“The Eye’s Delight”: Baghdad in Arabic Poetry

: The article deals with the role that Baghdad has played in Arabic poetry since its foundation in 762 AD and throughout the history of Arabic literature. Founded at a time when Arabic poetry was at its peak, the glorious image of the city perched on both banks of the Tigris ignited the imagination of subsequent generations of poets to carve it in verse and enshrine it in the mantle of universal myth. There were also periods when Baghdad claimed attention because of its dramatic decline and disintegration as well as for being a theater for bloody wars, but even in such tragic times the image of an alternative, utopian Baghdad, as a metaphor, remained immune to the vicissitudes of time and the dreary reality of the earthly city. The sway of Baghdad, the fabled city of Hārūn al-Rashīd and the enchanted land of A Thousand and One Nights , continues to capture the imagination of successive generations of poets, writers, and artists the world over. Neither East nor West seems immune to its irresistible charm.


Introduction
"Poetry and Baghdad are indivisible, flowing together.One reflects, then feeds the other and so on, " writes contemporary Baghdadi poet ʽAbd al-Qādir al-Janābī (b.1944), "the very nature of Baghdad strikes the match that ignites the poetic imagination of the Iraqis, and in a sense of poets in the Arab world." 1 About ninety years ago, the historian Reuben Levy (1891-1966) wrote that even in the storied East there are few cities that hold the imagination like Baghdad "whose annals should be sought not in the humdrum narratives of the scribe but in the unfettered imagery of poet or painter." 2 As expressed in a truism by English poet William Cowper (1731-1800), "God made the country, and man made the town." 3 Indeed, cities are "living processes" rather than "products" or "formalistic shells for living," 4 but Baghdad has been shaped also by the numerous poets who have written about the city during the more than 1,200 years since its foundation.Surely there are not many cities in the world about which so many verses have been written over such a span of time. 5here were, of course, variations in the volume and nature of the productive creativity of Baghdad's poets.In the first few centuries after the city was founded, both the Arab and international gaze witnessed Baghdad's great cultural and artistic achievements, and the inspiration of its so very many poets and writers.In other periods such as the first half of the twentieth century, Baghdad became known for its remarkable religious tolerance, multicultural cosmopolitan atmosphere, and peaceful cohabitations between all components of the society.There were also periods when Baghdad claimed attention because of its dramatic decline and disintegration, for example after the thirteenth century Mongol destruction; during Saddam Hussein's ill-reputed regime; and, for being a theater for bloody wars -such as the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, followed, in the next decades by the Gulf War and the

"Metropolis of the World"
Soon after the founding of the city, it became obvious that a specific identity, with distinct characteristics of Baghdad and its residents, was coming into being.The Bedouin nomadic ideology, which retained influence even in urban centers of the Islamic empire, placed genealogy (nasab) far higher on its meritorious scale than homeland (waṭan) -the implication being that "place" was, at best, only secondary, and perhaps even incidental, to the constitution of identity.Thus, biographical dictionaries were organized according to profession, legal school or generation, and only rarely according to city; it is no wonder that one of the outstanding of the latter type of dictionary was Taʾrīkh Baghdād (The History of Baghdad).With the city of Baghdad, the relationship of a person to a place had acquired new meaning and became a formative constituent of individual identity -place and self became mutually interdependent, the one a reflection of the other.Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shāfiʿī (767-820), for example, illustrates the change in the attitude toward the place when he writes: "I have never stayed in a place which I did not consider a mere stage in a journey, until I came to Baghdad.As soon as I entered the city, I, at once, considered it was my very homeland."7Not only did the city of Baghdad begin to serve as a source of identity for Arab and Muslim alike, but the Tigris and major icons of the city, such as various quarters, mosques and palaces, became anchors of personal identity.Baghdad became not only one of the most impressive cities in the Islamic empire, but also a place where people literally defined their identity in relation to it. 8ike people, cities often have multiple layers of identity.Reflection on the subject of identity generally proceeds along one of two major premises: primordialist and non-primordialist.The first assumes that there is an essential content to any identity which is defined by common origin or common structure of experience.The second argues that identities are constructed through an interplay of cultural reproduction, everyday reinforcements, as well as institutional indoctrination. 9In the present case, it seems that Baghdad's identity has been acquired through its natural location, rulers, residents, historians, writers, and, of course, its poets.However, since cities, especially major ones like Baghdad, are more evolving "processes" than finished "products, " they inevitably embody, express, and prioritize specific values.And this is how a city comes to acquire its particular ethos or "soul." "Ethos" can be defined as the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, community, or place as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations; in other words, "ethos" is "the set of values and outlooks that are generally acknowledged by people living in any specific city."Cities not only reflect but also "shape their inhabitants values and outlooks in various ways." 10 In the case of Baghdad, from its in-ception the city was more than the sum total of its parts.From its Golden Age, its image has been shaped by the poetic creativity of its residents, visitors, and those who identified with it.
Daniel Bell and Avner de-Shalit studied the identity and "spirit" of nine contemporary cities.They concluded that Jerusalem, for example, is the city of religion; Montreal, the city of language; Oxford, the city of learning; Berlin, the city of (in)tolerance; Paris, the city of romance, and, New York, the city of ambition.11What might we say about Baghdad's spirit?Or, should we refrain from any such attempt lest by reducing it to a single ethos we end up being guilty of reductionism and simplification?And what might we add if we tried to judge Baghdad not only in "our global age," as Bell and de-Shalit have done with the aforementioned cities, but to delve into this city's history from this diachronic perspective, since its foundation in the eighth century?Does Baghdad actually have any particular ethos?If we should attempt to designate an ethos for the city, and ignore the controversy about the essence of "Islamic city," 12 there is no doubt that, from the time of its founding, and in contradistinction from the aforementioned cities, Baghdad cannot be reduced to a single universal ethos which may serve as a recognizable core of identity shared in common by its inhabitants.Baghdad has been the city of Islam and Arabism par excellence -the center of the Islamic empire and the Arab world, in reality and, certainly, metaphorically.Baghdad was at times a metaphor even for the entire East.It was the city of the Arabian Nights, the city of the Golden Age of Islamic and Arab culture.Its destruction in 1258 reflected the decline of Arabism and Islam.For various Arab religious communities during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, it was the city of tolerance.By contrast, during most of the second half of the twentieth century, it was the city of Arab-Muslim dictatorship, or, during the last decades of that century, the city that illustrated the total submission of the Arab world and Islamic religion to the West.
Classical Arabic sources are full of sayings in reference to the glory of the city as the capital of Islam and Arabism in the medieval ages."Baghdad is the mother of this world and the queen of the provinces;" 13 and, "it is the navel of the globe, the treasure of earth, the source of sciences and the spring of wisdom." 14When one person declared that he had never been to Baghdad, the answer was crystal clear: "In that case, you have seen nothing on the earth." 15"Nothing is equal to Baghdad, " said another, "for the sublimity of its rank, for the splendor of its authority, for the great number of its scholars and prominent personalities, and for its glorious poets." 16 After he founded the city in 762, the Caliph al-Manṣūr (reign 754-775) 17 called the new city Madīnat al-Salām (The City of Peace); this became the official name of the city on government documents and coins. 18Later a shorter form of the name became popular, Dār al-Salām (The Abode of Peace), a name that hints at the Qurʾānic description of paradise: "And God summons to the Abode of Peace, and He guides whomsoever He will to a straight path; to the good-doers the reward most fair and surplus; neither dust nor abasement shall overspread their faces.Those are the inhabitants of Paradise, therein dwelling forever." 19 By the eleventh century, Baghdad had become the almost exclusive name for this world-renowned metropolis. 20Despite the name "Baghdad" being pre-Islamic in origin, most Arabic scholars have assumed it to be derived from Middle Persian, a compound of "Bag" (god) and "dad" (given), meaning "God-given" or "God's gift." However, the name Bagdadu was in use from the time of Hammurabi (1800 B.C.), which means that the name was current before any possible Persian influence.The city was also known as Madīnat al-Manṣūr (The City of al-Manṣūr); al-Zawrāʾ (The Bent or the Crooked); 21 and,, since the old city was built as a circle with an approximate diameter of between two and three kilometers.The city was planned so that within it there would be many parks, gardens, villas, and promenades, and at its center would lay the mosque and headquarters for guards.The four surrounding walls of Baghdad were named Kufa, Basra, Khurasan, and Damascus after the direction of the city gates, which faced these destinations.
After its founding, the city was developed rapidly."Never had there been a Middle Eastern city so large, " Ira M. Lapidus writes: "Baghdad was not a single city, but a metropolitan center, made up of conglomeration of districts on both sides of the Tigris River.In the ninth century it measured about 25 square miles, and had a population of between 300,000 and 500,000.It was ten times the size of Sasanian Ctesiphon." Baghdad was larger than Constantinople or any other Middle Eastern city until Istanbul in the sixteenth century.In its time, Baghdad was the largest city in the world outside China. 22With the founding of Baghdad, the Islamic empire established an effective governing system such as had never existed before; it had political, military, juridical, administrative powers, talented bureaucratic staffs, and improved practices.For example, the office of the vizier was further developed at the time and his power, as chief of administration, functioned in direct connection to the wishes or, one could say, the strength of the caliph -for example, the Barmakid viziers were very powerful at the time, but Hārūn al-Rashīd did not hesitate to execute prominent members of this family.
Many sayings in classical literary sources, prose and poetry, testify to the unique nature of Baghdad.A short while after its founding, Abu ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ (776-869), one of the greatest of classical Arab authors, gave the following testimony: "I have seen the greatest of cities that are known for their perfection and refinement, in the lands of Syria and the Greeks and other countries, but I have never seen a city like Baghdad whose roofs are so high, a city which is so round or more noble, the gates of which are wider and the walls better.It is as if the city were cast into a mould and poured out." 23 When referring to the three great cities in the territories known today as Iraq, al-Jāḥiẓ made the observation that "industry is in Basra, eloquence in Kufa, but goodness in Baghdad." 24Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Ḥasan al-Daylamī related: "I have travelled throughout the lands, visited countries from the borders of Samarkand to Qayrawān, from Sri Lanka to the lands of the Greeks, but I have never found a place better than or superior to Baghdad." 25 Baghdad acquired acceptance as the urban center of the Arab world and Islamic empire, to the degree that people regarded all other places outside it as rural: 26 "Baghdad is the metropolis of the world, " Abū Isḥāq al-Zajjāj (d.923) said, "outside it, there is only desert." 27When a visitor returned from Baghdad, he was asked about the city and replied: "Baghdad among the lands is like a master among slaves." 28 The traveler al-Muqaddasī al-Bashshārī (947-990) described Baghdad as having "a nature and elegance peculiar to her, excellent faculties and tenderness; the air is soft; the science is precise; everything is good.Everything nice is there; every wise man comes from there.Every heart longs for this city.Every war is declared against her.Her fame defies description, her goodness cannot be depicted.Praise cannot reach her heights." 29 As the capital of the Islamic empire, it is no wonder that Baghdad has been praised as a religious center.Abū al-Faraj al-Babbagha (925-1008) wrote: ‫ن‬ ‫إ‬ ‫و‬ ‫بفروعهما،‬ ‫وبسقتا‬ ‫بعروقهما‬ ‫وضربتا‬ ‫وفرختا‬ ‫ششتا‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ع‬ ‫بها‬ ‫ة‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫سلام‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫لخلافة‬ ‫و‬ ‫"ة‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫%بو‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ل‬ ‫&ولة‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ان‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ف‬ ‫سلام،‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫م&"%ة‬ ‫بل‬ ‫سلام‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ل‬ ‫م&"%ة‬ ‫هي‬ ‫م.‬ ‫نس‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ك‬ ‫من‬ 0 ‫ّش‬ ‫ر‬ ‫أ‬ ‫مها‬ ‫نس‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫إ‬ ‫و‬ ‫ماء،‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ك‬ ‫من‬ ‫عذب‬ ‫أ‬ ‫وماءها‬ ‫ء‬ ‫هو‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ك‬ ‫من‬ ‫غذى‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ءها‬ ‫هو‬ [Baghdad] is the City of Peace, indeed she is the city of Islam.The Prophetic State and the Caliphate of Islam nested there, hatched and struck its roots into the earth, and made its branches tall.Her air is more pleasant than any other air and her water sweeter than any other water, and her breeze is softer than any other breeze. 30 was said that whenever the name of Baghdad was raised in any conversation, people quoted the Qurʾānic verse: "A good land, and a Lord All-forgiving." 31 An interpreter explained that Baghdad was enriched with the fruits of a refreshing breeze. 32We read also in the sources: Baghdad is a paradise on earth, the City of Peace; the dome of Islam; the union of two rivers; the head of the land; the eye of Iraq; the house of the caliphate; the ingathering of good deeds and actions; the source of uncommon qualities and niceties.There can be found experts in any of the arts and extraordinary people in every field. 33so: "From the merits of Islam -Friday in Baghdad, the prayer performed during the nights of Ramadan in Mecca, and religious festivals in Tarsus." 34 Moreover, Baghdad enjoyed a pluralistic, cosmopolitan, and multi-confessional atmosphere with multi-cultural ethnic and religious gatherings of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, pagans, Arabs, Persians, as well as various Asian populations.This atmosphere was initially inspired by the leadership of the Caliph al-Manṣūr (754-775), who propagated, from Baghdad, an open and multicultural policy toward religious minorities.The political, religious and cultural supremacy of Baghdad as the center of the flowering of the Islamic empire encouraged such an atmosphere not only in Bagh -dad itself, but throughout other close and even remote cities.A contemporary text describing a gathering in the southern city of Basra in the year 156H (772/773 A.D.), may serve to illustrate this policy of multiculturalism: Ten persons used to meet regularly.There was no equivalent to this gathering for the diversity of the religions and sects of its members: al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad -a Sunni, and al-Sayyid ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥimyarī -Shiite, and Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Qaddūs -dualist, and Sufyān ibn Mujāshiʿ -Khariji, and Bashshār ibn Burd -morally depraved and impudent, and Ḥammad ʿAjrad -heretic, and the exilarch's son -a Jew, and Ibn Naṭīra -a Christian theologian, and ʿAmrū the nephew of al-Muʾayyad -Zoroastrian, and Rawḥ ibn Sinān al-Harranī -Gnostic.At these gatherings they used to recite poems, and Bashshār used to say: Your verses, Oh so-and-so, are better than sūra this or that [of the Qurʾān], and from that kind of joking and similar things they declared Bashhār to be a disbeliever. 35

The Golden Age
The glorious and multi-cultural cosmopolitan image of Baghdad, in the imagination of Arab culture, concealed a day-to-day reality of a city which suffered from all kinds of difficulties and troubles, just like any other medieval city.An example is the Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (763-809), whose name and fame have been associated with Baghdad as the legendary ultimate capital of the Islamic empire.It was under him that Baghdad flourished and became the most splendid city of its period.Taxes paid by rulers were used to finance activities in fine art, the construction of buildings with a high standard of architecture, and also a luxurious and even decadent way of life at court.Due to the One Thousand-and-One Nights tales, Hārūn al-Rashīd and particularly his activities in Baghdad became legendary but his true historic personality was thus obscured.Hārūn al-Rashīd was virtually responsible for dismembering the empire when he apportioned Baghdad between his two sons, al-Amīn (reign 809-813) and al-Maʾmūn (reign 813-833).After his death, a civil war (fitna) broke out between them (811-813).Contemporary poets described the events of the civil war and, between their poetic lines, the high status of Baghdad is apparent.ʿAmr ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al- Warrāq (d.815)  The slave has put a mark of disgrace upon his master, [Baghdad's] noblewomen have been enslaved.Among neighbors the noble have become the most evil, He who had been afraid of roads has become their master.This is a description of a world upside-down reminiscent of the Carmina Burana where the Fathers Gregory, Jerome, Augustine and Benedict are to be found in the alehouse, in court, or in the meat market; Mary no longer delights in the contemplative life and Lucretia has turned whore.Behind curtains, the honor of the Prophet's female descendants.Your relatives remained in their places and failed to help, All of them admitted humiliation.Their virgin females showed their ankles In grief, as they wept their demand for justice.Garments were stolen, veiled women Were exposed, ear-rings were removed.While being assaulted they seemed as Pearls emerging from oysters.
Notwithstanding all, within a short time after its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant industrial and commercial center for international trade as well as the intellectual and cultural heart of the Arab and Islamic world.On the latter level, Baghdad garnered a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning, " housing several key academic institutions, the best known being Bayt al-Ḥikma (House of Wisdom).This high point of Islamic civilization came when scholars of various religions from around the world flocked to that city, which was the unrivaled center for the study of the humanities and sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, zoology and geography, in addition to alchemy, and astrology.Drawing on Persian, Indian and Greek texts, Baghdad's scholars accumulated the greatest collection of learned texts in the world, and built on this knowledge through their own discoveries.In these times, there was also a market for copyists (sūq al-warrāqīn) where more than one hundred booksellers' shops were to be found and writers and merchants used to buy and sell manuscripts.Baghdad's libraries were renowned for their wealth even beyond the Arab world.Whereas the largest library in twelfth-century Europe housed around 2,000 volumes, there was a library in Baghdad that had 10,400 books. 38In Umberto Eco's Il Nome Della Rosa (1980), the library of the abbey is praised as "the only light Christianity can oppose to the thirty-six libraries of 37 See Snir 1994, pp.51-75.38 Coke 1935 [1927], p. 63; Ali 2010, p. 221; and Toorawa 2005, pp.13-15.Baghdad, to the ten thousand codices of the Vizir Ibn al-ʿAlqamī." 39However, Baghdad's rapid development met with delays.In 836, the caliphate residence was removed to the new city of Samarra, just built by the Caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (reign 833-842).The caliphate would remain there for over fifty-five years, that is, until the year 892 when it was returned to Baghdad by the Caliph al-Muʿtamid (reign 870-892).During that period, Baghdad missed the attention of the caliphs, even though it was still the center of commercial and cultural activity.
From the late tenth century, inter-sectarian conflicts between the Muslim Shiʿis and Sunnis became usual, but soon the population of Baghdad became international, a mixture of different religions, nations and cultures.The Jews of Mesopotamia, for example, who for centuries spoke Aramaic, in which language they produced the Talmud, underwent a rapid process of Arabization and integration into the surrounding Arab-Muslim society, the majority of them congregating in the new metropolis of Baghdad.Facilitating their integration was their high level of achievement and resulting prosperity in commerce, education and culture. 40It is estimated that in the tenth century the population of Baghdad reached one-and-a-half million 41 and was considered to be the largest city in the world, the kind of which had not been known before in the Middle East.Very sophisticated services were installed to meet the requirements of its residents.This is illustrated by, for example, the health system.We know of hospitals in Baghdad from since the ninth century.At the beginning of the tenth century, the chief court physician, Sinān ibn Thābit (880-943), was appointed director of the city's hospitals; he founded three additional hospitals. 42any poems reflect various levels of life in Baghdad throughout the first centuries after its founding and in a sense may be read as an alternative history of the city."Literature is a frail vehicle for documentation, " James Dougherty writes, "but it can become powerful when understood as the imaginative review of experience, a review that both discovers and imparts those spiritual expectations against which the city's appearance must be measured." 43Moreover, the history of Baghdad, during its formative classical period, cannot be fully documented without poetry.This is all the more obvious since until the second half of the twentieth century, poetry was the principal channel of literary creativity and served as the chronicle and public register of the Arabs as illustrated in the aforementioned saying al-Shiʿr Dīwān al-ʿArab.No other genres could challenge the supremacy of poetry in the field of belles lettres across more than 1,500 years of Arabic literary history.This high status that poetry enjoyed in Arab society as a whole is reflected in a passage by the eleventh-century scholar Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī (d.1063 or 1071): When a poet appeared in a family of the Arabs, the adjacent tribes would gather together and wish that family the joy of their good luck.Feasts would be got ready, the women of the tribe would join together in bands, playing upon lutes, as they were wont to do at bridals, and the men and boys would congratulate one another; for a poet was a defence of the honour of them all, a weapon to ward off insult from their good name, and a means of perpetuating their glorious deeds and of establishing their 39 Eco 1984, p. 35.In Eco's novel, the historical background of fourteenth century Christian Europe is reconstructed, but Baghdad's libraries had been already destroyed in 1258 and Baghdad lost its cultural dominance in the Arab world before the events of the novel took place.40 Wasserstrom 1995, pp.19-20.41 On this number and the various calculations which enable scholars to reach it, see Micheau 2008, pp.234-235.42 Duri 1980, p. 64.43 Dougherty 1980, p. x.Cf.Johnston 1984, p. xx.fame forever.And they used not to wish one another joy but for three things: the birth of a boy, the coming to light of a poet, and the foaling of a noble mare. 44ets of the time actually referred to Baghdad as a paradise on earth; they described its beauty, natural scenes, and the attachment they felt toward it.Manṣūr al-Namarī (d.825) described the Baghdadi breeze: ‫سمت‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ت%‬ ‫ذ‬ ‫إ‬ ‫لمرضى‬ ‫ر"اح‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ي‬ ‫تح‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ر"اح‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ل‬ ‫غصان‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ب‬ ‫وشت‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫وج‬  Al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 34.48 Yāqūt 1990, I, p. 546; and Al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 21.There is nothing like Baghdad, worldly-wise and religiously, Despite Time's transitions.The water -what a taste!Sweeter than wine.Her Tigris -two banks arrayed for us like pearls in a necklace, A crown beside a crown, a palace beside a palace.Her soil -musk; her water -silver; Her gravel -diamonds and jewels." 52 On the other hand, Baghdad was also known as a hedonist city, where pleasures of all sorts were available.The pleasures, as ʿAlī ibn al-Jahm (804-863) wrote, were sensual with wine parties, cupbearers, young men and women, and a carpe diem atmosphere: "Use your hands, carefree!Do not be afraid of the master, do whatever you want.Hint with your hand, wink, do not fear." 53 Homosexual love was very widespread and accepted in Baghdad at the time, and among the upper classes in society there was always an urgent need for newly imported young beardless boys.When Abū al-Maʿālī (1028-1085) was suddenly seen with a bearded boy, eyebrows were lifted: "Look for another!They urged.In that case I will never be pleased, I replied./ If his saliva were not honey, the bees would never have invaded his mouth." 54 49 Al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 22.  50 Al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 31.51 Yāqūt 1990, I, p. 547; al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 22; and al-Nawrasī 2009, p. 63.  52 Al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 24.53 Snir 2013, pp.98-99.54 Snir 2013, p. 147.
The hedonism of Baghdad's wealthier residents created a need for more free time for leisure.From the start, with the Abbasid dynasty, the caliphate's public offices were closed on Fridays so that believers could pray together in the mosques.For rest, relaxation and leisure, the Caliph al-Muʿtaḍid (reign 857-902) added another off-day -Tuesday.Every Tuesday, public employees would stay at home or head for public parks where they would spend their time in recreation and rest.Sometimes, it seemed a shame for a man to stay in the house on Tuesday and not participate in the majālis (sessions) of singing and wine drinking.Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī 1971, p. 36; Yāqūt 1990, I, p. 550; and al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 37.  56 Yāqūt 1990, I, p. 550; and al-Ālūsī 1987, p. 37.  Friendship of al-Zawrā's residents is falsehood, Residents' warmth as well -don't be tempted.Baghdad is a place for a mere "how are you?" You will not be able to gain more. 57d Abū al-ʿĀliya (The ninth century) has strong advice: ‫قام99999999999ة‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ر‬ ‫د‬ ‫د‬ ‫بغ&‬ ‫فما‬ ‫حل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫تر‬ ‫طائل‬ ‫د‬ ‫ببغ&‬ ‫"رجى‬ ‫من‬ ‫ع%&‬ ‫ول‬ ‫د"مهم‬ ‫أ‬ ‫في‬ ‫سمتهم‬ ‫م‪H‬وك‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫مح‬ ‫عاط9ل‬ ‫لمج&‬ ‫ة‬ H‫ح‬ ‫من‬ ‫‪H‬هم‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫فك‬ Leave!Baghdad is not a place to stay in, There is no benefit from her.She is a place for kings, their wickedness seen in their faces, All of them devoid of any glory. 58 Many anonymous verses described the immoral and evil nature of the residents such as the following: ‫به9999999999ا‬ It was in the prisons of Baghdad that (so we learn from poetry) the craft of weaving waistbands became very developed, and served as a metaphor for the deterioration of the status of the prisoners.We learn this, for example, from the poetry of the Prince ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muʿtazz (861-909), who succeeded in ruling for a single lone day before he was strangled in a palace intrigue: The sky of which is dirty, her water and air are muggy, her weather dusty, her soil quagmire, her water clay, her dirt dung, her walls unstable, her October -July.Many are burnt by the sun.In her shade the sweat is unbearable, her houses narrow, her neighbors evil, her citizens wolves, their speeches curses, their beggars deprived, their money hidden, never for spending, never for releasing, their gardens know no gardening, their roads rubbish, their walls unstable, their houses cages. 65d he composed the following verses: According to historical sources, one reason for selecting the site chosen for Baghdad was because it was free of mosquitoes and had lots of fresh air; but after the city had been built, there seem to have been various opinions from those who beheld the city and breathed its air.In any event, Baghdad could not have achieved its supremacy without having been an industrial urban center from its earliest times.Its residents were known for their brilliance in building splendid boats and ships, some in special shapes, such as domes, lions and eagles.According to extant statistics, there were thirty thousand of these ornate boats and ships; the Caliph al-Amīn owned a number.
In Because the climate in Baghdad is dry, poems blessing or cursing the city and its dwellers frequently open with such verses as "may God rain on Baghdad," "may the rain water the surface of your earth," "may He not rain on Baghdad" or "may clouds never rain upon you." Poetry also chronicles spells when Baghdad was covered in snow and inspired poets.Ibn al-Muʿtazz (861-909) described a sudden flurry of snow: "The clouds' eyes were bathed in water, / all at once they poured down snow, spreading it like white roses."Unlike Ibn al-Muʿtazz, al-Sharīf al-Rāḍī (930-977) had a different impression and makes an analogy between the damage caused by snow and people's wickedness and evil-doing: Floods have been one of the most frequently chronicled natural catastrophes striking Baghdad as recorded by historians 73 and poets from the first centuries after its founding -generally because of the neglect of the irrigation system.For example, a flood in the year 883 ruined 7,000 houses in al-Karkh.In 1243, 1248, 1255 and 1256, a series of floods ruined some of the city quarters and in one case floods even entered the markets of eastern Baghdad.The city suffered from floods until the twentieth century as Maʿrūf al-Ruṣāfī (1875-1945)  Leading armored fighters, nobody leading them.Once I was riding for pleasure on a noble horse, With a body but no heart.Galloping on, I imagined the ground was a lady's face; The Tigris was the eye, the horse the eyeball. 79 In the early centuries after Baghdad's founding, scenes of the Tigris were frequently depicted.One favorite image was the moon upon the river.Ibn al-Tammār al-Wāsiṭī (tenth century) writes:

‫تحسبه‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫لغرب‬ ‫فق‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫في‬ ‫لب&ر‬ ‫و‬ ‫ذهب‬ ‫من‬ ‫ن،‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫لش‬ ‫ع‪H‬ى‬ ، ‫جسر‬ & ‫ّش‬ ‫م‬ ‫ق&‬
Full moon sits in the western horizon as though A golden bridge stretching between the two banks.Reading the aforementioned verses about the Tigris and the bridges upon the river, William Wordsworth's lines "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" are recalled: Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare.
Baghdad was the city of lovers, worldly and divine.As it was the greatest urban center of the Islamic empire, this is no wonder!Certain parts of the city provided opportunities for the intermingling of the sexes, and had much more to offer than other less prominent, smaller places in affording space for this.An agonized earthly anonymous lover wonders:  Yāqūt 1990, I, p. 541).87 The black crow, the "crow of separation" (ghurāb al-bayn), is a frequent motif in classical Arabic poetry.88 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī 1971, p. 82; and Yāqūt 1990, I, p. 552.89 Al-Ḥallāj 1974, p. 41

1258 and Beyond
And this leads us to the major event that poets chronicled in detail -the destruction of Baghdad in  1258.Hulagu (1217-1265), the Mongol conqueror and founder of the Il-Khanid dynasty of Persia, launched a wave of conquests throughout the Islamic world.After direct control of much of the Islamic world south of the Oxus had slipped from the hands of the Mongols, Hulagu was entrusted by the Möngke Khan (1209-1259) with the task of recovering and consolidating the Mongol conquests in western Asia.He overcame the resistance of the Ismaʿilis of northern Persia, routed a caliphal army in Iraq, captured Baghdad, and murdered the Caliph al-Mustaʿṣim (reign 1242-1258).His army sacked the city and the killing, looting, and burning lasted for several days.The numbers killed during the fifty-day siege were estimated at from 800,000 to 1,300,000.According to some accounts, the Tigris and Euphrates ran red with the blood of scholars. 98Most of the city's monuments were wrecked and burnt, and the famous libraries of Baghdad, including the House of Wisdom, were eradicated.Poems and chronicles describe how copies of the Qurʾānic "became cattle's fodder." Books were used to make a passage across the Tigris: "The water of the river became black because of the ink of the books."Books were also pillaged from Baghdad's famous libraries and transported to a new library that Hulagu erected near Lake Urmiya. 99s a result of these events, Baghdad remained depopulated and in ruins for several centuries, and the event is conventionally regarded as the end of the Islamic Golden Age.The destruction of Baghdad inspired many poets in the centuries following and up to our own times -Hulagu being taken as the figure of the archetypal cruel dictator.The poetry of the times was a faithful mirror of those events.Taqī al-Dīn ibn Abī al-Yusr wrote: ‫به‬ ‫شرفت‬ ‫لذ‪S‬‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ربع‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ل‬ ‫و‬ ‫لخلافة‬ ‫تاج‬ ‫قف99999999999999ار‬ ‫إ‬ ‫عفاه‬ ‫ق&‬ ‫لمعالم‬ 94 Al-Hamadhānī 1973, pp.61-64, 122-128; al-Hamadhānī 1983, pp.55-59, 157-165; and al-Hamadhānī 2005, pp.71-74, 181-189.Baghdādh, as previously mentioned, is another version of name of Baghdad.It appears as such in order to rhyme with azādh (dates) in the first line of the maqāma.95 Al-Ḥarīrī 1985, pp.105-111; al-Ḥarīrī, 1969 [1867], pp.176-181; and al-Ḥarīrī 1980, pp.54-57.96 Hämeen-Anttila 2002, pp.329-330; and al-Ālūsī 1987, pp.150-153.97 On this poem, see Hermes 2017, pp.270-297, where a translation of the entire poem is quoted (this specific verse is translated in two versions in pp.282 and 295).98 Boyle 1968, pp.348-349; Boswerth 1967, pp.149-151; and Muir 1924, pp.591-592.99 Hitti 1946, p. 378; and Sedillot 1877, p. 293.They were dragged away, their breasts raised, their faces unveiled, Driven out from their private abodes. 102 As with the civil war following the death of Hārūn al-Rashīd, the events of 1258 were described as mundus inversus, such as in a poem On the whole, all that was written about the destruction of Baghdad, both at the time and in the succeeding decades and centuries, reflects the paradigm that sees political changes as pivotal in their effects on religious and cultural life.Hulagu has been engraved on the Arabs' memory as the fundamental reason for the destruction of their great medieval civilization and the cause for the cultural stagnation of the Arab world until the renaissance (nahḍa) in the nineteenth century.Arabs place emphasis, prompted by European orientalists, on the descriptions of the destructions of cultural institutions and libraries, the burning of books by the Mongol army, their throwing of books into the Tigris and using them as a bridge to cross the river, and the killing of many of the scholars and men of letters in Baghdad. 105 We find this not only in modern historical books, but also in literary histories and even in poetry and prose.Not a few modern Arab officials have used the Hulagu myth for their own aims, as did, for example, the late Egyptian president Jamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir (1918-1970).A well-known Swiss writer on Middle Eastern affairs even quotes "a high Syrian government official" as saying, "in deadly earnest": "If the Mongols had not burnt the libraries of Baghdad in the thirteenth century, we Arabs would have had so much science, that we would long since have invented the atomic bomb.The plundering of Baghdad put us back centuries." 106 Bernard Lewis (1916-2018) explains that this is an extreme, even a grotesque formulation, but the thesis which it embodies was developed by European scholars, who saw in the Mongol invasions "the final catastrophe which overwhelmed and ended the great Muslim civilization of the middle Ages." This judgment of the Mongols "was gratefully, if sometimes surreptitiously, borrowed by romantic and apologetic historians in Middle Eastern countries as an explanation both of the ending of their golden age, and of their recent backwardness." 107 Yet scholars now argue that this thesis is definitely 102 Snir 2013, pp.156-158.103 Al-ʿAzzāwī 1996, I, p. 287; and al-Nawrasī 2009, p. 82.104 See al-Kutubī 1951, I, pp.580-581.105 See, for example D'Ohsson 1834-1835, I, p. 387 as quoted by Browne 1951, II, p. 427; Nicholson 1956, p. 129; and  Goldziher 1966, p. 141.Cf.Browne 1951, II, p. 463.106 Hottinger 1957 (as quoted by Lewis 1973, p. 179).107 Lewis 1973, p. 179.unjustified, as the signs of the stagnation had appeared long before Hulagu appeared in Baghdad.The successive "blows by which the Mongols hewed their way across western Asia, culminating in the sacking of Baghdad and the tragic extinction of the independent Caliphate in 1258, " as H. A. R. Gibb writes, "scarcely did more than give finality to a situation that had long been developing." 108 Even some modern Arab intellectuals and historians feel that the descriptions of the sacking of Baghdad as regards the cultural losses were much exaggerated.The Syrian intellectual Constantin Zurayk (Zureiq) (1909-2000) comments that "some of us still believe that the attacks of the Turks and the Mongols are what destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and Arab power in general.But here also the fact is that the Arabs had been defeated internally before the Mongols defeated them and that, had those attacks been launched against them when they were in the period of growth and enlightenment, the Mongols would not have overcome them.On the contrary the attacks might have revitalized and reenergized them." 109 At any event, since the destruction of Baghdad, Hulagu and the year of 1258 have become a metaphor for the decline of Arab-Muslim civilization and even modern Arab poets have used his figure in order to allude to other catastrophes which have struck the Arab world.On one occasion the figure of Hulagu is described in Arabic poetry positively, and that was to serve a specific aim.While spending a sabbatical year in the United States, the Palestinian poet Mīshīl Ḥaddād (1919-1996)  missed his homeland and his town Nazareth.In his exile, he was surrounded by books he perceived to be in opposition to the natural order of things.After returning to his natural environment in his homeland, he wrote the poem "The Books" using the stories about Hulagu's burning of the books in Baghdad's libraries.The books are used here as metonym for the disasters that sciences and rational thinking have brought to mankind: ‫لكتب‬ ‫و"حر0‬ ‫كو‬ ‫هول‬ ‫اتي‬ ‫أ‬ " ‫ون‬ ‫لع‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫تك‬ ‫ن‬ ‫أ‬ ‫قبل‬ ‫فكار‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫وتخت‪vH‬‬ ‫لمزدحمة‬ ‫لغاتها‬ ‫‪H‬م%ا‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫تع‬ ‫ن‬ ‫أ‬ ‫قبل‬ ‫طمئ%ان‬ ‫ل‬ ‫اتي.‬‫أ‬ " ‫قب‪H‬ها‬ Hulagu will come and burn the books, Before eyes grow feeble, Before ideas are muddled, Before their crowded languages teach us Tranquility, Before that, He will come. 110 seems that Haddad was inspired by William Wordsworth's romantic dictum: Up! Up! my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double: Up! Up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?
Its shadow, wherever it throws itself Begets a cloud of hungry eagles Hovering over the houses.
Where the refugees See me in their Nightmares between the ruins.
And the prisoners sharpen A handful of straw from my horse. 114 is interesting to see how Hulagu's destruction of Baghdad appears also in comics for children such as in the comic book series al-Tisʽa wa-l-Tisʽūn or al-99 (The Ninety-Nine or The 99), created by Nāyif al- Muṭawwaʽ (b.1971), where the first episode begins in 1258, with the siege of Baghdad, but unlike the usual narrative where the Mongols invaded and destroyed the Grand Library, in this episode its countless precious books are saved from being dumped in the River Tigris. 115n the next centuries after the city fell to the Mongols, Baghdad was pushed into the margins of the Arab and Islamic world.The Mamluk capital Cairo replaced her as the capital of the Muslim world, and for centuries the name of Baghdad was lost in Europe or confused with Babylon.After the invasion of Tamerlain (1401), al-Maqrīzī wrote in 1437 that "Baghdad is but a heap of ruins; there is neither mosque, nor congregation, nor market place.Most of its waterways are dry, and we can hardly call it a town." 116In 1534, Baghdad was captured by the Ottoman Turks and under their rule Baghdad fell into a period of further decline.European travelers visiting the city during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reported that Baghdad was a center of commerce with a cosmopolitan and international atmosphere where three main languages (Arabic, Persian, and Turkish) were spokenat the same time, mentioning neglected quarters where many of the houses were in ruins.Sir Thomas Roe, the British ambassador at Constantinople from 1621 to 1628 confused Baghdad with Babylon.The French traveler Tavernier, describing his journey down the Tigris in 1651, related that he arrived at "Baghdad, qu'on appele d'ordinaire Babylon." 117 Only after the French orientalist Antoine Galland (1646-1715) translated the Arabian Nights into French, did Europeans again take an interest in Baghdad.In 1774 we find a report that "this is the grand mart for the produce of India and Persia, Con -114 Būluṣ 2008, pp.119-120.115 Akbar 2015.116 Raymond 2002, p. 18.  117 Levy 1977 [1929], p. 9; and Le Strange 1900, p. 348.stantinople, Aleppo and Damascus; in short it is the grand oriental depository." However, in the overall picture, Baghdad was in constant decline; in one report, its population was at a low of 15,000.Only think that during the tenth century its population was around a million and a half!ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Jamīl (1780-1863)  In 1816, Dawūd Pasha arrived on the scene and brought a degree of prosperity.He maintained control over the tribes and restored order and security.He took care of the irrigation system, established factories, encouraged local industry, built bridges and mosques, founded three madrasas, and organized an army of about 20,000 and had a French officer to train it.However, he imposed heavy taxes, and, after his fall along with floods and plagues, Baghdad still suffered from marginality.From 1831 to the end of the Ottoman period, Baghdad was directly under Constantinople and some governors tried to introduce reforms. 119nder Midhat Pasha (1869-1872), the leading advocate of Ottoman tanzimat reforms, a modern wilayet system was introduced, each divided into seven sanjaks headed by mutasarrifs, Baghdad being one of them.In 1869, under his influence, the first publishing house, the Wilayet Printing Press, was established in Baghdad.The same year, he founded al-Zawrāʾ, the first newspaper to appear in Iraq as the official organ of the provincial government; it was a weekly that lasted until March 1917.In 1870, he founded a tramway linking Baghdad with Kazimayn. 120With the exception of a few French Missionary schools, there had been no modern schools in Baghdad, but between 1869-1871, Midhat Pasha established modern schools, a technical school, junior (Rushdī) and secondary (Iʿdādī) military schools, and junior and secondary civil (Mulkī) schools.
Minorities in Baghdad enjoyed a rare tolerance for the times. 121In 1846, Rabbi Israel-Joseph Benjamin II said that "nowhere else as in Baghdad have I found my coreligionists so completely free of that black anxiety, of that somber and taciturn mood that is the fruit of intolerance and persecution." 122The Christian and Jewish communities became the pioneers in modern education in Baghdad.In 1864, the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU), 123 a Jewish School in Baghdad was founded; it offered a predominantly secular education and had a Western cultural orientation.It was to play a major role in the modernization of the local educational system.Visiting Baghdad in 1878, Grattan Geary, editor of the Times of India, wrote that instruction in the AIU School was of the best modern kind: "Arabic is the mother tongue of the Baghdad Jews," but many of them "spoke and read English with wonderful fluency," and, also, "they speak French with singular purity of accent and expression." 124 This was also the time when Baghdad started to regain its position as one of the great urban centers in the Middle East.The Gazetteer of Baghdad (compiled in 1889), mentioned in its chapter on the ethnography of the city that "the present population is now estimated at about 116,000 souls, or 26,000 families divided thus: -Turks, or of Turkish descent, 30,000 souls; Persians 1,600; Jews 40,000; Christians 5,000; Kurds 4,000; Arabs 25,000; Nomad Arabs 10,000." 125 The population of the city was gradually increasing and, in 1904, the population was estimated at about 140,000.In 1914 Baghdad was, numerically, a greater Jewish than Muslim city with its law-abiding, Arabic-speaking Jewish community." 126 According to the last official yearbook of the Baghdad wilayet (1917), the population figures for the city were as follows: Arabs, Turks and other Muslims except Persians and Kurds: 101,400; Persians 800; Kurds 8,000; Jews 80,000; Christians 12,000. 127By 1918, the population was estimated as 200,000.
Baghdad remained under Ottoman rule until 1917, when it was taken by the British during World War I.The aim of Fayṣal, who became King of Iraq on 23 August 1921, was to create "an independent, strong Arab state, which will be a cornerstone for Arab unity." 128Thus, the Iraqi constitution of March 21st, 1925 stated that "there is no difference between the Iraqi people in rights before the law, even if they belong to different nationalities, religions and languages." 129 Expressions overtly inclusive of all citizens are not surprising since Arab nationalists from their earliest phases had considered non-Muslims living among the Arabs as part of the Arab "race."Travelers were impressed with the great admixture of ethnicities, the diversity of speech, the rare freedom enjoyed by non-Muslims and the great tolerance among the masses.The free intermingling of peoples left its imprint on the dialects of Baghdad.
The British mandate from the League of Nations operated behind the facade of a native government in which every Iraqi minister had a British advisor.Sāṭiʿ al-Ḥuṣrī (1880130 Sāṭiʿ al-Ḥuṣrī ( -1968)), Director General of Education in Iraq (1923-1927) and Arab nationalism's first true ideologue, argued that "every person who is related to the Arab lands and speaks Arabic is an Arab." 131 With the aim of making the mixed population of the new nation-state homogeneous and cohesive, he looked upon schools as the means by which to indoctrinate the young in the tenets of Pan-Arabism, seeking the "assimilation of diverse elements of the population into a homogenous whole tied by the bonds of specific language, history, and culture to a comprehensive but still exclusive ideology of Arabism." 132The eloquent secularist dictum al-dīnu li-llāhi wa-l-waṭanu li-l-jamīʽ (Religion is for God, the Fatherland is for Everyone) was in popular circulation -it was probably coined in the Coptic Congress in Asyut (1911), by Tawfīq Dūs (1882-1950), a Coptic politician and later the Egyptian Minister of Transportation, 133 Qurʾānic verses fostering religious tolerance and cultural pluralism, such as "there is no compulsion in religion" 134 and "You have your path and I have mine, " 135 were often quoted.The Iraqi writer ʿAzīz al-Ḥājj (1926-2020), who worked in the education system, saw the composition of his own class (1944-1947) in the Department of English at the High School for Teachers in Baghdad (Dār al-Muʿallimīn al-ʿĀliya), as a significant and symbolic representation of the harmony among the religious communities of Baghdad: out of eight students, four were Jewish, including one female student, two were Christian and two were Muslim.He wrote: "The coexistence and intermixing between the different communities and religious sects in Baghdad is exemplary." 136 As an offspring of a family who emigrated from Baghdad to Israel in the beginning of the 1950s, I will take as an example the Jewish residents of Baghdad, who played a major role in the life of the city during the first half of the twentieth century.The Civil Administrative of Mesopotamia, in its annual review for the year 1920, stated that the Jews were "a very important section of the community, outnumbering the Sunnis or Shias." 137According to Elie Kedourie (1926-1992), "Baghdad at the time could be said to be as much a Jewish city as an Islamic one." 138 Jewish poets wrote about Baghdad from the 1920s onwards, even after the mass immigration of the Jews to Israel after its independence.The most famous of these Iraqi-Jewish poets was Anwar Shaʾul (1904-1984), who started to publish under the pseudonym of Ibn al-Samawʾal (the son of al-Samawʾal), referring to the pre-Islamic Jewish poet al-Samawʾal ibn ʿAdiyāʾ, proverbial in Arabic ancient heritage for his loyalty.According to the ancient sources, al-Samawʾal refused to hand over weapons that had been entrusted to him.As a consequence, he would witness the murder of his own son by the Bedouin chieftain who laid siege to his fortress al-Ablaq in Taymāʾ, north of al-Madīna.He is commemorated in Arab history by the wellknown saying "as faithful as al-Samawʾal.The days of my youth drank of the Tigris. 140ll major modern Arabic poets referred to Baghdad in their poetry, and the emergence of modernist Arabic poetry, from the 1950s, accompanied the transformation of Baghdad as a physical and spatial entity into what al-Janābī considers in his afterword to be "an easy metaphor for revival and eclipse -for what disintegrates into a lulling daylight!" 145This was also the time when different poetic forms dictated changes in the ways Baghdad was imagined and described.Until the mid-twentieth century, the basic poetic form of the poems written on Baghdad was the classical qaṣīda.This was the same poetic form that was developed in pre-Islamic Arabia and perpetuated throughout Arabic literary history.The qaṣīda is a structured ode maintaining a single end rhyme that runs through the entire piece; the same rhyme also occurs at the end of the first hemistich (half-line) of the first verse.The central poetic conception of the so-called neoclassical poets emerging from the late nineteenth century was basically the same: the qaṣīda is the sacred form for poetry, and the relationship between the poet and his readers was like that between an orator and his audience.It is when we come to the late 1940s and the rise of the aforementioned al-shiʿr al-ḥurr, the Arabic development of "free verse, " that we encounter significant deviation from classical metrics.As the new free verse succeeded in gaining some measure of canonical status, traditional poets and critics felt that this new poetry was in opposition to the accepted and ancient form of Arabic poetry they were used to.Based upon earlier experiments of Arab poets and influenced by English poetry, the essential concept of this poetry entails reliance on the free repetition of the basic unit of conventional prosody -the use of an irregular number of a single foot (tafʿila), instead of a fixed number of feet.The poet varies the number of feet in a single line according to need.The new form was closely associated with the names of the two Baghdadi poets, Nāzik al-Malāʾika (1923-2007) and Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb (1926-1964).More recent developments in Arabic poetry, especially the type of prose poem known as qaṣīdat al-nathr, as well as its variant types and forms, have already gradually pushed free verse into the margins.The change in the poetry written about Baghdad since the 1960s demonstrates that modernity has taken hold and Arabic modernist poets are, to a certain extent, mainstream poets.The poets born of this decade, that is, those whose creativity became active in the sixties, are called the "generation of the sixties." 146Instead of tribal membership, writes al-Janābī, "poets now felt that they belonged to a world-wide avant-garde.Baghdad figured as a metropolis, a state of mind, an explosive consonant." They no longer wrote "poetry about Baghdad; they wrote poetry of Baghdad.In the first instance, poets tinkled their bells in order that nostalgia be remembered, while in the second instance, poets nibbled the sun's black teat in order to set the limpid substance of the city ablaze and wave to the magnet of time!" 147 During the last three decades, Baghdad has suffered severe infrastructural damage, particularly following the First Gulf War, the Second Gulf War, the American-led occupation in 2003, and the sectarian violence and terrorist attacks.Nevertheless, the present population of Baghdad is now over seven million making it the second largest city in the Arab world after Cairo.Almost all poems written about Baghdad during the last decades are melancholic and reflect the political and moral collapse in the reality of existence in the city, though the ethos of the city as a metaphor for Arabism and Islam still clings, and poets combine the reality of immediate history with the city's ethos.There are also dialogs between modern and medieval poets.ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayyātī (1926-1999) referred to al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Aḥnaf's life and poetry: ‫د‬ ‫بغ&‬ ‫حانات‬ ‫ظ‪H‬مت‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ج&وى‬ ‫فلا‬ ‫"موت‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫لح‬ ‫من‬ ‫باس‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫فع‬ 145 Snir 2013, p. 310.146 See al-ʿAzzāwī 1997.147 Snir 2013, pp.310-311.dad, the place where al-Ḥallāj was executed in 922, symbolizes the glories of ancient Arab and Muslim civilization.Moreover, the star is rising from, and not over, Baghdad, i.e. there is an allusion to a possible universal message.The use of the active participle stresses the present relevance of the poem: the star is rising now, which is to say, the beginning of the 1960s.The very choice of the figure of al-Ḥallāj as the symbol of death and rebirth indicates the intention of the poet to stress the Arab and Islamic context of the poem as well as that of the entire collection in which it appears.Supposedly, according to its title, a lamentation for a personage who died more than a thousand years ago, "Elegy for al-Ḥallāj" is ironically transformed in the process of reading the poem into a vision of the Arab nation's rebirth.Since the star is rising now, from Baghdad, the death of al-Ḥallāj is the bridge which Arab-Islamic civilization crosses to reach a more perfect existence.
Soon hopes and expectations for Baghdad as a symbol of Arab rebirth had completely collapsed.Perhaps the most famous text with this message was written in 1969 but published only in May 2003 -the title being, "Please, look how the dictator's sword is sharpened, how necks are prepared to be cut." 153 It was published again in 2008 with the new title: "Poetry Presses Her Lips to Baghdad's Breast." 154 Adūnīs had written these verses after visiting Baghdad in 1969, his only visit to the city.He went as a member of the Lebanese Association of Writers' delegation, and stayed in Baghdad for several days, where he wrote these verses describing Baghdad's cultural and political atmosphere of fear and death.At the beginning of the text this atmosphere is presented plainly: ‫جاره.‬‫لقتل‬ v‫ط‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫"خ‬ ‫ه%ا‬ ‫جم‬ ‫ْه‬ ‫ن‬ ‫َع‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫ك‬ ‫سا.‬ ‫ًر‬ ‫هم‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ْه‬ & ‫ّش‬ ‫تح‬ ‫لم9999وت؟‬ ‫مع‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ُد‬ ‫تح&‬ ‫ن%ي‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫أ‬ ‫لو‬ ‫كما‬ ‫ع%ي‬ ‫ْه‬ ‫ت‬ ‫سا؟‬ ‫ًر‬ ‫هم‬ Whisper, please!Every star here plans to kill his neighbor Whisper?You mean as if I'm talking with death?Adūnīs walks in the streets of Baghdad of the Arabian Nights but sees men as mere "shapes without faces.Shapes like holes in the page of space" -men walking in the streets "as if digging them.It seems to me their steps have the forms of graves." These lines and others may call to mind sections from Istanbul by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (b.1952) where he describes the empty city as mirroring the empty souls, the "living dead, " the corpse "that still breathes, " and the feeling that expresses "the sadness that a century of defeat and poverty would bring to the people of Istanbul." 155 Like Pamuk, Adūnīs describes the "sewage systems, in open air, facing stores.Bad smells plunder the empty space… embracing even the birds that revolt against him." But the resemblance is only superficial because Pamuk's sadness is in essence melancholic and the romantic sadness of a lover, "The Melancholy of Autumn, " 156 while Adūnīs' feeling is the sadness of a terrorized people.
Adūnīs describes the fear among people when informants could be anyone -a neighbor, a friend, a relative or family member or just a passerby.It is the atmosphere of an "upside-down society.The poet does not see any difference between the Baghdad of 1258, the year Hulagu destroyed Baghdad, and Baghdad of 1969, the year of his own visit: ‫تتار،‬ ‫ّش‬ ‫َع‬ ‫ل‬ ‫بها‬ ‫ك‬ ‫َع‬ ‫ت‬ ‫َع‬ ‫ف‬ ‫َع‬ ‫ولى‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ل‬ -‫ب%اؤها.‬‫أ‬ ‫بها‬ ‫"فتك‬ ‫ة‬ ‫لثان‬ ‫و‬ The first, the Mongols destroyed, And the second, her children do the same.

Conclusion
A study of poems and epigrams included in the Palatine Anthology about Greek cities, reaches the conclusion that the vast majority of them "are laments for a fallen city, destroyed by war, by nature, or the ravages of times.Others celebrate the mythology of a site." 162 Retrospectively, readers of the present article might well arrive at similar conclusions in regard to Baghdad!The utopian city of Hārūn al-Rashīd, the realm of the One Thousand and One Nights was, in the end, a fallen city destroyed by wars and Time's calamities.As in the case of Greek cities, immediately after its founding, many poems celebrated the mythical city and its ethos as an Arab and Islamic city.Even before the ravages of the second half of the twentieth century, events had made reality more prominent than the romance, and people "brought reports eloquent of disillusionment," as Reuben Levy testified to in his A Baghdad Chronicle (1929). 163hus, as seen above, the history of Baghdad may be divided roughly into three periods: from its founding to its destruction by the Mongols (762-1258) -the city as the prestigious capital of the Islamic empire; from then to establishment of the modern Iraq (1258-1921) -and continuous decline and decay; and, finally the present period with its glimpses of flowering and thriving (such as those seen during the 1920s-1930s and 1960s), which have been buried under the ruins of decades of dictatorship and internal and external devastation.In the beginning of his book, Baghdad: The City of Peace, Richard Coke writes that the story of Baghdad is largely the story of continuous war and "where there is not war, there is pestilence, famine and civil disturbance.Such is the paradox which cynical history has written across the high aims implied in the name bestowed upon the city by her founder." 164More than eighty-five years later, one cannot maintain that Coke was wrong in his historical judgment of Baghdad.In other words, the glorious Baghdad is only an image and memory of the remote past; Baghdad of the present evokes only sadness, distress, and nostalgia for bygone days.
The writer and journalist Ḥusayn al-Mūzānī (Hussain al-Mozany) (1954-2016), who lived in Berlin, wrote about the contrast between the Baghdad he left and the one he found after thirty years of absence, which "has become a non place, represented by concrete walls." Al-Rashīd street, "that some used to call Iraq's aorta, has committed suicide, and now all that is left is its long corpse stretched out along the scattered, blackened shops that mourn a street which bid its people farewell and then killed itself." 165The poem "In Baghdad, Where My Past Generation Would Be" by ʽAbd al-Qādir al-Janābī (b.1944)  165 Al-Mozany 2010, pp.6-19; and Duclos 2012, pp.399-400.
Oh crow of separation, 87 why have you landedIn Baghdad to settle and never leave, are you so salubrious?Tears fell from the crow's eyes, while replying:We fulfill our desires and then leave.Baghdad, you know, is a house of calamity, May God save us from this very prison.
88On the other hand, it is noteworthy that, contrary to traditional thought where mystical phenomena thrive in isolated places like deserts, mountains and the countryside, Baghdad was one of the greatest centers of Muslim mysticism, i.e.Sufism.Scholars even refer to a Baghdadi Ṣūfī tendency, which places heavy stress on zuhd (asceticism) as opposed to the Khurasanian ecstatic tendency.Al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (858-922), whose mysticism was Khurasanian, spent his last period in Baghdad, where he was executed for having declared I am the Truth" -"Truth" being a synonym for God in mystical parlance.His divine love poems were inspired by Baghdadi scenes: