For much of its extraordinary life Baghdad, the 'City of Peace' as it has been called almost since its foundation, has been one of the most violent cities on earth. As U.S. troops entered in 2003, they became the latest participants in a turbulent history stretching back to the year 762, when Caliph Mansur's masons laid the first sun-baked bricks of his imperial capital. For 500 years Baghdad was the seat of the Abbasid Empire, a marvel of glittering palaces, magnificent mosques, Islamic colleges and teeming markets watered by the Tigris. This was the city of the mathematician Al Khwarizmi, who invented algebra; of Harun al Rashid, the caliph immortalised in many tales of Baghdad from A Thousand and One Nights; of the great poet Abu Nuwas, whose playful verses scandalised society, and of dozens of other astronomers, doctors, musicians and explorers. A thriving trading emporium and metropolis that attracted merchants from Central Asia to the Atlantic, its economy was the envy of West and East alike.
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