i85
 

Baldak, Baldac, Baudas, Babylon, New Babylon,
Bagdet, Baghd1d."i

** And in Caldee, the chief cytee is Baldak."

Sir John Mandeville.

The mere name of " Baghdad " has for eleven and a
half centuries stood for glory and power, and splendour
and magnificence^ both in the East and in the West, and
there is reason to believe that a rich and important
trading centre has, probably under the same name,
occupied its site or its immediate neighbourhood for
some thousands of years. The fact that the Babylonians
built Bakdada, or possibly the Sumerians, and the Greeks
Seleucia and the Parthians Ctesiphon and the Sassanids
Al-Madain, all within a few miles of the great Arab
city of Baghdad, proves that the needs of the population,

^ Among the authorities on Baghdad may be mentioned
Benjamin of Tudela, ed. Asher, London, 1840; Pietro della Valle,
Lettera XVII, in Viaggi, ed. Gancia, 2 vols., Brighton,i845 ; P. Teixeira,
Voyages, Paris, 1681; F. Vincenzo Maria, II Viaggio all' Indie
Orientali, Venice, 1683; Rauwolf's Itinerary (in Ray's Collection,
London, 1693, chap, viii, p. 179 ff.) ; Tavernier, Les Six Voyages,
Utrecht, 1712 ; J. Otter, Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, Paris, 1748 ;
C. Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabic, Amsterdam, 1776, and Reisebe¬
schreibung, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 1778 ; Evers, Journal kept on a journey
from Bassora to Baghdad, London, 1784; de Beauchamp, Voyage in
Journal des Sgavans, 1785, p. 285 ; Kinneir, Geographical Memoirs,
London, 1813, and Journey through Asia Minor in 1813 and 1814,
London, 1818 ; Ker Porter, Travels, 2 vols., London, 1821; Bucking¬
ham, Travels, 2 vols., London, 1827; A. N. Groves, Journal of a
Residence in Baghdad in 1830 and 1831, London, 1832 ; J. R. Wellsted,
Travels, London, 1841; Felix Jones, Government Records No.
XLIII, New Series, Bombay, 1857 ; Rawhnson, article on Baghdad
in Encyclo. Brit., IXth edition ; Marco Polo, ed. Yule, 2 vols., London,
1875 ; Ibn Serapion, ed. Guy le Strange in Jnl. Royal As. Soc, 1895 ;
the descriptions of Baghdad by Yakut, Mas'udi, and others in their
works; and Guy le Strange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate,
Oxford, 1900.