Medieval History
Baghdad was once the capital of an empire and the centre of the Islamic world, but at 1,250 years old, the Iraqi city is a far cry from its past glories after being ravaged by years of war and sanctions.
Construction of the city on the bank of the Tigris River began in July 762 AD under Abbasid Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, and it has since played a pivotal role in Arab and Islamic civilisations.
"Baghdad represented the economic centre of the Abbasid Empire, and it was used as a starting point for controlling other neighbouring regions to enhance Islamic power," said Issam al-Faili, a professor of political history at Mustansiriyah University.
"Baghdad witnessed a renaissance of thought through translation, which was usually mastered by Jews and the Christians, and became a destination for intellectuals, poets and scholars from all parts of the world, and a centre for craftsmen and a city of construction," Faili said. "Baghdad today, after it was the capital of the world, has become one of the most miserable cities," he said.
Click here to read this article from Yahoo News
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Medieval History
Baghdad at 1,250: a far cry from past glories
Baghdad was once the capital of an empire and the centre of the Islamic world, but at 1,250 years old, the Iraqi city is a far cry from its past glories after being ravaged by years of war and sanctions.
Construction of the city on the bank of the Tigris River began in July 762 AD under Abbasid Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, and it has since played a pivotal role in Arab and Islamic civilisations.
"Baghdad represented the economic centre of the Abbasid Empire, and it was used as a starting point for controlling other neighbouring regions to enhance Islamic power," said Issam al-Faili, a professor of political history at Mustansiriyah University.
"Baghdad witnessed a renaissance of thought through translation, which was usually mastered by Jews and the Christians, and became a destination for intellectuals, poets and scholars from all parts of the world, and a centre for craftsmen and a city of construction," Faili said. "Baghdad today, after it was the capital of the world, has become one of the most miserable cities," he said.
Click here to read this article from Yahoo News
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Tomorrow morning (Thursday 11th November) at 9am, Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, lecturer in Scandinavian History in ASNC, will be one of the guests on Melvyn Bragg's Radio 4 programme 'In Our Time', where the topic of discussion will be the 'Volga...
- Remembering China?s Forgotten Jewish Community At Passover
It should therefore come as no surprise that Chinese and Persian Jewish scholars, Fook-Kong Wong and Dalia Yasharpour, have just jointly published a well-annotated reproduction of the Passover Haggadah of that now defunct Jewish community of indigenous...
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Medieval manuscripts written by Arabic scholars can provide valuable meteorological information to help modern scientists reconstruct the climate of the past, a new study has revealed. The research, published in Weather, analyses the writings of scholars,...
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Archaeologists in Norway say an ancient Islamic coin dating back to 805 AD was found just west of Oslo earlier this year. Houshang Khazaei, who is a researcher at the University of Oslo, said that the coin is an issue of Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid,...