The History of Baghdad: Epicenter of the Medieval World

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[00:00:09]This is Baghdad, home to 7 million people.  This sprawling urban jungle is the second   largest city in the Arab world after Cairo.  But between the skyscrapers and honking cars   you can see remains of this city's magnificent  mediaeval past. This once Round City’s walls   crumbled long ago. But a thousand years ago  brilliant scientists, architects, writers,   and merchants of different races and religions  made massive contributions to the knowledge of   humanity. Back when Paris and London were home to  20,000 people over 1 Million Baghdadi's lived here   among canals, libraries, and palm trees. So what  is the history of Baghdad, what’s a House of   Wisdom, and what does it all have to do with  Mediaeval Robots trying to get people drunk.

[00:01:04]Well, let’s find out.

[00:01:15]It’s 632CE and the Prophet Muhammad has just  died. He left behind a religion called Islam   that was adopted by his people the Arabs. “Ey, do  you know what I was thinking? We should conquer   EVERYTHING! “ ”Oh our God I was thinking  the same thing ”. And well…they did. THIS IS   11,100,000 km2 OF LAND SPANNING  3 CONTINENTS!!!. It’s been like   90 years since Muhammad died, how  did they do this ancient Red Bull??

[00:01:50]Is it just me or was that easier than you though it was going to be?

[00:01:55]Yeah... This expansion happened under the  Rashidun and then the Umayyad Caliphates.   Their rulers were called Caliphs or Successors and  the Umayyad Caliphate was based here in Damascus   Syria. But the Umayyads had some ehhhhh  internal issues. Their Caliphate excluded   non-Arabs from positions of power even if  they were Muslim. Millions of Christians,   Jews, and non-Arab Muslims like Iranians,  Egyptians, and Berbers living in the massive   Empire's recently conquered lands  were not huge fans of this policy.

[00:02:30]Spotting this weakness Abu al-Abbas with huge  support from Iranians, destroyed the Umayyad   armies, wiped out the dynasty and founded  the Abbasid Caliphate in its place in 750 CE.

[00:02:43]The new Abbasid Caliphate needed a  capital away from Arabia and Syria   and closer to where their power base was: Iran.

[00:02:52]The second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur located  a strategic spot in Mesopotamia that already   had a small market town called “suq  Bagh​dad”. This town was ancient,   it was even mentioned in documents from  king Hammurabi's time around 1750 BCE.   Geographically it was perfect. Right in the middle  of trade routes between the Persian Gulf, Armenia,   Egypt, Syria, China and the Byzantine Empire, plus  it was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

[00:03:25]Founded in 762 CE the city went by  a few names like Madinat al-Salam,   city of peace. But the old market  town's name, Baghdad, stuck.

[00:03:37]Al-Mansur had the city built in a  perfect circle. Around 2.7 km in diameter   protected by three concentric  brick walls and a fancy moat.

[00:03:50]The city had four massive gates from  which came four roads. Each gate was   named for the region it faced: Damascus,  Basra, Kufa, and Khurasan. These connected   Baghdad to the world but made it clear this  city was the symbolic centre of a new world.   Behind each gate there were arcades  lined with markets acting like the   arteries of the city. Between these main  streets were residential neighbourhoods.   At the core of the city was a huge open green  space. There you could find the caliph’s Palace   of the Golden Gate topped with a giant green  dome with the central mosque by its side.

[00:04:34]The city was surrounded by a network of  canals, creating fertile land for agriculture.

[00:04:41]The city had thousands of fountains  and public baths open to all. People   would walk near the streams, spread out on the  grass and collect fruits and flowers from the   stunning gardens of the city. In its large  parks you could see horse racing and polo   or you could visit the Zoo displaying lions,  elephants, giraffes and all sorts of wild animals.   On the canals dotted with palm trees you could  see thousands of gondolas dancing like sunbeams   on the water carrying the inhabitants of the  city from one part of Baghdad to another.

[00:05:15]According to legend the city had no  mosquitoes, which was very important because 1. Mosquitoes are pure evil!

[00:05:21]And 2. Malaria is not fun.

[00:05:26]While a Round City looks cool it only lasted  for about 70 years. His palace in the centre   was supposed to protect the caliph because  there were hundreds of thousands of peasants   between the caliph and whoever wanted to kill  him. It was like a Great Wall of Peasants!   Which is a great idea until you realise that  also meant once enemy troops took over the city,   there was no way for him to escape. The  Great Wall of peasants is sneaky that way.

[00:05:56]The increasingly busy and chaotic markets inside  the walls seemed like a security risk so the   caliph al-Mansur moved them outside the city walls  where suburbs were already growing rapidly. The   Round City was swallowed by the thriving suburbs  and soon vanished, now the whole area was Baghdad.

[00:06:17]The bricks of the round city were used  to build a growing Baghdad. It became a   cosmopolitan trade hub linking the East and West.  They monopolised trade across the Silk Road which   made them incredibly rich. Their ships traded  as far as the Baltic to Madagascar to China.   Furs from Russia, African gold, Indonesian spices,  Silks from China you could find it all in Baghdad.   They traded so widely that this bronze cross  with an Arabic inscription saying “bismillah”   (“in the name of God”) was discovered in a bog in  Ireland! Which is a fair bit away from Baghdad.

[00:06:56]Between the years 900 and 1000 CE the  city reached 1 million inhabitants.   Making it the world's largest  city, truly the metropolis   of its time. Baghdad peaked under the rule  of its most famous Caliph, Harun al-Rashid.

[00:07:16]Harun was the son of the third  caliph, al-Mahdi, by one of his wives,   al-Khayzuran (Al-Haz-U-Ran). Who  is a fascinating woman by the way.

[00:07:24]Al-Khayzuran was a slave given to al-Mahdi by his  father. At the time many concubines of nobles were   well-educated. Some learned writing, poetry,  music, dance, history, philosophy, and science.

[00:07:39]Al-Mahdi fell madly in love with  her. She convinced him not only to   free her from slavery but also to make her  his official wife. She used this to build   considerable power. She sat with her husband  at court which was unusual and met with his   ministers behind the scenes. She discussed state  business with generals and foreign diplomats. and   managed the empire's administration. She made  sure her sons Musa al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid   were placed ahead of the Caliph's other older  sons as heirs to the empire. She used her wealth   to fund canal building in Baghdad and it is  said a quarter of the city was named after her.   She built wells and shade giving trees  along pilgrammage routes to Mecca and on   one of her pilgrimages, she bought the  house in which the prophet Muhammad was   born and turned it into a mosque. You can  go see it today but it's a library now.

[00:08:35]Al-Mahdi died suddenly in 785CE  which threw the Empire into chaos.   But Khayzuran took control of the situation  and secured a smooth transition of power to   her older son Musa al-Hadi. She stopped a  military rebellion, and had all the military   officers and court officials swear allegiance  to her son who wasn't even in Baghdad yet.

[00:09:00]And HOW DOES AL-HADI REPAY HIS  MOTHER!!! He gets jealous of her power,   tries to push her out of political life,  publicly humiliates her several times,   and some sources say he tried to have his  mother poisoned. After a year of ruling,   at 24 years old Al-Hadi died...of  poisoning. So be nice to your mother!

[00:09:26]The new Caliph Harun Al Rashid adored his mother.   Khayzuran died in November 789 and Harun  helped carry her body barefoot through the   mud on a rainy day as a sign of respect for  the woman behind the reigns of 3 caliphs.

[00:09:44]Harun fought off invasions and rebellions to  maintain his empire that spanned from India to   North Africa. He forced the Byzantines  to pay him tribute and during his rule   wealth poured into Baghdad.

[00:09:59]The Abbasid military made many improvements  on the battlefield. From little things like   adopting the stirrups in cavalry which attached  the rider to the horse. To the use of naphtha,   a refined version of petroleum used in fire based  warfare. They developed fire grenades called   "naphtha shells" to throw at the enemy. A section  of the Abbasid army were “naphtha-firemen':   archers specialised in flaming arrows who  very wisely wore fireproof suits that let them   rush into the cities and castles they set on  fire. They also had a camel based ambulance core.   This line is just in here for me. They’re  camels, they’re the llamas of they’re desert.

[00:10:43]The Abbasids oversaw a global network of  merchants, spies, and diplomats stretching from   France to China. Harun once sent gifts to the Holy  Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. Gifts including silks,   spices, books, and Abul Abbas...who was an  elephant. Getting the elephant to France   was probably difficult but Charlemagne  was absolutely fascinated by this gift.   Legend says he took Abul Abbas to battlefields  and on travels. When Charlemagne’s died his   remains were wrapped in a silk with an  elephant print! Isn't that just adorable?

[00:11:22]Harun and Charlemagne sent each other a lot  of gifts and they bonded over their shared   hatred of the Byzantine Empire. Harun  actually wrote a fairly sassy letter   to the Byzantine Emperor that I love, "The  least of the territories ruled by the least   of my subjects provides a revenue  larger than your whole dominion".

[00:11:44]Harun was a great patron of the arts.  Under his rule Baghdad was full of artists,   scholars, and poets from 3 continents. This  is how Harun ended up in one of the greatest   pieces of literature of all time: Alf Laylah  wa-Laylah or 1001 Nights or Arabian Nights.

[00:12:04]The 1001 Nights is a collection of stories. The  story of it's origins says that a Iranian King   called Shahryar marries a woman and she cheats on  him. So he murders her. He marries many more times   but he has trust issues now so he kills  every single one of his new brides.   Therapy didn't exist yet. He then marries  Scheherazade. On the first night after the   marriage she tells him a story that ends in a  cliffhanger that she will only finish the next   day. She does this for a thousand nights and  a night. The stories make Shahryar wiser,   less murdery, and make him  fall in love with Scheherazade.   And they lived happily ever after. She was  fine with all the previous wife-murder I guess.

[00:13:00]Because Scheherazade told so many tales,  it was easy for anyone to add or subtract   stories to the collection. Aladdin,  Sindbad the sailor and Ali Baba and   the 40 Thieves are all tales from this  book that were added at a later point.   Some of the major protagonists in the stories  are Harun Al-Rashid and his vizier Jafar,   yeap the Jafar that inspired the Disney  villain. The real Jafar actually came from   a powerful family called the Barmakids that  were originally Buddhists from Afghanistan.

[00:13:31]Jafar convinced Harun to open the first  papermaking houses in Baghdad. As the Arabs had   just learned how to make paper from the Chinese.  Paper was more efficient as it was cheaper and   easier to make than parchment made from animal  skin. And don’t even get me started on papyrus!!

[00:13:48]Paper combined with Baghdad's many different  people, cultures, and languages created an   intellectual revolution. Arabic was the language  of the empire, but scholars in Baghdad became   experts in translation. In Baghdad people  read the words of Aristotle and the Buddha   to the Hindu Vedas and Zoroaster. Jews,  Manichaeans, Christians, Zoroastrians,   Buddhists, and Hindus met and exchanged ideas.  One result of this exchange was “Arabic numerals”,   the ones we use today, including the  revolutionary number 0. These originated in India,   were improved on by scholars in Baghdad, and  then spread through the Middle-East to Europe.

[00:14:29]Baghdad was a crossroad of knowledge filled  schools & libraries. The most important of   which was The House of Wisdom. We don't know  much about it but this combined library,   academy, and research institute welcomed scholars  from around the world to translate, preserve,   and debate their works. Under Harun’s son, the  Caliph Al-Ma’mun the House of Wisdom became   world's largest library and the most important  storage site of knowledge since the Library   of Alexandria. With books in Arabic, Greek,  Latin, Persian, Syriac, Chinese, and Sanskrit.

[00:15:04]Many ancient Greek texts only survived due  to Arabic translations of them which made   their way into Europe during the Renaissance.  Greek philosophy influenced the Middle-East   so heavily that the Arabic word for Philosophy  is falsafa. Which is just Philosophy but said   differently. Here you can see an Arabic painting  of Socrates or Soqrat teaching his students.

[00:15:26]Caliph Al Mamun paid scholars to travel abroad and  bring back books. Once those books got to Baghdad,   they were copied, translated, and sent to other  scholars across the empire. After wars Mamun   demanded books when negotiating peace treaties.  He became so obsessed with collecting genius he   apparently offered the Byzantine Emperor two  thousand pounds of gold for a Mathematician   called Leo living in Constantinople. They refused  the offer. If Leo had moved to Baghdad he would   have had quite the life. One scholar,  the Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq   lived in a mansion and received a massage and  manicure daily. One scholar said about Baghdad:   “nowhere in the world have I seen better  financial arrangements to assist a scholar”.

[00:16:15]This thirst for knowledge sparked the Islamic  Golden Age. Just a quick note about this name,   it's called the Islamic Golden Age but many  Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews contributed.   The Golden Age included people from Central  Asia to Iberia. It was so successful because the   Caliphs built a multicultural empire obsessed  with learning. Some scholars have suggested   using the name Arabic Golden Age because the main  language was Arabic but it's still being debated.

[00:16:43]The House of Wisdom brought together different  scientific traditions from around the world.   And they saw the differences between Iranian,  Indian and Greek texts, which meant they couldn't   all be right. So these scholars didn't just  copy and translate books, they tested them,   commented on them, and developed new ideas. Like  algebra! Invented by Al-Khwarizmi. He combined   Greek and Indian mathematical ideas and made  something new: mathematics without numbers, like   when you calculate with x and y. This completely  revolutionised science and caused me to fail maths   class. It is only thanks to Khwarizmi that we can  use algorithms for example. The word algorithm is   just a mangled latinized version of Al-Khwarizmi's  name from al-Khwarizmi to algoritmi to algorismus.

[00:17:34]Baghdad led the world in  cartography and astronomy.   Scholars in Baghdad upgraded the astrolabe,  a device that measures the incline of an   object and can help navigate over sea and  land. An experiment funded by Caliph Mamun   included the astronomer Al-Farghani calculated the  circumference of the Earth to be about 38,000km   about 4% off the real number. Columbus used  Al-Farghani's calculations for his voyage but he   converted the Arabic miles incorrectly and thought  the Earth was much smaller than it actually was.

[00:18:14]Caliph Mamun funded the construction of the  world's first scientific observatory in Baghdad   and scholars there became experts in the stars.  That’s why there are so many stars with Arabic   names. Tthe Big Dipper's 7 stars all have Arabic  names. Over time some star names were latinized,   but most of these stars got their  names more than a thousand years ago.

[00:18:37]Alchemy, alkali, alcohol, algebra,  algorithm, are all Arabic names.

[00:18:42]They also developed distillation, a way  of separating liquids through differences   in their boiling points. This meant  they could create strong alcohol which   wasn’t totally banned in Islam yet but  actually the main application of distillation   was to produce scents. Rose water,  for example, was used as perfume,   especially beard perfume but was also added to  cosmetics, foods and drinks. They also popularised   hard bars of soap and had massive soap factories.  *Train brakes hard* As a person that has to   get on packed trains regularly I am extremely  grateful for this. *Sniff* Is that rose water?

[00:19:20]They perfected the distillation of  crude oil into kerosine for lamps.   A process without which we wouldn’t  have gasoline, asphalts, or plastics.   We have reports from the early 13th century  of Muslims paving their streets with asphalt.   Something not seen anywhere else until  asphalt was laid in Paris in 1838.

[00:19:41]In 805, the first general hospital opened in  Baghdad. Soon there were 30 more throughout   the empire. Some developments included separating  wards by disease, having in-hospital pharmacies,   keeping patient medical records, and psychiatric  wards. This was revolutionary in a time when the   mentally ill were thought to be possessed  by demons in many parts of the world.   These were the first modern hospitals where  doctors followed a code of obligations towards   their patients, regardless of their wealth,  religion, or background. All doctors had   to pass an examination to practise, these are  the first medical diplomas! They also invented   peer reviewed studies, clinical trials, and  testing medicine on animals before humans!

[00:20:26]These doctors invented hundreds of  surgical instruments and new techniques.   Cataracts, a condition that  clouds the lens of the eye,   could ruin ancient peoples lives. But we have a  description from the 10th century Islamic world,   of a procedure that involved sucking  the cataracts out through a syringe.   A procedure similar to what was used until  laser surgery took over in the 20th century.

[00:20:53]They also had these devices that boring  historians call Automata. BUT I’M NO HISTORIAN,   THEIR RULES DO NOT BIND ME, THESE ARE ROBOTS.  MEDIAEVAL ROBOTS! Some of these automated   machines are described in a book called The Book  of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.

[00:21:13]Some devices described are: an automatic water  and soap dispenser, a giant elephant clock, a boat   with a full robot band, and a programmable flute  that plays itself which seems to be humanity's   first programmable machine. They also describe  a very elaborate way of playing spin the bottle.

[00:21:33]This multi-storied robot was a whole party in  itself, it was placed in the middle of a room.   The first floor had a girl pouring wine.  The second floor provided the music with   four women playing instruments. The third floor  was the entertainment, a male dancer, not that   kind of male dancer! At the top was a horseman  carrying a lance. He would spin round and round   and every 20 minutes the horseman would stop.  The lucky person that ended up in front of the   lance would drink the litre of wine the first girl  was pouring. This sounds like a fun party to me!

[00:22:08]This Golden Age thrived for a couple centuries.  But in 1258 CE the Mongol leader Hulego,   grandson of Genghis Khan conquered the city.  Burned it down, destroyed the House of Wisdom,   massacred the population, and killed the Caliph.  Legends say the Tigris ran red with the blood of   the city's citizens and then black with the ink  of it's libraries. The fall of Baghdad to the   Mongols ended the Abbasid Caliphate but Baghdad  as a city still attracted scholars well into   the 1500 and 1600s, it never completely vanished  and so the city standing today has been occupied   since at least the times of Hammurabi! Today  little of what they built remains. One of the   few survivors is the Great Mosque of Samarra which  gives us a glimpse of what they were capable of.

[00:23:01]Baghdad and most of Iraq would go on to be  conquered by the Ottomans and then colonised   by the British Empire. The city was chosen to  be the capital of the Republic of Iraq in 1958.   Terrorism and decade-long occupation  by the United States military   have destroyed much of the city. But today  in a recovering Baghdad you can still walk   down Mutanabbi Street, a thousand year old  street dedicated to booksellers and readers   and take part in Baghdad’s ancient  obsession with sharing knowledge.

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[00:25:50]Thanks a lot for watching and Ma’a salama!.