by The Planned Metropolis as Economic and Administrative Hub
This nomination for the Caliph al-Mansur and his urban planners, who in 762 CE founded Baghdad as Madinat al-Salam (“City of Peace”), a purpose-built capital designed to be the economic and administrative hub of the Abbasid Caliphate. Its iconic original Round City layout was a masterpiece of symbolic and practical urban planning, with concentric walls, radial avenues converging on the caliph’s palace and Great Mosque, and dedicated commercial quarters (the Karkh). This design facilitated security, administration, andcruciallythe efficient movement of goods and people. Baghdad was placed at the nexus of trade routes between the Mediterranean, Persia, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean (via Basra). Its founding was an audacious act of economic strategy, creating a colossal consumer market and administrative center that attracted merchants, artisans, and scholars from across the known world. The citys subsequent explosive growth into the world’s largest city proved that a deliberately planted urban pole, backed by imperial power and geographic logic, could concentrate capital, talent, and demand to an unprecedented degree, becoming the vibrant heart of a globalized medieval economy.
