He traveled along the Tigris River where he found a small town well situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.He decided to construct a palace complex at the junction of the Tigris and the Sarat canal and founded the city in 762 AD.
Before the opening of Baghdad, there had been a town at that location for thousands of years. The site was a place of power being in a fertile region at the juncture of the east-west land trade routes and the north-south river trade routes of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The city was given the name Madinat al-Salam (City of Peace) but the old name of Baghdad (Persian for Gift of God) survived. It appears that al-Mansur decided on this particular location because of strategic and geographic advantages.
The Sarat was deep enough to accommodate commercial traffic and so the Caliph was able to utilize the two major river systems which the Sarat connected: The Tigris and the Euphrates.
In 800 AD, only four decades after its establishment, Baghdad became a metropolis of more than 300,000 inhabitants. As the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate that stretched from present-day Algeria to Pakistan, Baghdad was the center of economic and political power in the Islamic world, unrivalled in its artistic, scientific, and cultural achievements.
During the five centuries of the Abbasid caliphate, the plan of Baghdad with its suburbs changed considerably; in 836, the seat of the Caliphate was moved to Samarra but in 892 the latter was abandoned and the caliph re-established his court in the old capital.
It began to decline in the 9th to 11th centuries, and was destroyed in the Mongolian invasion in 1258.
For the next four centuries up to the invasion of the Mongols (1258), the caliphs permanently established their residence on the east bank.
After the Abbasid period, Baghdad was captured by many foreign countries. Five major occupations manifested their own influences on the historical area of Baghdad, namely, Mongol Hulagu, Jalayirid, Persian Safavids, Ottoman, and the British invasion.
Early history of Baghdad
