'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎53] (164/258)

OBSERVATIONS ON BAGHDAD.
53
Art. III .—Brief Observations, forming an Appendix to the Map
of Baghdad. By Felix Jones, Cemmander I. N., and Sur
veyor in Mesopotamia.
The present Map represents the ground plan of a city once as celebrated as
any in the Universe. A hopeless decay during six centuries, in which it has
been contended for and held by many conquerors, has yet failed in ruining it
altogether, though its attenuated state at the present day serves to show the
original vigour of its constitution, when founded by A1 Mansur, eleven cen
turies ago. For five hundred years it was the abode of the Abbasside Khalifs,
and with more or less interruption the seat of Empire of the World.
To the antiquarian and general scholar the site possesses various attractions,
for, degraded as it is, Baghdad is still the representative of those great capitals
which flourished in antiquity, and which are intimately blended with sacred
and profane writings, as well as connected with the early spread of Christianity
itself. After the total destruction of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, where the epis
copal chairs had been established by the first missionary fathers, the Eastern
Metropolitians have been invested here, and the title of Bishop of Babylon
still pertains to the Archiepiscopal See, at present more respected in the title
than honored in any thing else ; and, though the Khalif A1 Mansur is named
by all the writers as the founder of Baghdad, there is little doubt, from exist
ing remains, but that a Babylonian city occupied the spot long before the es
tablishment of the Khalifate on the soil.
I shall not stop to dwell on its history, nor detail the motives of Mansur for
fixing on a new locality to establish his “ House,” such indeed was the
custom among barbarian conquerors, from antiquity to the present time. It
appears that the western side of the Tigris was the chosen site for the original
Baghdad, the larger position of the town now to the east of the river, having
risen from a military position and enlarged afterwards to suit the growing ex
tent of the population as individual families settled from nomade life, or as
emigrants from more distant places. The new city was added to also by the
remnants still lingering around the ruins of Ctesiphon and Seleucia, and with
captives and others—either brought or invited, from lands over which the early
Khalifs extended their arms—the city and tracts around soon become a highly
populated district. All writers enlarge upon the masses that comprised its
population in its more prosperous periods, though there is great discrepancy in
enumeration. At the funeral of Ibn Hanbal,* a much venerated Mahomedan
sage, who died at Baghdad in 241 A. H. We are told ei ght hundred thou
* Refer to the annals of Abulfeda and D’ Herbelol’s history of the Mahomodans.