Early history of Baghdad

With the end of Ummyad rule centered in Damascus, the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur was seeking a new capital for what would become the Abbasid dynasty.

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

Bayt al-Hikma

Mosque libraries became the first public libraries in Islam used by students, teachers, worshipers and anyone who sought a particular book. As compared to mosques and madrasa, the Bayt al-Hikma had more secular than spiritual material.

Bayt al-Hikma was a caliphal institution in Baghdad that is best characterized as a library with a number of limited scholarly functions but without most of the attributes of scholarly interchange that historians have sought to embody in it. It was founded to promote research in scientific and technological areas. Bayt al-Hikma has been variously described as a royal archive, a library and the nerve center of the translation movement.

It was also known as dar al-hikma and hizanat al-Hikma. Persons explicitly associated with the Bayt al-Hikma were administrators, copyists, and binders. Like every library, the Bayt al-Hikma was a place where one came to copy works.

One is familiar with a certain Allan b. Hasan al-Shu’ubi, a bookseller with shop in Baghdad and renowned copyist: he worked in the Bayt al-Hikma for Harun al-Rasyid, al-Ma’mum and Barmedices and without doubt he also made some copies there to sell in his shop.

Ibn Nadim report that the astrologer al-Fadl ibn Nawbaht was at the hizanat al-Hikma for Harun Al-Rashid; he translated from Persian into Arabic and relied in his scholarship on the books of Iran.

The centre was said to house thousands of books. Of particular interest to the Abbasids were books on philosophy, medicine, and science in Greek, although books in Pahlavi, Sanskrit and other languages were also collected. Al-Ma’mum intensified efforts to translate the books into Arabic.

Other activities had the Bayt al-Hikma as their setting. Reunions of scholars took place there but, paradoxically, those with which concern the religious sciences.

People from all countries came to Baghdad in ruder to study various sciences in libraries where the books were completely the disposal of all users.
Bayt al-Hikma 

Madrasa al-Nizamiyya in Baghdad

If the caravansaries were the central element of the Seljuk economic policy, the madrasa was an important element of Seljuk political ideology.

The madrasa, a religious college, was established by the Baghdad caliph to spread Sunni doctrine, in opposition to Shi’i-Isma’ili teachings.

The first, al-Nizamiyya, in Baghdad, was founded in 1066 by Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier who was killed by an Assassin (Nizari Ismai’ili). It is beginning for the madrasa system and the first of a series of nizamiyyas across the Seljuk Empire, publicly endowed with stipends for students and salaries for teachers.

The Nizamiyya Madrasa became the network of colleges of Islamic law and the best known and most important of these was the Nizamiyya of Baghdad, which remained a premier institution of learning for several centuries and served as a model for numerous law colleges throughout the Islamic world.

The purpose was to strengthen Sunni Islam. Important figures such as al-Ghazali (1058-1111) taught at these nizamiyyas. The great Persian poet of Shiraz, studied under a fellowship at the Nizamiyya College at Baghdad.

Islamic thinker, Al-Ghazali, is noted for his work in jurisprudence, theology and philosophy. He occupied the highest academic chair in Nizamiyya, teaching 300 students.
Madrasa al-Nizamiyya in Baghdad