Ahmad al-Ya‘qūbī, Kitāb al-buldān (Ninth Century)

At the same time Carolingian emperor Charlemagne (r. 768–814) was forging his empire, Islamic leaders were strengthening their own. In 750, a new dynasty, the Abbasids, seized control of the Islamic state, which they brought to new heights of power and influence. The foundation of a new capital city, Baghdad, in 762 by the Abbasids physically embodied the revolutionary nature of their rule. In the first fifty years of their reign, they transformed Baghdad into the hub of the Islamic state. An early historian of Islam and descendant of the Abbasid family, Ahmad al-Ya‘qпbī (d. 897), experienced the dynamism of the city firsthand during his travels as a young man, and he later included his observations in a geographical work, Kitāb al-buldān, which he wrote near the end of his life. Although composed after economic problems had begun to tarnish the Abbasids’ luster, Kitāb al-buldān elucidates the cultural and economic forces binding the Islamic world together even at a time when the caliphate was fragmenting into separate political units.

A New Islamic Dynasty: Ahmad al-Ya‘qūbī, Kitāb al-buldān, Ninth Century. From Islam: From the Prophet Muhammed to the Capture of Constantinople, Volume II, Religion and Society, (pp. 69–73), edited and translated by Bernard Lewis. Copyright © 1974. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

I begin with Iraq only because it is the center of this world, the navel of the earth, and I mention Baghdad first because it is the center of Iraq, the greatest city, which has no peer in the east or the west of the world in extent, size, prosperity, abundance of water, or health of climate, and because it is inhabited by all kinds of people, town-dwellers and country-dwellers. To it they come from all countries, far and near, and people from every side have preferred Baghdad to their own homelands. There is no country, the peoples of which have not their own quarter and their own trading and financial arrangements. In it there is gathered that which does not exist in any other city in the world. On its flanks flow two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and thus goods and foodstuffs come to it by land and by water with the greatest ease, so that every kind of merchandise is completely available, from east and west, from Muslim and non-Muslim lands. Goods are brought from India, Sind, China, Tibet, the lands of the Turks, the Daylam, the Khazars, the Ethiopians, and others to such an extent that the products of the countries are more plentiful in Baghdad than in the countries from which they come. They can be procured so readily and so certainly that it is as if all the good things of the world are sent there, all the treasures of the earth assembled there, and all the blessings of creation perfected there.

Furthermore, Baghdad is the city of the Hashimites, the home of their reign, the seat of their sovereignty, where no one appeared before them and no kings but they have dwelt. Also, my own forbears have lived there, and one of them was governor of the city.

Its name is famous, and its fame widespread. Iraq is indeed the center of the world, for in accordance with the consensus of the astronomers recorded in the writings of ancient scholars, it is in the fourth climate, which is the middle climate where the temperature is regular at all times and seasons. It is very hot in the summer, very cold in the winter, and temperate in autumn and in spring. The passage from autumn to winter and from spring to summer is gradual and imperceptible, and the succession of the seasons is regular. So, the weather is temperate, the soil is rich, the water is sweet, the trees are thriving, the fruit luscious, the seeds are fertile, good things are abundant, and springs are easily found. Because of the temperate weather and rich soil and sweet water, the character of the inhabitants is good, their faces bright, and their minds untrammeled. The people excel in knowledge, understanding, letters, manners, insight, discernment, skill in commerce and crafts, cleverness in every argument, proficiency in every calling, and mastery of every craft. There is none more learned than their scholars, better informed than their traditionists, more cogent than their theologians, more perspicuous than their grammarians, more accurate than their readers, more skillful than their physicians, more melodious than their singers, more delicate than their craftsmen, more literate than their scribes, more lucid than their logicians, more devoted than their worshippers, more pious than their ascetics, more juridical than their judges, more eloquent than their preachers, more poetic than their poets, and more reckless than their rakes.

In ancient days, that is to say in the time of the Chosroes and the Persians, Baghdad was not a city, but only a village in the district of Bādārayā. The city in Iraq which the Chosroes had chosen for their capital was al-Madā’in, seven parasangs¹ from Baghdad. The audience chamber of Chosroes Anushirvan is still there. At that time there was nothing in Baghdad but a convent situated at a place called Qarn al-Ṣarāt, at the confluence of the Ṣarāt and the Tigris. This convent is called al-Dayr al-‘Atīq [the ancient convent] and is still standing at the present time. It is the residence of the Catholicos, the head of the Nestorian Christians.

Nor does Baghdad figure in the wars of the Arabs at the time of the advent of Islam, since the Arabs founded Basra and Kūfa. Kūfa was founded in the year 17 [638] by Sa’d ibn Abī Waqqās al-Zuhrī, one of ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb’s governors. Basra, too, was founded in the year 17 by ‘Utba ibn Ghazwān al-Māzini of the tribe of Māzin of Qays, also a governor of ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb at that time. The Arabs settled down in these two places, but the important people, the notables, and the rich merchants moved to Baghdad.

The Umayyads lived in Syria and did not stay in Iraq. Mu’āwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, who had been governor of Syria in the name of ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and then of ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Affān for twenty years, lived in Damascus with his family. When he seized power and sovereignty passed to him, he kept his residence and capital in Damascus, where he had his authority, his supporters, and his faction. The Umayyad kings after Mu’āwiya stayed in Damascus, since they were born there and knew no other place, and its people were their sole supporters.

Then the Caliphate came to the descendants of the paternal uncle of the Apostle of God, may God bless and save him and also his family, the line of ‘Ab-bās ibn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭālib. Thanks to clear discernment, sound intelligence, and perfect judgment, they saw the merits of Iraq, its magnificence, spaciousness, and central situation. They saw that it was not like Syria, with its pestilential air, narrow houses, rugged soil, constant diseases, and uncouth people; nor was it like Egypt, with changeable weather and many plagues, situated between a damp and fetid river, full of unhealthy mists that engender disease and spoil food, and the dry, bare mountains, so dry and salty and bad that no plant can grow nor any spring appear; nor like Ifriqiya, far from the peninsula of Islam and from the holy house of God, with uncouth people and many foes; nor like Armenia, remote, cold and icy, barren, and surrounded by enemies; nor like the districts of the Jabal, harsh, rough, and snow-covered, the abode of the hard-hearted Kurds; nor like the land of Khurāsān, stretching to the east, surrounded on every side by rabid and war-like enemies; nor like the Ḥijāz where life is hard and means are few and the people’s food comes from elsewhere, as Almighty God warned us in His book, through His friend Ibrāhīm, who said, “O Lord, I have given to my descendants as dwelling a valley without tillage” [Qur’an]; nor like Tibet, where, because of the foul air and food, the people are discolored, with stunted bodies and tufty hair.

When they understood that Iraq was the best of countries, the ‘Abbasids decided to settle there. In the first instance the Commander of the Faithful, Abu’l-’Abbās, that is ‘Abdallāh ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Alī ibn ‘Abdallāh ibn ‘Abbās ibn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭālib, stayed in Kūfa. Then he moved to Anbār and built a city on the banks of the Euphrates which he called Hāshimiyya. Abu’l-’Abbās, may God be pleased with him, died before the building of this city was completed.

Then, when Abū Ja’far al-Manṣūr succeeded to the Caliphate, he founded a new city between Kūfa and Ḥīra, which he also called Hāshimiyya. He stayed there for a while, until the time when he decided to send his son, Muhammad al-Mahdī, to fight the Slavs in the year 140 [757–758]. He then came to Baghdad and stopped there, and asked, “What is the name of this place?” They answered, “Baghdad.” “By God,” said the Caliph, “this is indeed the city which my father Muhammad ibn ‘Alī told me I must build, in which I must live, and in which my descendants after me will live. Kings were unaware of it before and since Islam, until God’s plans for me and orders to me are accomplished. Thus, the traditions will be verified and the signs and proofs be manifest. Indeed, this island between the Tigris in the east and the Euphrates in the west is a marketplace for the world. All the ships that come up the Tigris from Wāsiṭ, Basra, Ubulla, Ahwāz, Fārs, ‘Umān, Yamāma, Baḥrayn, and beyond will anchor here; wares brought on ships down the Tigris from Mosul, Diyār-Rabī‘a, Ādharbayjān, and Armenia, and along the Euphrates from Diyār-Muḍar, Raqqa, Syria, the border marches, Egypt, and North Africa, will be brought and unloaded here. It will be the highway for the people of the Jabal, Iṣfahān, and the districts of Khurāsān. Praise be to God who preserved it for me and caused all those who came before me to neglect it. By God, I shall build it. Then I shall dwell in it as long as I live, and my descendants shall dwell in it after me. It will surely be the most flourishing city in the world.”

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