The City Of Peace
By 750, the Umayyad dynasty had expanded the Muslim Caliphate to its greatest limits - ruling over a realm twice the size of the Roman Empire at its peak, stretching from Spain to China. However, that year, the Umayyads were overthrown and slaughtered by the Abbasid dynasty who, rather than ruling from Damascus, decided to establish their very own capital. In 762, the Abbasid caliph picked a plot near the old Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon for a remarkably ambitious new city, a beating heart for the Islamic Golden Age to come.
Named Madinat A1 Salam, or 'The City of Peace’, it was a perfectly circular metropolis, overlooking the Tigris river. Four gates were set within its mighty walls, like spokes on a wheel: the southeastern Basra Gate opened up to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean; the southwestern
