Baghdad and the Abbasids

 

The Round City of Baghdad, 762–766. Source: Samarra Archaeological Survey.

 

Once in power, after 750, the Abbasids built a series of new capitals – two called al‐Hashimiyya (after their dynastic ancestor), whose sites remain unknown – before Abu Jaʿfar al‐Mansur founded Baghdad in 762–766. Baghdad, formally Madinat al‐Salam (City of Peace), was laid out in a way that developed from the amsar. At the center, on the west bank of the Tigris, was the caliph’s circular city, called Madinat Abi Jaʿfar (known to us as the Round City).

To the south of it lay the market area of al‐Karkh. According to the sources, this only became the market area after the merchants were expelled from the Round City .

 However, as is evident from the name, al‐Karkh, a Syriac word meaning “fortified city” (Karkhe), al‐Karkh must have been a small pre‐Islamic town, outside which the Round City was built. From the four gates of the Round City, the four Grand Avenues extended into the suburbs (rabad, pl. arbad).

The suburbs were divided into four quarters (arba ʿ), and each was governed by an associate of al‐Mansur. There was a further Grand Avenue (shari ʿ aʿzam) on the Tigris. From 769 onwards, the heir of al‐Mansur, al‐Mahdi, came back from Rayy in Iran, and settled on the east bank of the Tigris in al‐Rusafa, in a typical arrangement where the eldest son had his own establishment.

The new element in the plan, apart from the fact that the quarters were no longer divided by tribe, was the Round City, famous for being circular, with the mosque and the caliph’s palace placed in the center.

 No archaeological trace of it has been discovered, but the textual descriptions are quite detailed, in the Kitab al‐Buldan of al‐Yaʿqubi, and the topographical introduction of the Ta ʾrikh Baghdad of al‐Khatib al‐Baghdadi.

The unconfirmed plan was first reconstructed by Herzfeld, and then corrected by Lassner, from the textual sources without much reference to archaeological evidence. Two imitations of the Round City exist: al‐Rafiqa, the Abbasid city at Raqqa in Syria (772), and Qadisiyya (before 796), called al‐Mubarak, near Samarra, north of Baghdad, on both of which see below.

Al‐Rafiqa is not circular but was described as imitating Baghdad. Qadisiyya is an octagon, geometrically related to a circle. A third example, in this case a palace with a circular enclosure wall, exists at Hiraqla, outside Raqqa in Syria (Toueir 1982).

These copies are useful for confirming the details of Baghdad that has now disappeared – the type of mud‐brick walls, the size of the bricks, most importantly the dimensions. Present thinking of researchers is that the Round City was about 2500–2638 m in diameter, according to the conclusions of Creswell.

The most detailed single description is that of al‐Yaʿqubi from the late ninth century, who states that the Round City was 5000 cubits from one gate to the other, outside the moat. This figure has been presumed by Creswell to be one quarter of the circumference, but the text could also mean half the circumference.

In this latter case, the Round City would have been of similar dimensions to its imitations, for its overall diameter would have been 1655 m, and the largest overall dimension of the Octagon of Qadisiyya, between the corner towers, is 1659 m.

 

 

The concept of the Round City, if new, was based on existing ideas, including partly on the plans of the amsar. Al‐Yaʿqubi tells us that the circular plan had never been seen before (al‐Yaʿqubi 1892: 9).

However, in reality, circular plans are quite frequent in Mesopotamian architecture, and concentric roughly circular city plans are already known from the Bronze Age at Mari and Tell Chuera in Syria.

The closest extant example is that of the early Sasanian circular city of Ardashir‐Khurreh (Firuzabad), southeast of Shiraz in Iran (third century ce), and 1950 m in diameter, with double walls and a radial plan (Huff 1969).

In the Round City of Baghdad, according to al‐Yaʿqubi in the center of the rahba (courtyard) lay the palace of al‐Mansur, whose gate was called Bab al‐Dhahab (Golden Gate), 400 cubits each side, and the mosque, 200 cubits square. In a circle around the rahba were the following buildings:

 The residences of the younger children of al‐Mansur, and his vassals (mawali) who are close to him in his service, the bayt al‐mal (the treasury), the arsenal, the diwan al‐rasa’il (bureau of correspondence), the diwan al‐kharaj (the land tax), the diwan al‐khatam (the seal), the diwan al‐jund (the army), the diwan al‐hawa ʾij (requirements), the diwan of the entourages (ahsham), the public kitchen, and the diwan al‐nafaqat (expenditures).

Then there were four vaulted streets (taqat), which led to the gates of Kufa, Basra, Khurasan, and al‐Sham (Damascus). These were initially occupied by merchants, providing local markets of the type provided in the cantonments at Samarra. There were also 45 radial streets (sikka), which were “known by [the names of] his quwwad and his mawali.” The great prison, al‐Matbaq, was also located in the streets.


The expression mawali normally refers to personal vassals but may here refer to the servants of the palace, probably also including other officials. It is certain that the quwwad were the commanders of the army.

In Samarra, these commanders were quartered with their soldiers, with one exception. The Round City must have been an important military settlement in the time of al‐Mansur. Al‐Harbiyya, the northwestern suburb outside the Round City, was also an important settlement of the army: according to al‐Yaʿqubi (1892: 248) it was settled by Central Asians – “the people of Balkh, Merv, al‐Khuttal, Bukhara, Isbishab, Ishtakhanj, the people of the Kabulshah, the people of Khwarazm.”


It is not certain whether al‐Yaʿqubi is speaking here of his own lifetime in the ninth century. The names appear to speak of later recruitment than the time of al‐ Mansur, such as al‐ʿAbbasiyya of Harun al‐Rashid, or the Iranian and Central Asian forces recruited by al‐Maʾmun. In the case of the quwwad of the Round City, it is clear that he is speaking of the time of al‐Mansur, for he says in two cases that he has forgotten the original name of the street.

One may conclude that the Round City was intended by al‐Mansur to accommodate the palace, the mosque, the administration, the servants of the palace, and an important part of the army. Other units of the army were later settled outside the walls. Al‐Mansur settled in the Round City all the elements of the state which were important to him, if we compare these details with the surviving state budget of the caliph al‐Muʿtadid at the end of the ninth century.

This was the new concept in Baghdad: a royal city in which the majority of the functions of the state were assembled under the eye of the caliph, and separated from the public areas of the city by a fortification.

The public only entered for prayers in the congregational mosque, which according to the earlier tradition, was placed next to the palace. The problem of the security of the caliph is much mentioned in the historical sources – that of letting the general public in for prayers in the mosque – and in the end, it was al‐Mansur who left the Round City and settled in a new palace, al‐Khuld (Eternity), on the banks of the Tigris, in 774.

 

 

Image Reference:
https://historyofyesterday.com/ancient-baghdad-the-round-city-6dd64ced2ac7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_city_of_Baghdad#/media/File:Baghdad_150_to_300_AH.png

 Book Reference:

A companion to Islamic art and architecture by Flood, Finbarr Barry Necipoğlu, Gülru.

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