and he provided it with eight gates in the outer wall and another eight in the inner. No one gate faced exactly opposite the next; rather, each was set slightly askew from its neighbour. For this reason the city was called Baghdad al-Zawraʾ—“the Oblique”—because its gates slant away from one another.

Some said the epithet came from the bend the Tigris makes at that spot.

He built the Palace of Government at the very centre of the city so that all people would be equally distant from it, and he laid out the congregational mosque beside the palace; the man who fixed its qiblah was al-Hajjaj ibn Artaʿah.

Ibn Jarir (1) relates that the mosque’s qiblah is actually misaligned, so that anyone praying there must angle himself toward the Basra Gate. He adds that the Rusafa Mosque is nearer to the correct orientation because it was erected before the palace, whereas the city’s congregational mosque was built in line with the palace, which threw its qiblah off.

Ibn Jarir (2) also reports, on the authority of Sulayman ibn Mujalid, that al-Mansur wanted Abu Hanifah al-Nuʿman ibn Thabit to accept the judgeship, but he refused. Al-Mansur swore that he would make him take office, and Abu Hanifah swore that he would not; so the caliph put him in charge of the city works—supervising the moulding of bricks and driving the men to labour. Abu Hanifah remained over that duty until the section of the city wall adjoining the moat was finished, its completion taking place in 144 AH.

Ibn Jarir (3) further transmits from al-Haytham ibn ʿAdi that al-Mansur offered Abu Hanifah the office of qadaʾ and grievances, and when he declined the caliph swore he would not release him until he worked for him. On hearing this, Abu Hanifah fetched a reed and counted the bricks with it, thereby fulfilling Abu Jaʿfar’s oath. Abu Hanifah died in Baghdad thereafter.

He likewise records (4) that it was Khalid ibn Barmak who first advised al-Mansur to build the city and that he constantly urged the craftsmen on. Al-Mansur consulted the commanders about transferring the White Palace from al-Madāʾin to Baghdad to serve as the new Palace of Government,

to which they replied, “Do not do so, for it is a wonder of the world, and within it is the prayer-place of the Commander of the Believers ʿAli ibn Abi Talib.” He ignored them and removed a great deal from it, yet what he obtained did not even cover the cost of transporting it; so he abandoned the attempt and instead moved the doors of the palace of Wasit to become the doors of the Palace of Government in Baghdad. Al-Hajjaj had earlier brought those stones from a city in that region said to have been built by Solomon son of David; the jinn had fashioned those doors out of enormous blocks of stone.

The clamour of the markets could be heard from the Palace of Government—the shouts of the vendors and the hubbub of trading reached the palace—so one of the Christian patriarchs who came from Byzantium on an embassy criticised this. Al-Mansur therefore ordered the markets to be relocated elsewhere and commanded that the thoroughfares be widened to forty cubits by forty cubits; anything built within that span was to be demolished.