Database: Founding of Baghdad

When the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in 750, they quickly decided to relocate their capital away from the Umayyad center of power in Damascus. In 762, Caliph al-Mansur (r. 754-775) founded a new city which served as his family's residence for the next half-millennium.

After a personal reconnaissance of central Iraq, he chose a fertile plain bounded by the Tigris river next to a village called Baghdad (God-given in Persian). In selecting this location, al-Mansur participated in a long tradition of imperial cities in the region: both the Greek Seleucids and the Persian Sasanians had founded their capitals of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, respectively, in the area. Legend has it, a few kilometers to the north of these ruins, the caliph used his sword to draw three concentric circles in the sand, upon which the city walls were built. Inside the city, he installed his palace, large gardens, government offices and military barracks. In keeping with the Roman tradition of city layout, the concentric circles were divided into four quadrants by a Cardo Maximus (North-South Road) and a Decumanus Maximus (East-West road), which, upon leaving the city, led to various parts of the empire.

From the start, the city had many names. Al-Mansur called it Madinat al-Mansur ("the city of Mansur"), his administrators the “Round City”, and most of its habitants Madinat al-Salam, ("the city of Peace”, in reference to the Quranic Paradise). In time, all these names disappeared and only Baghdad remained.

Soon, merchants and craftspeople flocked to this new center of power, resulting in the vast expansion of the city outside of the original walls. By the ninth century, multiple districts on both banks of the river hosted hundreds of thousands of Baghdadis. Al-Mansur's creation had become one of the largest and most famous cities in the world.