Harun al-Rashid and the Golden Age of Baghdad, 786-809 | Calm Bedtime History

In the year 786, a new caliph took his place in the Palace of the Golden Gate at the exact centre of Baghdad's perfect circle. Harun al-Rashid, not yet twenty years old, inherited a city that his great-grandfather al-Mansur had raised from dust beside the Tigris barely two decades before. Already the largest city on earth, its four gates opened onto roads that stretched to China, to India, to the Mediterranean Sea, and to the high passes of Central Asia where merchants counted their profits in silk and spices.