Welcome to Baghdad!
Baghdad (Arabic: بـغداد Baġdād) is the capital and largest city of Iraq, with an estimated population of 6-7 million. Baghdad (Arabic: بَغْدَاد) is the capital of Iraq and the second largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. Located along the Tigris, near the ruins of the ancient Akkadian city of Babylon and the ancient Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon, Baghdad was founded in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Caliphate’s most notable major development project. Within a short time, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as hosting a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning".
Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state (formerly the British Mandate of Mesopotamia) in 1932, Baghdad gradually regained some of its former prominences as a significant center of Arab culture, with a population variously estimated at 6 or over 7 million. Compared to its large population, it has a small area of just 673 square kilometers (260 sq mi).
The city has faced severe infrastructural damage, due to the Iraq War that lasted from 2003 until 2011, and the subsequent insurgency and later the renewed war that lasted from 2013 until 2017, resulting in a substantial loss of cultural heritage and historical artifacts. During this period, Baghdad had one of the highest rates of terrorist attacks in the world, however, terrorist attacks have been rare since the territorial defeat of ISIL in Iraq in late 2017.