FOR BAGHDAD
the night falls
on the soil that wears our spirit;
owls shall perch on the wings of the wind
with songs that flutter past their beaks
this song shall have no lyrics
we shall tap on beat and shall still lose counts
this song shall have no rhythms, no rhymes
no words to qualify the smell of blood— the fire that
burns
we shall hear lamentations of children in this song—
echoes that hold our homes in bizarre—
fathers shall walk down dark street
mothers shall leave their wrappers here
this song shall stand like a prophet
that sees the height of a dreadful night
this song is a rock that calls our soul to salvation
this song…
Hulegu's Siege of Baghdad (1258)
In 750 al-Khilāfatu l-ʾUmawiyyah (The Umayyad caliphate) was overthrown and succeeded by al-Khilafatu al-ʿAbbasiyya (the Abbasid caliphate). At 1st its capital was in al-Kufah, but the 2nd caliph moved the government 110 miles north to Madinat al-Salaam ("city of peace") in 762. It was near the ancient city of Babylon and the cite of several villages, including Baghdad (from the Persian term for "bestowed by God"), which became the name by which the new city was known. Within a generation it became an important intellectual center, and its Bayt al-Ḥikmah ("the house of wisdom") had the world's largest selection of books by the middle of the 9th century. The city was successfully besieged by Tahereben Hoseyn (812-813) during a civil war, endured a prolonged siege in 865-866 during another Abbasid civil war, was the site of a destructive internal struggle between rival factions in 946, and was besieged by the Seljuq Turks in 1157. In 1258 Genghis Khan's grandson Hulagu besieged and captured the city, ended the Abbasid caliphate, destroyed much of the city, and killed 800,000 inhabitants. Baghdad continued to have symbolic importance for Muslims, but Hulagu's Īl-Khanate, centered on Tabriz in Azerbaijan rapidly replaced it as the major commercial and political hub of the region. It was taken in 1401 by Temur "Lang" (Tamelane), who ordered that every soldier should show him at least 2 severed human heads, which resulted in the decapitation of the city's defenders, prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and even the victorious soldiers' own wives in order to meet the quota. In the regional struggle between Safavi dynasty of Persia and the Osmanli sultans in Istanbul, the city was the site of major battles in 1534, 1623, 1625, and 1638. The British took the city in 1917. The Americans bombed and occupied it in 2003.
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