The revolution and the Round City of Baghdad

Part oneBlack banners from the east

In 747, in the oasis city of Merv, crowds gathered under black banners. Merv was the main city of Khurasan, a frontier province that covered parts of today's Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. It lay on the Silk Road, and it was a very long way from the Umayyad capital at Damascus.

Abu Muslim raised the banners, and his message was carefully worded. He called for a ruler chosen from the family of the Prophet ﷺ, and he did not say which member of the family that would be. Many different people could hope that the answer was theirs.

It found a ready audience. Many Muslims in the east, especially converts from Persian and Central Asian families, felt that Umayyad rule favoured Arab families and gave them less than their share. Settlers and soldiers in Khurasan had quarrels of their own. A movement that promised fairness in the name of the Prophet's ﷺ household drew them together.

Behind the call stood the Abbasids, descendants of al-Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him), the uncle of the Prophet ﷺ. The army of Khurasan marched west, and in 749 the first Abbasid caliph, Abu al-Abbas, was proclaimed in Kufa, in Iraq. He took the title as-Saffah.

Marwan II, the Umayyad caliph, led his own army out to meet them. The two sides fought beside the Greater Zab river, in northern Iraq, in January 750, and the Umayyads were beaten. Marwan fled towards Egypt and was killed there, and Damascus passed to the Abbasids.

What followed was hard. Many members of the Umayyad family were hunted down and killed. One young prince, Abd al-Rahman, escaped across North Africa to Iberia and founded a new Umayyad state there, a story told in the era on Al-Andalus.

A year after the Zab, in 751, an Abbasid army met a Chinese army beside the Talas river in Central Asia and won. Ideas and crafts, including papermaking, were already moving along those roads. Within a few decades they would help change how Baghdad worked.

Part twoAl-Mansur and the City of Peace

As-Saffah died in 754, only a few years into his reign, and his brother Abu Jafar succeeded him as al-Mansur, a title meaning the Victorious. Many historians count him as the true founder of the dynasty, because he was the one who made it last.

His early years were full of danger. Abu Muslim, the organiser of the revolution, was so powerful and so popular that the caliph judged him a threat, and had him killed in 755. Some Muslims had hoped that a descendant of Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) and Fatimah (may Allah be pleased with her) would be the one to rule, and they were disappointed. In 762 a member of that line, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, rose in revolt in Madinah. The revolt was put down.

That same year, al-Mansur began to build. The old garrison cities of Iraq, Kufa and Basra, were restless and divided. Damascus belonged to the dynasty he had overthrown. He wanted a new capital that was his alone, and he chose a spot on the west bank of the Tigris, near a small village called Baghdad and not far from the ruins of Ctesiphon, the old Persian capital.

On a map the choice made sense. The Tigris and the canals that linked it to the Euphrates brought food and goods by water. Roads ran north-east to Khurasan, the heartland of the revolution, and west to Syria. The land around was some of the most fertile farmland in the world.

Work began in July 762 and took about four years. Craftsmen and labourers came from across Iraq, Syria and Iran. The plan was a perfect circle, with two rings of walls and a moat. Four gates, named for Khurasan, Basra, Kufa and Syria, faced the four main directions, and the roads from them led to the centre.

At the middle stood the caliph's palace, crowned with a green dome, and beside it the great mosque. The people called it Madinat as-Salam, the City of Peace. The older village name, Baghdad, stayed on everyone's lips and soon belonged to the whole city.

Nothing of the Round City can be seen today. Even in its first years, the city spread beyond the walls. Markets grew up outside them, especially in the district of Karkh to the south, and on the east bank a second quarter, Rusafa, was founded for the heir, al-Mahdi.

Al-Mansur lived simply by the standards of a caliph, and he watched the city's costs closely. He kept up a network of messengers that brought him news from every province. In 775 he set out for Hajj and died on the road to Makkah. He left the treasury full and the succession settled, which would rarely be so for later caliphs.

When he died, Baghdad was less than fifteen years old. It was already on the way to becoming one of the largest cities in the world.

Al-Mansur drew a circle beside the Tigris, and within a generation the world was coming to it.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahAl-Mansur, the Founder of Baghdad (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Merv
• Kufa
• the Greater Zab river
• Damascus
• Baghdad

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter