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Bab al-Talsim (Arabic: باب الطلسم, romanized: Gate of Talisman), originally named Bab al-Halba (Arabic: باب الحلبة, romanized: The White Gate), was an old Abbasid gateway that existed on the Rusafa side of Baghdad, Iraq, and was one of the old gates of Baghdad. The gate was preserved and well-maintained until Ottoman troops demolished it in 11 March 1917 when retaliating from the city during World War I.

History

During the late Abbasid Era, the 28th Caliph, al-Mustazhir (r. 1094–1118 CE), built a new wall around the eastern side of Baghdad to protect it from invading armies and Bedouin raids. Along with the wall came several gates, one of which was the Bab al-Talsim, then known as Bab al-Halba. Over time, several Abbasid Caliphs would repair the walls of Eastern Baghdad. In 1221, Caliph al-Nasir restored the gates and walls of Baghdad and decorated Bab al-Halba with an inscription. Al-Nasir's inscription on the gate depicts two knotted serpents or dragons who are being held by a seated figure who is believed to be the Caliph himself. The inscription became known for being talismanic among the people of Baghdad as it was believed to give protection against Baghdad's enemies. Due to this, the gate later gained its more well-known name of Bab al-Talsim.

Before al-Nasir's restoration, the gate was already described by the Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr in 1185. It was mentioned in the accounts of the Mongols' 1258 Siege of Baghdad. A polo field in front of the gate was inaugurated in 1086 by Seljuk Sultan Malik Shah. Bab al-Wastani is located north of where Bab al-Talsim once stood. When Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered a map to be made of Baghdad in 1534, Bab al-Talsim wasn't included despite the details of the map. In 1638, Ottoman Sultan Murad IV conquered Baghdad, he entered through the gate and had it sailed and closed off.

During the late parts of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was losing the war. To prevent the British Empire from storing gunpowder inside the gate, Ottoman troops destroyed the gate on 11 March 1917 while withdrawing from Baghdad, leaving no surviving remnants of the Abbasid gate today.

Architecture and features

The gate was a cylindrical tower built out of burnt bricks and connected to the northeastern ramparts of Baghdad. The main façade of the tower contained several smaller loophole windows halfway through the middle. The top of the façade included pointed arch openings on the entire circumference, serving as an open balcony. The gate contained stone voussoirs and included several decorations and inscriptions.

An inscription ran on the wall above the gate, mentioning the Abbasid Caliph as “the imām, to whom the whole of humanity has to submit,” as well as “the caliph who is initiated by the master of the world and who is a proof for Allāh of the entirety of beings”.

The dragons and the caliph

The most notable part about the gate was the detailed stone-craved inscriptions depicting a seated human figure, possibly a ruler, grasping the tongues of two dragons or serpents. A very unusual carving that was uncommon but can be seen in a similar paired dragon carving on a gate in the Citadel of Aleppo. The stone figures representing a ruler sitting cross-legged between two dragons have not been securely attributed to any ruler, but theorized to belong to the period of Murad IV.

But the seated figure is generally more agreed to be the figure of al-Nasir since the carvings were part of his restoration of the gate. The carvings could symbolize his victory over his two major enemies at the time: the Grand Master of the Order of Assassins, and the Khwarizmian Empire ruler Muhammad II.

The seated cross-legged figure may also be personification of the sun.

• Gallery of Bab al-Talsim's features
• Pre-1917 photograph of the gate
• The front view of the gate's tower
• The entrance of the gate which was closed by Murad IV
• A recreation of the seated figure carved on the gate

See also

• Bab al-Sheikh
• Citadel of Aleppo
• Gates of Baghdad

References

1. Scheiner & Torel 2022, p. 14. sfn error: no target: CITEREFScheinerTorel2022 (help)
2. Allen, Terry (1999). "Chapter Five: Al-Malik al-Zâhir and the Ornamented Style, The Serpent Gate". Ayyubid Architecture. Occidental, California: Solipsist Press.
3. ^ Al-Tamimi, Naja Ali Muhammad. "Bab al-Halba between veto and excavation". Al-Adab Journal (in Arabic). ResearchGate. doi:10.31973/aj.v1i136.1272.
4. Le Strange 1900, pp. 291–292.
5. Scheiner & Torel 2022, p. 15. sfn error: no target: CITEREFScheinerTorel2022 (help)
6. ^ "Archnet > Site > Bab al-Talsim". www.archnet.org. Retrieved 2024-12-01.
7. Scheiner & Torel 2022, p. 92. sfn error: no target: CITEREFScheinerTorel2022 (help)
8. Kuehn, Sara (2011). The dragon in medieval East Christian and Islamic art. Leiden: Brill. p. 126. ISBN 978-90-04-18663-7. The inscription, which refers to the caliph as "the imām, to whom the whole of humanity has to submit," as well as "the caliph who is initiated by the master of the world and who is a proof for Allāh of the entirety of beings"
9. ^ Scheiner & Torel 2022, pp. 92–93. sfn error: no target: CITEREFScheinerTorel2022 (help)
10. *Hillenbrand, Robert (1999). Islamic art and architecture. London : Thames and Hudson. p. 124, Fig. 97. ISBN 978-0-500-20305-7.
    • El-Hibri, Tayeb (22 April 2021). The Abbasid Caliphate: A History. Cambridge University Press. p. 237. doi:10.1017/9781316869567.005. It has been suggested that an image al-Nasir had carved over Bab al-Talsim, the Talisman Gate of Baghdad, in 618/1221, showing a seated figure holding two dragons at bay with his outstretched hands, was meant as symbolic of the caliph's success in subordinating the Ismaʿili Grand Master and the Khwarazm shah. The image remained there up until World War I, when the gate was blown up by the retreating Ottoman troops in 1917.
    • Kuehn, Sara (2011). The dragon in medieval East Christian and Islamic art. Leiden: Brill. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-90-04-18663-7. One of the most outstanding examples of the dragon iconography on city gates certainly must have been the monumental sculptures on the archivolt of the so-called Talisman Gate (Bāb al-Talism) in Baghdad which was destroyed in 1917 during the First World War. (...) It showed a seated figure that presumably represented the caliph in the act of subduing a pair of mighty confronted dragons whose expansive serpentine bodies entirely filled the rest of the archivolt.
11. Pancaroğlu, Oya (January 2004). "The Itinerant Dragon-Slayer: Forging Paths of Image and Identity in Medieval Anatolia". Gesta. 43 (2): 160. doi:10.2307/25067102.

Works cited

• Le Strange, Guy (1900). Baghdad During the Abbasid Caliphate. From Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9781138080324.
• Scheiner, Jens; Torel, Isabel (28 July 2021). Baghdād: From Its Beginnings to the 14th Century. Brill Publishers. ISBN 9789004513365.

• Abbasid architecture
• Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate
• Military history of Baghdad