Baghdad
Atlas’ Notebook: Edition LXIII
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. The following is part of our Atlas’ Notebook series, featuring art, poetry, literature, cartography, and photography, all centred on a particular place. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.The caliph's barge slid silent on the ancient river. His eyes fixed on the land beyond, rich and fecund, pregnant with possibility. His name was Al-Mansur, the Victorious. But he was not here for battle.
Monks had told him about this place, its favourable clime and strategic position. He stepped ashore, the rich soil yielding beneath his feet. This ground would birth an empire's heart. The crossroads of the universe, some would later call it. City of Peace.
The caliph raised his arms. The gesture at once benediction and claim. The air shimmered with visions yet unrealised. Towers of gleaming stone. Scholars bent over ancient texts. Merchants haggling over spices and silks from lands beyond imagining. The screams of the dying and the wails of the bereft. Millions would soon live here: hawkers and hustlers, nobles and prostitutes, mercenaries and slaves from three continents — from the sands of Arabia, from the frozen wastes of the north, from the African savannah, from the furthest rivers of the East, all would come.
For several breaths he stood thus. Then he lowered his hands and spoke a single word: Baghdad.
The Tigris flowed on, indifferent. It had seen cities rise and fall uncounted times. It would see this one do the same.
