Baghdad

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Capital city of modern Iraq, Baghdad was, until it was absorbed into the Ottoman empire, a major cosmopolitan centre of Islamic learning and commerce. It remained a city of complex of ethnic and religious mix of Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurds until it was heavily damaged by the six-week long bombardment by US bombers in the Gulf War of 1991. The "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq by the US and Britian in 2003 sparked a civil war that has since reduced the city to a island of sectarian ghettos whose inhabitants venture into their neighbour's in peril of their lives.

At one stage in its life, Baghdad was a world centre of learning and Islamic civilization, as well as the setting for the famous