978-1-4222-3442-6

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

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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