammad at-Taqi, and draws Shi'a pilgrims from across the world. About one million people visit Baghdad annually for religious purposes, traveling from Iran, Pakistan, and India.