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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
informative
sad
fast-paced
Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.
Peter Ackroyd wrote the best biography of a city in his London. It is a magnificent, unsurpassable prose poem to a famous city. In some ways, Ackroyd had it easy. After all, despite Boudicca, the Great Fire, and the Blitz, London stands; it has been rebuilt, but it always stands.
Baghdad doesn’t quite stand the same way it used to.
Justin Marozzi’s book is a history of famed city that has fallen on harsh and violent times. While Marozzi’s work isn’t quite the prose poem of Ackroyd’s London Trilogy (London, The Thames, London Under), it comes very, very close when writing about booksellers or Rashid Street for instance.
This isn’t really Marozzi’s fault. It must difficult, if not impossible, to write a prose love poem that will also have to cover what Hussein did as well as the two Iraq Wars and the build up to the current conflict. While Marozzi cannot for obvious reasons deal with the current Iraq situation, he does cover underlying issues that are coming to light – the religious conflicts among others.
Marozzi traces the city from its founding to the aftermath of Gulf War II. In many ways, Baghdad does seem to constantly be the city of the title – of peace and blood. The blood comes early, not just recently (though the hardest parts of the book, the most unnerving have to do with the modern era), for some of the early rulers had a tendency to be Bluebeard before Bluebeard. It does raise the question of another source for the Bluebeard tale. The locked door even plays a part in the story.
There are some interesting facts, like the treatment of the Jewish population post-WW II, but overall what the book does, perhaps unintentionally, is though a description of a city make the current crisis in Iraq not understandable but seen as part of a boarder and large canvas, something that few, if any, American news outlets take the time to do.
This isn’t to say that the book is all heavy going. Much time is spent on the description of Baghdad as a center of learning, introducing the reader to writers and artists as well as rulers who founded them. Less time is spent on women, but Marozzi takes the time to explain why women are not as evident in the historical record, and describes in details several of the women who escape this trend for a variety of reasons. This includes not only members of the harem, but also prostitutes, one of whom was pulled though the streets by a man who blew raspberries. Western women, like Gertrude Bell, make appearances, and some of the most moving passages of the book have to do with the grave of Bell.
Marozzi might lack the poetry of that Ackroyd possesses when writing about London, but Marozzi’s passion for a city that today is only known for violence comes though quite strongly. At the very least, this book will deepen your knowledge of Baghdad and regret that visiting it is so out of reach at the moment and perhaps forever.
Peter Ackroyd wrote the best biography of a city in his London. It is a magnificent, unsurpassable prose poem to a famous city. In some ways, Ackroyd had it easy. After all, despite Boudicca, the Great Fire, and the Blitz, London stands; it has been rebuilt, but it always stands.
Baghdad doesn’t quite stand the same way it used to.
Justin Marozzi’s book is a history of famed city that has fallen on harsh and violent times. While Marozzi’s work isn’t quite the prose poem of Ackroyd’s London Trilogy (London, The Thames, London Under), it comes very, very close when writing about booksellers or Rashid Street for instance.
This isn’t really Marozzi’s fault. It must difficult, if not impossible, to write a prose love poem that will also have to cover what Hussein did as well as the two Iraq Wars and the build up to the current conflict. While Marozzi cannot for obvious reasons deal with the current Iraq situation, he does cover underlying issues that are coming to light – the religious conflicts among others.
Marozzi traces the city from its founding to the aftermath of Gulf War II. In many ways, Baghdad does seem to constantly be the city of the title – of peace and blood. The blood comes early, not just recently (though the hardest parts of the book, the most unnerving have to do with the modern era), for some of the early rulers had a tendency to be Bluebeard before Bluebeard. It does raise the question of another source for the Bluebeard tale. The locked door even plays a part in the story.
There are some interesting facts, like the treatment of the Jewish population post-WW II, but overall what the book does, perhaps unintentionally, is though a description of a city make the current crisis in Iraq not understandable but seen as part of a boarder and large canvas, something that few, if any, American news outlets take the time to do.
This isn’t to say that the book is all heavy going. Much time is spent on the description of Baghdad as a center of learning, introducing the reader to writers and artists as well as rulers who founded them. Less time is spent on women, but Marozzi takes the time to explain why women are not as evident in the historical record, and describes in details several of the women who escape this trend for a variety of reasons. This includes not only members of the harem, but also prostitutes, one of whom was pulled though the streets by a man who blew raspberries. Western women, like Gertrude Bell, make appearances, and some of the most moving passages of the book have to do with the grave of Bell.
Marozzi might lack the poetry of that Ackroyd possesses when writing about London, but Marozzi’s passion for a city that today is only known for violence comes though quite strongly. At the very least, this book will deepen your knowledge of Baghdad and regret that visiting it is so out of reach at the moment and perhaps forever.
Obviously, the history of Baghdad is important to us because the current conflicts in that region. However, in the Middle Ages it was one of the major cities of the world, a center of commerce, learning, arts and science. In this city, modern algebra and the coffee house were invented. It was a cosmopolitan cities consisting of many religions and ethnic groups. Also, Baghdad has served as the location for many stories and tales such as the Arabian/Thousand and One Nights in the Middle Ages and Agatha Christie mysteries in the twentieth century.
It is interesting to note that Baghdad is a created city. A group of Sunni muslins known as the Abbasids defeated the ruling Umayyads who were Shia. An early Abbasaid Caliph was named Mansur. He wanted to find a new capital for the Muslim empire; the previous capital had been Damascus. Mansur picks the location of Baghdad to be the empire's new capital. It was founded in the mid-700s. Baghdad in Persian means "City of Peace".
It has been said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. In this book, I thought of a different saying; those who know history won't be surprised by the present. The founder of Baghdad executed many people.
However, there is one story about Mansur, the founder of Baghdad that for me made the whole book worth reading. Mansur ,before he goes on a pilgrimage, gives to his daughter-in-law, Rita, the keys to his storage rooms and tells her only to open the storage rooms if it is confirmed that he is dead. In 775, it is confirmed that Mansur has died.
Upon receiving this confirmation, Rita and her husband, Mansur's son, go down to the storage rooms thinking they were going to find a hidden treasure. Instead they find a bunch of decomposing bodies. The ages of the corpses ranged from children to old men. The bodies were those of the descendants of the founders of the Shia lineage. In addition, a tag was placed in in the ear of each corpse naming the victim and how the victim was related to the founders of the Shia movement.
Thus early in Baghdad's history were some patterns were established that run throughout its history. Obviously, there is the pattern of violence between the Sunni's and the Shias. There is a violence that seems very methodical and systematic. Also it seems many rulers of Baghdad seem to have felt it is not enough just to kill one's enemies; they also need to do something gruesome, horrific and unsanitary with their enemies’ corpses.
It is the grandson of Mansur who is believed to model for Caliph of the Arabian Nights/Thousand and One Nights. After him the Abbasaid regime slowly declines. What destroyed Baghdad as a major city was the invasion of the Mongols in 1258 where the city was butchered by the Mongols; the rivers turned red from all the blood that the Mongols shed.
Since 1258, Baghdad has been invaded multiple times and has suffered from major plagues which have decimated the city. It has been under the rule of the Persians and different groups of Turks. The Ottoman Empire and different European countries tried to modernize Baghdad in the nineteenth century.
After the First World War, the British took over Baghdad and then a pro-British Iraqi monarch was installed. During this time Baghdad seems to have undergone a bit of a renaissance.
Then Sadaam Hussain took over. Even by Iraqi standards he was violent. Even before the US invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis were suffering from embargos placed on Iraq by the US.
Baghdad has changed significantly from its founding to the present time. Once Baghdad was a major intellectual center, now all its thinkers want to leave. For much of Baghdad's history, the Jewish population was ten to forty percent of Baghdad's population often playing a major role in the city; now there are only seven Jews in Baghdad. The Christians now are also in the process of leaving Baghdad.
The quality of the writing of the book is uneven. The second half of the book is much easier to read then the first half. The first half of the book goes a lot into the geography of Baghdad which is not interesting if you have not been to the city and jumps around in time period being discussed.
The politics of the city in this book can be confusing. I think this confusion is in part because of the subject matter and in part the author does have some difficulties in explaining it.
However, despite these drawbacks the book was a highly interesting and worthwhile book to read.
It is interesting to note that Baghdad is a created city. A group of Sunni muslins known as the Abbasids defeated the ruling Umayyads who were Shia. An early Abbasaid Caliph was named Mansur. He wanted to find a new capital for the Muslim empire; the previous capital had been Damascus. Mansur picks the location of Baghdad to be the empire's new capital. It was founded in the mid-700s. Baghdad in Persian means "City of Peace".
It has been said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. In this book, I thought of a different saying; those who know history won't be surprised by the present. The founder of Baghdad executed many people.
However, there is one story about Mansur, the founder of Baghdad that for me made the whole book worth reading. Mansur ,before he goes on a pilgrimage, gives to his daughter-in-law, Rita, the keys to his storage rooms and tells her only to open the storage rooms if it is confirmed that he is dead. In 775, it is confirmed that Mansur has died.
Upon receiving this confirmation, Rita and her husband, Mansur's son, go down to the storage rooms thinking they were going to find a hidden treasure. Instead they find a bunch of decomposing bodies. The ages of the corpses ranged from children to old men. The bodies were those of the descendants of the founders of the Shia lineage. In addition, a tag was placed in in the ear of each corpse naming the victim and how the victim was related to the founders of the Shia movement.
Thus early in Baghdad's history were some patterns were established that run throughout its history. Obviously, there is the pattern of violence between the Sunni's and the Shias. There is a violence that seems very methodical and systematic. Also it seems many rulers of Baghdad seem to have felt it is not enough just to kill one's enemies; they also need to do something gruesome, horrific and unsanitary with their enemies’ corpses.
It is the grandson of Mansur who is believed to model for Caliph of the Arabian Nights/Thousand and One Nights. After him the Abbasaid regime slowly declines. What destroyed Baghdad as a major city was the invasion of the Mongols in 1258 where the city was butchered by the Mongols; the rivers turned red from all the blood that the Mongols shed.
Since 1258, Baghdad has been invaded multiple times and has suffered from major plagues which have decimated the city. It has been under the rule of the Persians and different groups of Turks. The Ottoman Empire and different European countries tried to modernize Baghdad in the nineteenth century.
After the First World War, the British took over Baghdad and then a pro-British Iraqi monarch was installed. During this time Baghdad seems to have undergone a bit of a renaissance.
Then Sadaam Hussain took over. Even by Iraqi standards he was violent. Even before the US invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis were suffering from embargos placed on Iraq by the US.
Baghdad has changed significantly from its founding to the present time. Once Baghdad was a major intellectual center, now all its thinkers want to leave. For much of Baghdad's history, the Jewish population was ten to forty percent of Baghdad's population often playing a major role in the city; now there are only seven Jews in Baghdad. The Christians now are also in the process of leaving Baghdad.
The quality of the writing of the book is uneven. The second half of the book is much easier to read then the first half. The first half of the book goes a lot into the geography of Baghdad which is not interesting if you have not been to the city and jumps around in time period being discussed.
The politics of the city in this book can be confusing. I think this confusion is in part because of the subject matter and in part the author does have some difficulties in explaining it.
However, despite these drawbacks the book was a highly interesting and worthwhile book to read.
This work is clearly both a letter of love and grief to a storied city. Baghdad has both been the center of the learned world and reduced from outside forces but more often than not, at their own hands, to little more than a provincial backwater.
Early Baghdad, while far from perfect, arguably was a poster child of how religion, science, art, math, literature, and architecture could coexist in amazingly fluid form. It's astounding to learn the things in depth that Baghdad was responsible for under the Abbasid Caliphate. Those of us who consume, and study Greco-Roman philosophy owe a great debt of gratitude to the early Caliph's who sent gifts to Byzantium asking in return for copies of Greco-Roman philosopher's works. In doing so, quite a few pieces of work that would have been arguably lost to time and war found preservation in Arabic translations that enabled the west to translate them decades/centuries later in the Renaissance.
The author pulls zero punches heading into the modern era, cataloguing the absolute suffering of the people at the hands of the Baathist party and their minions (Along with the US). The aspects of the abject sadism in the form of torture are presented in a matter-of-fact way, not glorified/reveled in while still making one cringe and feel immediate empathy for the persecuted.
This is an excellent study on an incredibly storied city, though at times the presentation can be a little confusing. I found this source of confusion in the timeline jumping method of storytelling. If the author was conveying a subject that would later become a pattern or cycle, he would often jump from the current timeline to that future timeline to explain the pattern/cycle before returning.
Early Baghdad, while far from perfect, arguably was a poster child of how religion, science, art, math, literature, and architecture could coexist in amazingly fluid form. It's astounding to learn the things in depth that Baghdad was responsible for under the Abbasid Caliphate. Those of us who consume, and study Greco-Roman philosophy owe a great debt of gratitude to the early Caliph's who sent gifts to Byzantium asking in return for copies of Greco-Roman philosopher's works. In doing so, quite a few pieces of work that would have been arguably lost to time and war found preservation in Arabic translations that enabled the west to translate them decades/centuries later in the Renaissance.
The author pulls zero punches heading into the modern era, cataloguing the absolute suffering of the people at the hands of the Baathist party and their minions (Along with the US). The aspects of the abject sadism in the form of torture are presented in a matter-of-fact way, not glorified/reveled in while still making one cringe and feel immediate empathy for the persecuted.
This is an excellent study on an incredibly storied city, though at times the presentation can be a little confusing. I found this source of confusion in the timeline jumping method of storytelling. If the author was conveying a subject that would later become a pattern or cycle, he would often jump from the current timeline to that future timeline to explain the pattern/cycle before returning.
"May the City of Peace live up to its name before we ourselves depart to eternal peace."