** 14th book of 2021: Nomadic Empires **
Everybody hates Dubai. The common critique runs that Dubai is * “too new, too fake, too flashy, too lacking in history and culture, the cocky young kid on the block.” *Yet along with Doha, these two cities have become neutral cities, * “with echoes of Vienna in the Cold War, or a Persian Gulf version of the fictional pirate bar in the Star Wars movies.” * Every other city has centuries of history, art, and culture to rely upon. So it’s easy to think of these two cities as outliers, but peel away the layers of time, and the nomadic nature of Islamic empires reveals that each of the great capitals in the Arab world each had their brief and gaudy day century in the sun.
Step back to 8th century Damascus, and rather than being able to import workers from South Asia and architects from New York, the Caliph had to resort to more direct means in order to fulfill his urban and architectural dreams. So he went to the ailing Byzantine empire and *demanded 200 skilled workers for ‘ I wish to construct a mosque the like of which has never been built and never will be again. If you do not comply, I will invade your countries with my armies. * He then built the Umayyad mosque, still in use today. Follow the line of capitals to 9th century Baghdad, and the trend of tolerance and cosmopolitanism soars to new heights, with the invention of the university, and sponsored scientific research. Sadly, * “Over time the heterogeneous has given way to the homogeneous. Most of these cities were once vibrantly cosmopolitan, melting pots of two or three of the Abrahamic faiths and a many-layered mosaic of different communities. *
Like the Byzantines after the 5th century, Arab capitals quickly descended to religious infighting and moral decrepitude little more than a century after their founding. Unlike the Byzantines, without the advantageous geography or Theodesian walls to keep out invaders, after a city fell from grace, there was little to sustain imperial culture. Thus the ancient round city of Baghdad and most of the monuments in Samarkand are lost to time.
In telling the story of cities, Marozzi shines a light on an oft overlooked missing aspect of Islamic civilization: not only the distinct culture that each city created, but the sheer number of different capitals that held sway over the Islamic world over the last 14 centuries. Each chapter is individually digestible, although I skipped over a few (like Mecca) whose stories I’ve consumed too many times. Also, the travelog into current war-torn countries felt like a rude interruption to my enjoyment of history. I’ve spent enough time in bombed out cities and don’t need an author to describe to me what bullet holes look like.