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Baghdâd: Imago Mundi, and Other Foundation-Lore
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
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Great cities, no less than small books, have their fates. Some are capable of self renewal from seemingly unsalvageable shards of their older phases, like Alexandria; some continue to add new rings to their girth, preserving alike the evidences of alternating greatness and mediocrity, like Cairo; some disappear entirely into memory and literature, like the Round City of al-Mansûr, which today has as little to do with its living descendant, Baghdâd, as do the City of Brass or Qur'ânic Iram. Despite an absolute dearth of archaeological spade-work on the site, and a correspondingly absolute dependence on written sources, the scholarly literature dealing wholly or in part with al-Mansûr's Baghdâd is by now fairly extensive. For the most part, this literature has restricted itself to discussion of technical and architectural problems, or to those of historical and social geography. This paper proposes to look into the symbology of the city's immediately striking plan, the cross within the circle, as another instance of the imago mundi, a fitting pattern for this capital of the world-bestriding 'Abbâsid Empire. In the course of investigation, some treatment, however summary, of a number of folkloric/literary motives was found requisite, all, it is to be hoped, tending toward the definition of a clear and plausible design.
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References
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page 108 note 6 al-Baghdâdî, Al-Khatîb, Ta'rîkh Baghdâd (Beirut, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 164, tells us that he was believed to have lived for 350 years, of which, he assures us, at least 250 are not to be doubted, by reckoning of the ‘savants’ ('ahl al-'ilm).Google Scholar
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page 125 note 1 Beal, Samuel, Si- Yu-Ki (London, n.d.), pp. 44 ff. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness in matters of Far Eastern bibliography to Professors Wilbur Fridell and Chauncey S. Goodrich of the University of California at Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
page 125 note 2 Ibid. p. xxv.
page 125 note 3 Ibid p. xxvii.
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page 126 note 3 Futuh, p. 409; Mu'jam, vol. IV, p. 819. The deed was perpetrated by the Muslim general ‘Atâ’ b. Sâ'ib in A.H. 42/663–4. Though supposedly ‘restored’ by the Barmak, it could never have been re-endowed with its old magnificence.Google Scholar
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page 128 note 5 Ibid. p. 274.
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