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Results for Baghdad:

Baghdad: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The present-day capital of Iraq, a site 330 miles northwest of the Persian Gulf at the intersection of historic trade routes (Khorasn Road, part of the Silk Route) which was the foremost city of ancient Mesopotamia. Archaeological evidence shows that the site of Baghdad was occupied by various peoples long before the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637 AD, and several ancient empires had capitals there. The true founding of the city dates from 762 when the Abbasids moved the Islamic capital there. It was the Islamic capital from the 8th-13th centuries. Abbassid Baghdad is buried beneath the modern city. There was a palace, a congregational mosque, ministries and barracks, surrounded by walls and a moat. In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, Baghdad was large and at its height economically; it was considered the richest city in the world. The caliph abandoned Baghdad in favor of Samarra from 836-892. The city was burnt by the Mongols in 1258, rebuilt and sacked by Timur in 1400. The glory of Baghdad is written about in The Thousand and One Nights"."
Abbasids: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The second of two Arab dynasties of the Muslim Empire of the Caliphate (caliphs = rulers) and descended from al-Abbas, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. It overthrew the Umayyad caliphate in AD 750 and was based in Baghdad until 1258 when it was sacked by the Mongols. The end of the Umayyad dynasty meant a shift in power from Syria to Iraq. The Abbasids' settlement in Baghdad marked the beginning of the golden age of Arabic literature. The Abbasids, of great intellectual curiosity, adapted elements of earlier high cultures and incorporated them into their own.
Aqrab, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site on the Diyala River east of Baghdad, Iraq. There was a flourishing city in the 3rd millennium BC and excavations revealed a temple of the Early Dynastic period. The temple was dedicated to Shara, patron god of the city of Umma.
Aqrab, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site on the Diyala River east of Baghdad, Iraq. There was a flourishing city in the 3rd millennium BC and excavations revealed a temple of the Early Dynastic period. The temple was dedicated to Shara, patron god of the city of Umma.
Babylon: SYNONYM: Bab-ilu (Babylonian), Bab-ilim (Old Babylonian), Bavel or Babel (Hebrew), Atlal Babil (Arabic)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most famous cities of antiquity, the capital of southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia) from the early 2nd millennium to the early 1st millennium BC and capital of the Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) Empire in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. It was located about 80 km south of Baghdad, Iraq on the Euphrates River. Babylon was occupied from the 3rd millennium BC, but it first reached prominence under King Hammurabi (reigned 1792-1750 BC), who made it the capital of his empire. (Hammurabi is best known for his code of laws.) Babylon was destroyed by the Hittites c 1595 BC and ruled by the Kassites until c 1157 BC. The city had frequent wars with Elam and Assyria during several short-lived dynasties until the 11th and last dynasty (626-539 BC), when the city was at its highest development and largest size. This last dynasty -- that of Nebuchadnezzar -- was instrumental in destroying Assyria and it conquered lands from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean before being overthrown by Cyrus in 539 BC. It continued in existence through the Achaemenid period, though with much reduced importance, until its abandonment in 641 AD after the Muslim conquest. The city itself covered around 200 hectares and had a population of about 100,000. Excavations beginning at the turn of the 20th century revealed the city's plan and scanty remains of the ziggurat, the original Tower of Babel. The high water table, which has risen in the last few millennia, allowed those excavators (R. Koldewey from 1899-1917) access to only buildings of the Neo-Babylonian period. The ruins, including temples (some for Marduk, the city's patron deity), fortifications, palaces, and the substructure of the Hanging Gardens, have not held up well over time, especially due to brick-robbing. The finest surviving monument is the Ishtar Gate and Procession Street. Important buildings excavated include Nebuchadnessar's palace, close to the Ishtar Gate, a huge building with many rooms arranged around five different courtyards. Another huge palace of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (605-562 BC) -- the 'Summer Palace' -- was constructed to the northwest of the Inner City and was enclosed by a triangular outer wall.
Babylonia: CATEGORY: site; culture; language
DEFINITION: An ancient region occupying southern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (southern Iraq from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf), whose capital was Babylon for many centuries. The term Babylonia also refers to the culture that developed in the area from its original settlement c 4000 BC and their language of cuneiform script. Before Babylon's rise to political prominence (c 1850 BC), the area was divided into Sumer (in the southeast; the world's earliest civilization) and Akkad (in the northwest) during the third millennium BC. The region one of the richest agricultural areas of the ancient world.
Córdoba: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Spain that was probably Carthaginian in origin and was occupied by the Romans in 152 BC. It declined under the rule of the Visigoths from the 6th to the early 8th century AD. In 711 Córdoba was captured and largely destroyed by the Muslims. Its recovered under 'Abd ar-Rahman I, a member of the Umayyad family, who made Córdoba his capital in 756. 'Abd ar-Rahman I founded the Great Mosque of Córdoba, which was later enlarged and completed about 976. The city quickly rose to become one of the finest in Europe, rivaled only by Baghdad and Constantinople. In the 10th century, one of the rulers of Cordoba built a pleasure-city outside its walls known as Medina al Zahara; this is now an archaeological site.
Ctesiphon: SYNONYM: Tusbun, Taysafun
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient city founded by the Parthians, located on the Tigris River southeast of modern Baghdad, Iraq. It served as the winter capital of the Parthian empire and later of the Sasanian empire. The site is famous for the remains of a gigantic vaulted hall, the Taq Kisra, which is traditionally regarded as the palace of the Sassanian king Khosrow I (reigned 531-579 AD) and Shapur I (reigned 241-272 AD). The hall has one of the largest single-span mud-brick arches in the world.
Diyala: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: One of the main tributaries of Tigris River, east of Baghdad, Iraq, where four sites were excavated: Tell Asmar (Eshnunna), Khafajah (Khafaje), Ischali, and Tell Aqrab of the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. The work allowed the establishment of a pottery sequence for this part of Mesopotamia, from the late 4th to the early 2nd millennium BC and the investigation of a number of important buildings of the periods.
Eshnunna: SYNONYM: Tell Asmar
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city under the mound of Tell Asmar, northeast of Baghdad, Iraq. It was a city-state in the Early Dynastic period (early 3rd millennium BC) and there are shrines, sculpture, palaces, and private houses. It became politically important in the 19th and 18th centuries BC, when it was involved in a struggle for power with Assur, Mari, Elam, and Babylon. It is rarely mentioned in history after its conquest by Hammurabi of Babylon, c 1761 BC.
Harmal, Tell: SYNONYM: Shaduppum; Tall Abu Harmal
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An administrative center, Shaduppum, of the kingdom of Eshnunna of the Old Babylonian period, on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. It was a walled settlement (Shaduppum) from the early 2nd millennium BC with several temples, residential buildings, and a collection of literary, scholarly, and administrative texts on tablets. The Laws of Eshnunna" are inscribed on two broken tablets which are not duplicates but separate copies of an older source. The laws are believed to be about two generations older than the Code of Hammurabi; the differences between the two codes help illuminate the development of ancient law."
Jemdet Nasr: SYNONYM: Jamdat Nasr
CATEGORY: site; artifact; chronology
DEFINITION: A small site between Baghdad and Babylon, near Kish, Iraq, which has given its name to a period of Mesopotamian chronology and its black-and-red painted pottery ware. The period of 3100-2900 BC was characterized by writing in pictographs, pottery with painted designs or plum red burnished slip, and plain pottery with beveled rims. Cylinder seals are squat and plain and drill used in designs. The period is characterized by increasing populations, the development of more extensive irrigation systems, towns dominated by temples, increased use of writing and cylinder seals, more trade and craft specialization. The period -- equivalent to Uruk III of the Eanna Sounding sequence -- was followed immediately by the Early Dynastic period of Sumer. A building of Jemdet Nasr date may be the oldest palace discovered in southern Mesopotamia.
Kufa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Before the founding of Baghdad, one of the largest and most important towns in Iraq. It was founded as a garrison by the caliph Omar I in 638. In 749, it served briefly as the capital of the Abbasids, before they founded Baghdad. Kufa became a large commercial and intellectual center, but a series of incursions by the Qarmathians caused extensive damage and by the 14th century it was almost deserted. The mosque, built in 670, was a stone structure with columns 15 meters high supporting the roof without the use of arches.
Mallowan, Sir Max Edgar Lucien (1904-1978): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British archaeologist who worked in the Middle East, excavating at Arpachiyah, Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak, and Nimrud (Kalhu). He also served as director of the British School of Archaeology in Baghdad and ran the British Institute of Persian Studies. He was married to Agatha Christie.
Raqqa: SYNONYM: Ar-Raqqah, Rakka; Ar-Rashid
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in northern Syria on the Euphrates River, founded by the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mansur and reputedly modeled on those of Baghdad. Raqqa is on the site of an ancient Greek city, Nicephorium, and a later Roman fortress and market town, Callinicus. It flourished again in early Arab times when the 'Abbasid caliph Harun ar-Rashid built several palatial residences there and made it his headquarters against the Byzantines. The surviving part of the Baghdad gate shows that it had a four-centered arch surmounted by a band of three-lobed niches resting on engaged colonnettes. The congregational mosque, also attributed to al-Mansur, was a rectangular building with a sanctuary of three arcades. Raqqa ware is 12th- and 13th- century earthenware with painted ornament under thick alkaline glaze.
Sippar: SYNONYM: modern Abu Habbah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient city of Babylonia, southwest of Baghdad, Iraq, an ancient Sumerian city lying on a canal linking the Tigris and the Euphrates. It was an important religious and trading center in southern Mesopotamia. Sippar was subject to the 1st dynasty of Babylon, but little is known about the city before 1174 BC, when it was sacked by the Elamite king Kutir-Nahhunte. It recovered and was later captured by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I. Under the 8th dynasty of Babylon (c 880), Sippar's great Temple of Shamash was rebuilt. Tens of thousands of tablets from Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian periods have been found.
Uqair, Tell: SYNONYM: Uqair
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site south of Baghdad, Iraq, with a temple of the Uruk phase with unexpectedly fine wall paintings depicting mythical scenes. The fine polychrome wall paintings had human and animal figures. A small subsidiary chapel, later in date than the temple, contained a collection of pottery and four clay tablets inscribed with pictographic symbols of the kind used in the Jemdet Nasr period (4th millennium BC). The site was occupied from the 'Ubaid period.
Wasit: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Military and commercial city of medieval Iraq, especially important during the Umayyad caliphate (661-750 AD). It was established as a military encampment in 702 on the Tigris River, between Basra and Kufah. A palace and the chief mosque were built and irrigation and cultivation were encouraged. Because of its location on the Tigris, Wasit became a shipbuilding and commercial center. Even after the caliphal capital was moved from Damascus to Baghdad, the city remained important. The only standing building is a shrine with a monumental portal flanked by minarets, datable to the 13th century. Excavations revealed a congregational mosque with four periods of construction, the earliest with a large courtyard surrounded on three sides by a single arcade and a sanctuary 19 bays wide and 5 bays deep. Adjoining the mosque was the Dar al Imara, or governor's palace.

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