Cities · a Light

Baghdad was built as a perfect circle and nothing remains

In 762 the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur laid out a new capital on the Tigris and called it Madinat al-Salam, the City of Peace. It was circular, a double ring of walls with four equidistant gates, the mosque and the palace at the exact centre, and the chroniclers describe tens of thousands of workers brought in to build it. Within a century it was among the largest cities on earth and the place where Greek, Persian, Syriac and Sanskrit books were translated into Arabic. Not one stone of the Round City has been located with certainty today. The plan survives only in the descriptions of the geographers who walked through its gates.

Al-Mansur · Baghdad, 762 CE