Abbasid planners built Baghdad in 762 on the Tigris banks
Baghdad, Iraq's capital of roughly eight million, began in 762 AD when caliph al-Mansur founded a round city on the Tigris over older Neo-Babylonian settlement. It became the Abbasid intellectual showcase, later Mandatory Iraq's capital in World War I, and today generates about 40% of Iraq's economy.
The name predates Islam and its origin is disputed. Medieval Arab writers usually looked to Middle Persian and read it as bestowed by God, while others point to an Old Babylonian place called Bagdadu, or to Aramaic roots. Al-Mansur himself called his foundation Madinat as-Salam, the City of Peace, a name now attached to the original Round City; by the eleventh century Baghdad had displaced it almost entirely. Neo-Babylonian brickwork along the west bank of the Tigris shows the site was occupied long before.
After the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads, al-Mansur commissioned the new capital on 30 July 762, advised by the Iranian Barmakids. Building ran from 764 to 768 and employed more than 100,000 workers, with astrologers picking an auspicious start and the jurist Abu Hanifah overseeing brickmaking, each brick 18 inches square. The plan centred on a circular core about 2 kilometres across, with the mosque and guard headquarters in the middle, and unlike European towns of the day it had sanitation, fountains and thousands of public baths. Markets were moved out to al-Karkh, and inspectors called muhtasib policed trade against fraud.
Within a generation the city had eclipsed Ctesiphon, the old Sasanian capital 30 kilometres away, and become a centre of science, medicine and philosophy. The translation movement that began under al-Mansur peaked under al-Ma'mun, and by the mid-ninth century the House of Wisdom held the largest book collection in the world. Today the capital is home to about 22 percent of Iraq's people and remains a regional hub of finance and commerce, though the war that began with the 2003 invasion destroyed much of its heritage.
Source: Baghdad
