Walking through history with the booksellers of Baghdad

After decades of war, Iraq's capital is embracing a cultural revival through literature, art and a passion for learning

Baghdad's Al Mutanabbi Street is lined with bookshops, cafes and outdoor book stalls. Photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaye

“Today we are living in dark times, but I think we will rise again and Baghdad will become the cultural centre of the Middle East," says Ahmed, or "The Philosopher" as he likes to be called. He pauses before cautioning his statement with a dose of pessimism: “Well, that is if the invaders stay away.”

Ahmed has a reason for optimism and pessimism. After all, this is Baghdad and over the past few decades, anyone who has called Iraq home has needed to retain a healthy sense of both.

For many of us, Ahmed’s wish that one day Baghdad could rise to become a cultural powerhouse might seem unlikely. For years the majority of stories coming out of Iraq were of Saddam Hussein, war and invasions, sectarian violence, ISIS, punishing international sanctions and a search for weapons of mass destruction.

It has been enough to make many people assume that Iraq is a place where culture died with the thud of a bullet. For Ahmed though, who has been selling books from his stand on Al Mutanabbi Street for 35 years, none of that blocked the way. “Saddam Hussein, the war. It didn’t matter," he says. "I kept my bookshop open all of the time. Every day during the fighting I was here trying to sell books, but every day I faced the danger of suicide bombers."

Ahmed outside his bookshop, which he's run for 35 years. Stuart Butler for The National

Booksellers and artists haven’t always faced grave dangers in Iraq. Indeed, for much of its history, Iraq has celebrated literature and art in all its forms and has often been a centre of culture and learning. During the Golden Age of Islam, when the city was the biggest on Earth, it was home to the House of Wisdom, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad.

Containing tens of thousands of books and manuscripts, it was the largest library in the world and helped to make Baghdad a city of learning. However, as has happened so many times during the city's long history, an invading army – this time the Mongols – descended in the 13th century and destroyed everything in their path, including the treasured library. Local folklore says that the Mongols threw so many books into the Tigris that the river ran black from all the ink.

Iraq’s love affair with the written word and other artistic forms goes back even further than the House of Wisdom though. Just how far back is made clear to me a few days after my conversation with Ahmed.

Leaving the last of the sprawling Baghdad suburbs behind, I sit in Ali Ghanim’s car as it speeds across the flat desert plains. The harsh brown of the dust and sand are occasionally enlivened by a shot of green crops fed by waters from the Euphrates or Tigris, the two great rivers of Iraq.

As we drive, Ghanim, my guide, and I do more than travel away from urbanity. We also travel through time. Way back in time to the very place where culture was born.

Nowadays, there’s nothing much to Nippur. Some tumbledown walls, a few hardy scrubs growing low to the ground and a hot and gusty wind that whips up fine dust. Yet, this silent and largely forgotten place was once the spiritual heartland of the Sumerians and one of the places where, 7,000 years ago, civilisation began.

It was the Sumerians who first conjured up the wheel, developed sandals, irrigation and chariots and invented arithmetic. We can even thank them for creating the concept of time itself.

But, the Sumerians also invented something else. Something that has shaped the world ever since. Something that has spread ideas. Something that has brought us together and something that – at times – has torn us apart. Crunching across sand and stones, Ali stoops down and picks something off the ground. “Look," he says reverentially, “words."

And there, carefully engraved into the shard of clay in his hand is a series of symbols and patterns. The world’s first writing. Scanning the ground around me I realise we are walking across not merely stones, but thousands upon thousands of bits of broken clay tablets, many of which are similarly carved with this early form of writing.

We are quite literally walking across history. When I express my surprise, Ali points to the weathered and stumpy walls around us. “Writing was invented by the Sumerians and here in Nippur, they built the world’s first library," he says. "We’re likely stood in it now.”

Humanity's first writings can be traced back to Nippur. Stuart Butler for The National

Back on Al Mutanabbi Street, Ahmed is far from the only bookseller. The road, which stretches for almost a kilometre right through the heart of old Baghdad, is fondly known as Booksellers Street on account of the sheer number of bookshops, printing houses and book stalls lining each side.

From scientific journals to romantic novels, historical tomes to catchy thrillers and steely religious texts, books from around the world can be found here. As Ahmed indicates, the recent past has been hard on Booksellers Street but, now that the guns have fallen silent and a form of peace and optimism has swept across Baghdad, it has brought with it the first stirrings of a cultural revival.

For the first time in years, Baghdad, like much of Iraq, is safe enough that crowds come to browse books on weekends, listen to street musicians and relax in one of the old cafes. And while the historical street may be the cultural heart of the city, it’s not the only place in Baghdad where art and culture are seeing something of a rebirth.

Riyadh Ghenea is the curator of The Gallery in the upmarket Karrada district of Baghdad. Stuart Butler for The National

In the upmarket Karrada district in the east of the city, fancy restaurants and clothing boutiques dot one of Baghdad's trendiest neighbourhoods. It’s also where The Gallery, the city's first dedicated modern art space, can be found.

“The very first art school opened in Baghdad in 1956,” says Riyadh Ghenea, curator of The Gallery. "It quickly gained such a reputation that people would come from other Middle Eastern countries to train here. But, under [Saddam] Hussein, many artists went into exile as the only kind of art permitted in Iraq was pro-regime propaganda."

With his trimly manicured moustache and fedora hat, he looks every inch the non-conformist artist. Like so many of his contemporaries, Ghenea left Iraq and spent 23 years abroad. “When I returned in 2011, I tried to introduce what I had learnt abroad to a new generation of artists and to make modern art accessible to everyone in Baghdad," he says.

With a proud smile, he adds: “Finally, in 2021, The Gallery was established. I want it to be an open and welcoming place. Every day more and more people come here. For some, it’s their first time in an art gallery like this and it’s really generating an interest in art."

As I listen to Ghenea and his enthusiasm for spreading his passion for art across Iraq, I think back to the words of Ahmed the bookseller who insisted: "We will rise again." It’s something Iraq has done many times before. And so it will again because, in this country and this ancient city, it is where it all began.