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T
raditionally Iraq was a country of small farming communi-
ties, but that changed during the second half of the 20th
century. According to a 2011 study, 66.5 percent of Iraqis
live in urban areas. The largest of these is Baghdad, the capital,
with a population of approximately 7.2 million people. Other large
cities in Iraq include Mosul (population estimated at around 1 mil-
lion) and Basra (population: 1.5 million).
B
AGHDAD
Baghdad was founded in
CE
762 by Abu Jafar al-Mansur, the sec-
ond Abbasid caliph. The city, originally built on the west bank of
the Tigris River, was called Madinat as-Salam—“the City of Peace.”
Baghdad was the center of the Islamic world during the early
decades of the Abbasid dynasty (750–1258), reaching its greatest
level of prosperity in the ninth century.
The city was
sacked
by the Mongols during their 13th-century
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Iraq’s archaeological heritage is among the richest in the entire world. Shown here are the
remains of the Sassanid palace of Ctesiphon in Taq-i-Kisra.
Communities