Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Cities

Baghdad

Also Known As Baghdadi
Iraq

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Baghdad was founded in 762 CE by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur as Madinat al-Salam, the City of Peace, a purpose-built round capital on the Tigris. Under the early Abbasids it became the intellectual capital of the Islamic world, home to the House of Wisdom's translation movement, where Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Harranian scholars rendered Greek philosophy and science into Arabic. As seat of the Abbasid Caliphate it carried the Sunni Muslim world's central claim to religious authority for five centuries, and today its northern Kadhimiya district holds the tombs of two Shia Imams, a major pilgrimage site distinct from the hawza cities of Najaf and Karbala further south.

Facts
Site
Pilgrimage
Major pilgrimage destination today 1
The Kadhimiya shrine, holding the tombs of the seventh and ninth Shia Imams, draws large numbers of pilgrims year round
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Arabic as the language of the caliphate and Islamic scholarship; Syriac and Greek as the working languages of the House of Wisdom's translation movement 1
Origins
Founded
Founded in 762 CE by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur as Madinat al-Salam, a purpose built round city on the Tigris 1
Attributions
Tradition
Sunni Islam as the Abbasid Caliphate's seat, with a religiously plural scholarly community and a significant Shia shrine district 1
Learn More
The Round City and the House of Wisdom

Al-Mansur, the second Abbasid caliph, chose a site on the Tigris in 762 CE and laid his new capital out as a perfect circle, walls and palace concentric around the caliphal mosque at its center, a design meant to embody both defensibility and cosmological order. He called it Madinat al-Salam, though the older Aramaic name of a village on the site, Baghdad, outlasted the official one in common use. Within decades the city had outgrown its round walls to become one of the largest cities in the world.

Its most consequential institution was the House of Wisdom, Bayt al-Hikma, which flourished under Harun al-Rashid and especially his son al-Ma'mun in the early ninth century as a library and center of translation. Scholars there rendered Greek philosophical and scientific works, often by way of earlier Syriac translations, into Arabic: Hunayn ibn Ishaq, a Nestorian Christian physician, led much of the medical and Galenic corpus; Thabit ibn Qurra, from the star-worshipping Harranian community that claimed Quranic protection under the label "Sabian," carried mathematics and astronomy; Jewish scholars and physicians worked alongside them. Al-Kindi, remembered as the first great philosopher writing in Arabic, was active in this same milieu, synthesizing Greek philosophy with Islamic theology.

A Caliphate's Capital, a Shia District

As seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, Baghdad carried the Sunni Muslim world's central claim to religious and political authority from 762 CE onward, the caliph holding a title understood as successor to the Prophet's leadership of the community. Real political power slipped from Abbasid hands well before the caliphate itself ended, first to Iranian Buyid governors and then to Seljuk Turkish sultans who ruled in the caliph's name, but Baghdad remained the office's symbolic seat until the Mongol conquest of 1258, when Hulagu Khan's forces sacked the city and executed the last Abbasid caliph, an event still remembered as one of the great catastrophes of Islamic history.

The city's northern Kadhimiya district holds its own, older Shia significance, home to the tombs of Musa al-Kadhim, the seventh of the Twelve Imams, and his grandson Muhammad al-Jawad, the ninth, and drawing pilgrims in numbers that make it one of the major Shia shrine sites of Iraq. Kadhimiya's religious life runs on its own track from the seminary cities of Najaf and Karbala further south: it is a shrine and pilgrimage center rather than a center of jurisprudential training, and its history as a Shia stronghold within a majority Sunni imperial capital reflects Baghdad's long-standing religious plurality.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Baghdad was founded as the Abbasid capital in 762, became the largest city in the world, and was sacked by Hulagu in 1258.

Al-Kindi, the first major philosopher writing in Arabic, was active in Baghdad's House of Wisdom milieu.

This source names Baghdad directly: "in the Najibiyyih garden outside Baghdad, later commemorated as the festival of Ridvan, and his 31 August 1868 arrival at Acre after departing Adrianople under Ottoman exile order; not the right..."

Source Baha'u'llah (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baghdad directly: "from Masha'allah in eighth century Baghdad through Abu Ma'shar's systematic elaboration to Kepler's own engagement with the tradition, including essays on Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions across medieval..."

Source From Masha'allah to Kepler: Theory and Practice in Medieval and Renaissance AstrologyCharles Burnett and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (editors)
Gao, Cities

This source names Baghdad directly: "authority from the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

This source names Baghdad directly: "Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasid Society, published by Routledge in 1998, is a widely cited scholarly study of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement, the sustained..."

This source names Baghdad directly: "alongside the house of Baha'u'llah in Baghdad, it became the third point of obligatory Baha'i pilgrimage, together with the Shrine of Baha'u'llah at Bahji and the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa."

Kadhimiya, in northern Baghdad, holds the tombs of the Imams Musa al-Kadhim and Muhammad al-Jawad.

This source names Baghdad directly: "family name points to origins near Baghdad."

This source names Baghdad directly: "century primary text, composed at Baghdad in the early fourth century of the Islamic calendar, and it is the actual work that fixed the number of canonical Qur'anic reading traditions at seven and..."

Source Kitab al-Sab'a fi al-Qira'at (The Book of the Seven Readings)Ibn Mujahid (Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Musa ibn Mujahid)

This source names Baghdad directly: "horoscope for the founding of Baghdad in 762 CE under Caliph al-Mansur."

Source Mashallah ibn Athari (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baghdad directly: "horoscope cast for the founding of Baghdad in 762, and advocated the theory that conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn mark the timing of major terrestrial and historical change."

Source Mashallah ibn Athari (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baghdad directly: "crowd crush on the Al Aimmah bridge in Baghdad during a Shia religious commemoration."

This source names Baghdad directly: "Garden on the Tigris outside Baghdad, known to Baha'is as the Garden of Ridvan, is where Baha'u'llah spent twelve days in April 1863 before his banishment onward to Constantinople, and where he is..."

Baghdad's Kadhimiya district is a major Shia Twelver shrine and pilgrimage site, distinct from the hawza cities further south.

This source names Baghdad directly: "article on the 1258 siege of Baghdad, community-edited."

Source Siege of Baghdad (1258) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baghdad directly: "would proclaim his mission in Baghdad nineteen years later."

Source The Bab (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baghdad directly: "1863, Baha'u'llah left his house in Baghdad, where he had lived since an earlier exile from Persia, and entered the Najibiyyih garden on the banks of the Tigris."

Source Baha'u'llah (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Baghdad directly: "Shiraz and the House of Baha'u'llah in Baghdad."

This source names Baghdad directly: "Khan's Mongol army besieged and took Baghdad between late January and 10 February 1258, ending five centuries of Abbasid rule as the caliphate's own political center."

Source Siege of Baghdad (1258) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Contained In

Sacred To

Islam, Religions

Baghdad was the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, the central claimant to Sunni religious authority for five centuries.

Sunni, Denominations

The Abbasid Caliphate, based in Baghdad, was Sunni Islam's central political and religious institution.

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.