EXPLORE IRAQ

In about 762 A.D., the Abbasid dynasty became the rulers of the vast Muslim world and moved the capital to the newly-founded city of Baghdad. Over the next five centuries, the city would become the world's centre of education and culture. This period of glory has become known as the "Golden Age" of Islamic civilization, when scholars of the Muslim world made important contributions to both the sciences and humanities: medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, literature, and more. Under Abbasid rule, Baghdad became a city of museums, hospitals, libraries, and mosques.

 

Mesopotamia conjures up the very ancient past, the beginnings of our developments as peoples and our cultures. To walk on sites such as Ur, Babylon, Uruk and Eridu takes us back to 6000 B.C or earlier and that is exciting.

Also in Iraq because of this extraordinary ancient past we can track the rise and fall of so many City States, civilisations and eras. From ancient Sumer, to Babylonia, Assyria, Persians, Greeks, Alexander The Great made Babylon his capital it should be remembered, to Persians again, the great Islamic Conquests, the Ottomans and the scrappy years of the First World War, the British occupation, the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq, the Second World War, and then the Republic and Saddam Hussein era and now another occupation by The Coalition this time. In our travels we see elements of all this history.