Baghdad, (“City of Peace”), capital of Iraq and capital of Baghdad governorate, central Iraq. Its location, on the Tigris River about 330 miles (530 km) from the headwaters of the Persian Gulf, is in the heart of ancient Mesopotamia. Baghdad is Iraq’s largest city and one of the most populous urban agglomerations of the Middle East. The city was founded in 762 as the capital of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty of caliphs, and for the next 500 years it was the most significant cultural centre of Arab and Islamic civilization and one of the greatest cities of the world. It was conquered by the Mongol leader Hülegü in 1258, after which its importance waned. A provincial capital under the Ottoman Empire, Baghdad regained prominence only when it became the capital of Iraq in 1920; over the next half century, the city grew prodigiously and took on all the characteristics of a modern metropolis.

City site:
Baghdad is situated on the Tigris River at its closest point to the Euphrates, 25 miles (40 km) to the west. The Diyālā River joins the Tigris just southeast of the city and borders its eastern suburbs. (See Tigris-Euphrates river system.) The terrain surrounding Baghdad is a flat alluvial plain 112 feet (34 metres) above sea level. Historically, the city has been inundated by periodic floods from the Tigris’s tributaries to the north and east. These ended in 1956 with the completion of a dam on the Tigris at the town of Sāmarrāʾ, north of Baghdad, and the ending of the floods has permitted extensive expansion of the city to the east and west. To the north, urban expansion has absorbed the old townships of Al-Aʿẓamiyyah on the east bank and Al-Kāẓimiyyah on the west bank.

Climate:
The climate is hot and dry in summer, cool and damp in winter. Spring and fall are brief but pleasant. Between May and September the average daily maximum temperature reaches the low 100s F (low 40s C), and the high may reach the low 120s F (high 40s C) at midday in July and August. Intense daytime heat is mitigated by low relative humidity (10 to 50 percent) and a temperature decline of 30 °F (17 °C) or more at night. In winter the average daytime temperature is in the mid-50s F (low 10s C), and the temperature occasionally drops below freezing. Precipitation is sparse (6 inches [150 mm] annually) and occurs mainly between December and April. There is no precipitation in summer. In spring and early summer the prevailing northwesterly winds (shamāl) bring sandstorms that frequently bathe the city in a dusty mist.

Character Of The City:
Despite the sundry vicissitudes visited on the city in its history, Baghdad has maintained a mystique and allure equaled by few of the world’s cities. Many Muslims revere it as the seat of the last legitimate caliphate and others as the cosmopolitan centre of the Arab and Islamic worlds when they were at the height of their grandeur. Still others—including many in the West—know it primarily through print and film as the scene of many tales of The Thousand and One Nights adventures and other accounts found in a rich tradition of Middle Eastern storytelling. In more peaceful times, modern Baghdad has been a prosperous and sophisticated city whose rich cultural life can be measured by its many museums, universities, and institutes and by the myriad scholars and literati who traveled there and made it their home.
Baghdadis have an affinity for gardens and family recreation. Traditionally on weekends the city’s restaurants, cafés, and public parks have been filled with people. Restaurants serve the local delicacy masgūf, Tigris fish roasted over an open fire. Recreational centres include two islands in the Tigris that have swimming pools and cafés, the Lunar Amusement Park, and Al-Zawrāʾ Public Park and Zoo. Beginning in the early 1990s, traditional patterns of recreation for city residents were disrupted by war and economic hardship. Although a prosperous class of government and party officials and wealthy merchants continued to frequent private clubs, most residents spent their free time either at home or visiting close friends or relatives.

Architecture and monuments:
The architecture of the city ranges from traditional two- or three-story brick houses to modern steel, glass, and concrete structures. The traditional Baghdad house, usually located on a crowded narrow street, has latticed windows and an open inner courtyard; a few fine specimens from the late Ottoman period are tucked away in traditional quarters of Al-Karkh, Ruṣāfah, and Al-Kāẓimiyyah. The typical modern middle-class dwelling is built of brick and mortar and has a garden and wall.
While no monuments survive from the early ʿAbbāsid period, examples of late ʿAbbāsid architecture include the ʿAbbāsid Palace (late 12th or early 13th century) and the Mustanṣiriyyah madrasah (an Islamic law college built by the caliph al-Mustanṣir in 1233), both restored as museums, and the Sahrāwardī Mosque (1234). The Wasṭānī Gate, the only remnant of the medieval wall, has been converted into the Arms Museum.
Another group of buildings dates from the late 13th and 14th centuries (the Il-Khanid and Jalāyirid periods). These include the minaret of the caliph’s mosque (1289), the ʿAqūlī Mosque (1328), and two superb buildings constructed by the Jalāyirid governor Marjān ibn ʿAbd Allāh—the Marjān Mosque (1356), partly demolished in 1946, and the Marjān Khān (1359), a restored caravansary (inn). A number of mosques, bazaars, and public baths survive from the Ottoman period.

A cultural revival in the post-1958 period produced many modern monuments, the work of contemporary artists and sculptors. Among the best-known are Jawād Salīm’s Liberation Monument in Taḥrīr (“Liberation”) Square, depicting the struggle of the Iraqi people to achieve liberty before the 1958 revolution, and Muḥammad Ghānī’s “Murjāna Monument,” which depicts Murjāna, Ali Baba’s housekeeper in The Thousand and One Nights, pouring boiling oil on the 40 thieves.
Two monuments are dedicated to war dead. A large modernistic shield, built by Khālid al-Raḥḥāl in 1982, commemorates the Unknown Soldier. The Martyr’s Monument, a 150-foot (50-metre) split dome built in 1983, commemorates the casualties of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–90). The Victory Arches (1988), which consist of two enormous sets of crossed swords nearly 150 feet (50 metres) high and mounted on bases in the form of a man’s forearm, were erected to celebrate Iraq’s self-proclaimed victory in the Iran-Iraq War and were purportedly cast from metal taken from captured Iranian weapons. The arches and the Unknown Soldier’s monument are all located on a parade ground complex in Zawrāʾ Park, near Al-Karkh. Under the Baʿthist regime this was the site of numerous rallies and nationalist parades. The Martyr’s Monument is situated east of the Tigris River near the Army Canal.

Education
Public school facilities expanded rapidly beginning in the 1950s. Education is compulsory through primary school, and statistics showed nearly total compliance in Baghdad throughout the 1980s. During the 1990s many young students left school to seek employment.

The Baghdad governorate has more than 1,000 primary schools, several hundred intermediate and secondary schools, and a number of vocational schools, as well as numerous technical institutes and teachers’ training schools. Baghdad is the centre of higher education in Iraq. The University of Baghdad was established in 1957, although some of its faculties were founded much earlier. There are, in addition, three other institutions of higher learning: Al-Mustanṣiriyyah University (1963), the University of Technology (1975), and Al-Bakr Military Academy. Education is free up to and including the university level.

Cultural Life
Baghdad has long been an active cultural centre for the Arab world, producing prominent sculptors, painters, poets, and writers. Iraqi poets, for example, pioneered the free-verse movement in Arabic.
Among the most important of Baghdad’s museums are the Iraq Museum (1923), containing important archaeological treasures from ancient Mesopotamian history; the Iraq War, several were looted and vandalized in the civil discord that followed. A number of important artifacts and works of art were lost.
Several of the most important mosques and shrines in the Islamic world are found in Baghdad, including the shrine of the Shiʿi imams Mūsā al-Kāẓim and Muḥammad al-Jawād, in Al-Kāẓimiyyah; the shrine of the important Sunni jurist Abū Ḥanīfah, in Al-Aʿẓamiyyah; and the shrine of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, founder of the Qādiriyyah Sufi order, in Ruṣāfah. All contain libraries and are centres of Muslim pilgrimage.