<From your lips to God's Ear.>
A dawn of a new day.. The fall of Baghdad from Feb 1258 to new surrender April 5th 2003..Allied forces will realise that with power comes responsibility today is the first day of new responsibility for Allied forces that of rebuilding of Iraq and we all should bestow of ours heads in collective modesty to pray for a new inauguration of an era of welfare and freedom for Iraqis. For great nations like US in victory modesty of jubilation becomes a primary ingredient that is the test of the Americans today. The valour with which the soldiers of Allied forces have fought and achieved this fastest victory in annals of human history reminds all the tyrants of the to world shape up or ship out.
Muslims seem fanatical in their devotion to Muslim ethnic tyrants. Considering that Indonesians and virtually every other Muslim population* has protested for Saddam they seemingly fail to remember that Saddam is part of 20,000 Tirkiti clan, which has co-opted the rest of Iraq's Muslim population. In Syria the Alawites, forming 2% of the population, are in control whereas in Saudi Arabia the Al-Saud Dynasty hails from the Nejd enclave and remains fiercely loyal to the tribal tradition. Muslims tend to be rail against American troops in these heartlands of Islam ("Saudi Arabia" is home to Mecca, Syria to Damascus, the seat of the Ummayad Dynasty and Iraq was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate) however the conduct of these tyrants, who often practise revisionist or heterodox versions of Islam (the Alawites are marginal Muslims at best) do not earn censure. Why doesn't Jakarta, Dhaka or Doha protests against these tyrants, directly responsible for the death of countless Muslims (Hafez Assad killed at least 20,000 Muslims in his brutal uprising of Hama's population) and active in their suppression of indigenous Islamic customs? I wonder why Muslims paradoxically demonstrate against the liberation of an Islamic population!
As forces enter to liberate Baghdad and I see thousands of troops welcoming the UD forces as expected, may we all pray in all modesty for the fallen soldiers and join in the grieve of all the families military and non-military whose lives were impacted by this war of liberation. I am confident that the day of fall Baghdad may be associated with great show magnanimity and greatness of Allied forces.
I find it appropriate today as you all will watch the great fall of Baghdad from a tyrant hands into humane forces how Baghdad was treated in its previous falls. The stories of Scherzade as told in the Arabian Nights give an idea of life about 800 AD in the court of one of the most famous Abbasid rulers, Caliph Harun al-Rashid. The first fall of Baghdad was in February 1258 -Mongols under Hülegü (Genghis Khan's grandson) take Baghdad, kill the last 'Abbasid caliph; the population is massacred.
Baghdad became a famous center of learning in the Middle Ages, and by the tenth century was regarded as the intellectual center of the world. As capital of the caliphate, Baghdad was also to become the cultural capital of the Islamic world. Baghdad reached its apogee of cultural elevation and refinement during the time of Mamun al-Rashid who had founded Beit al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) where all kinds of scholars, scientists and mathematicians were employed for the advancement of rational sciences.
Baghdad was the city of education and research, grand mosques and other places of worship, hospitals, the center of Sufis and Saints, and vibrant discussions and debates.
Baghdad was the city of Al-Kindi (800-873 CE), the first Arab philosopher of renown, and the city of Imam Al-Ghazali (1058-1111 CE) who was born in Tus, Iran, but was a professor at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad, which was the most prestigious of a number of madaris instituted by Nizam al-Mulk. Al-Ghazali is known worldwide for his monumental work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, in which he rebutted the Greek philosophy propounded by the celebrated Arab philosophers Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Baghdad was also the city of exceptionally talented Al-Razi (latinized Rhazes) (864-930 CE) who although born at Rayy near modern Teheran was appointed Doctor in charge of the main hospital of Baghdad. Al-Khwarizmi (780-850 CE), the great mathematician, was attached with Beit al-Hikmah. Al-Imam al-Azam, Abu Hanifah, was born in Kufa, and lived and died in Baghdad. Baghdad remained the seat of caliphate for five centuries and the Muslim rulers in other different countries of the world paid homage to the caliph in Baghdad. (A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M.M. Sharif, pp. 793-94).
In February 1258 -Mongols under Hülegü (Genghis Khan's grandson) take Baghdad, kill the last 'Abbasid caliph; the population is massacred ...Hulagu Khan stormed Baghdad after he had extirpated the Ismaili power at Alamut in 654/1256. The city which had been a metropolis of Islam for more than five centuries (132/749- 656/1258) was given over to plunder and flame. The massacre, according to Diyarbakri (d. 982/1574) in his Tarikh al-Khamis, continued for thirty-four days during which 1,800,000 persons were put to the sword. For days blood ran freely in the streets of Baghdad and the water of the Tigris was dyed red for miles….To quote Kitab al-Fakhri, “Then there took place such wholesale slaughter and unrestrained looting and excessive torture and mutilation as it is hard to be spoken of even generally….Al-Must’asim bi Allah (640/1242- 656/1258) who was destined to be the last caliph of this renowned dynasty was beaten to death, and, according to another version, trampled on by horses … with it were destroyed the great libraries and unique treasures of art, philosophy and science, accumulated through hundreds of years. Books were consumed to ashes or thrown into the rivers. Mosques, colleges, hospitals, and palaces were put to fire…The awful nature of the cataclysm in the words of Percy Sykes is ‘difficult to realize and impossible to exaggerate’”, (A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M.M. Sharif, pp. 793-94).
Describing the fall of Baghdad, Bernard Lewis (The Middle East, p.97) states, “Finally, in January 1258, the Mongol armies converged on the city of Baghdad. The last caliph, al-Musta’sim, after a brief and futile resistance, pleaded in vain for terms or for mercy. The city was stormed, looted and burnt, and on 20 February 1258, the Commander of the Faithful, together with as many members of his family as could be found, was put to death. The House of Abbas, for almost exactly five centuries the titular heads of Sunni Islam, had ceased to reign”. According to Philip K. Hitti (Islam - A Way of Life, p. 102), “So offensive were the odors from the corpses strewn in the streets that even the terrible Mongols had to keep away for several days”.
Baghdad was again sacked by Timur Lang in 1401 who massacred many of its inhabitants. Later, Iraq was overtaken by the Ottomans who maintained it as a buffer state. After World War I, the League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to administer Iraq and in1921 Britain installed Faisal ibn Husayn as king of Iraq. The mandate ended in 1932 and Iraq became a constitutional monarchy until 1958 when the monarchy was overthrown by the army in a coup d’etat. Saddam eventually came to power after a series of coups in 1979-2003. Today as his regime a tyranny unfolds the whole world will see the new miracle of a new surrender and fall of Baghdad, no massacres no looting and no callous treatment of the civilians, the power from tyrant transfers ot the poor people of Iraq.
I shriek with the images of citizens of Al-Zubayr and Basra looking for drinking water, they sit on top of the largest oil reserves and live in a country where two rivers flow they neither had water nor shelter. Shoeless children and eyes full of fright will be lasting images of this war.
Lets hope that Allies will reinstate Baghdad to its old glory, the world will collectively break the chains through which Baath regime dragged Baghdad from glory of greatness to darkness of medievalism. The perpetual decline for progress to anarchy has its roots in denial of freedom; freedom and welfare are intricately joined, with freedom will come the fruit of prosperity, the country of two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris will once again become the bread-basket for the entire Middle East. |
