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Baghdad, A City Primeval Essay

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¶ … Baghdad must have been a beautiful sight. Yakut describes it as a "veritable city of palaces" and each of the palace grounds were "laid out with gardens, and adorned with exquisite taste with plants, flowers, trees, reservoirs and fountains surrounded by sculpted statues" (Yakut). One can only imagine how majestic the city must have been. According to Yakut, both sides of the river were fronted by the palaces, kiosks, gardens and parks of the grandees and nobles, marble steps led down to the water's edge, and the scene on the river was animated by thousands of gondolas, decked with little flags, dancing like sunbeams on the water. Compare Yakut's description to the today's more "modern" description of the same area, and one would wonder if the description was of the same society. Of course, it's a given that the rule of the Abassids coincided with what many experts agree is the "Islamic Golden Age" and that Baghdad was at the epicenter of that Golden Age. At the time, Baghdad housed "numerous colleges of learning, hospitals, infirmaries for both sexes, and lunatic asylums" (Yakut). Additionally, there were according to Yakut, mosques of the city that were "vast in size and remarkably beautiful." To go from vast in size and remarkably beautiful to a city, an area, a region that is now almost completely different takes not only a war (or ten or twenty) but a religion that demands of its people certain...

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It seems to be a very extreme set of beliefs that guide the government, the rulers and the leaders of this once great city. Many of the laws governing the residents herein are couched in religious terms and beliefs and a majority of the leaders follow the Quran and institute laws that are based on the prophet Mohammed's teachings. For example; "the prophet hath cursed ten persons on the account of wine: 1) the first extractor of the juice of the grape for others, 2) for…

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Davis, W.S. ed.; (1998) Readings in ancient history: Illustrative extracts from the sources, 2 vols., Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Vol. II: Rome and the West, pp. 365 -- 367

Graham, S.; (2004) Vertical geopolitics: Baghdad and after, Antipode, Vol. 36, Issue 1, pp. 12-23
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