Mutanabbi Street
Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in Baghdad, Iraq, near the old quarter of Baghdad; at al-Rashid Street. The street is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named after the classical Iraqi poet alMutanabbi, the street has been referred to as the heart and soul of the Baghdad intelligentsia.
Al-Mutanabbi Street is considered the most famous street in all of Iraq due to its ancient history and community. The Street is crowded from the early hours of the morning until late at night with visitors including poets, writers, artists and students as well as tourists from all over the world.
Description
Al-Mutanabbi Street is a narrow car-free street in the middle of Baghdad near the Tigris river. It's lined with freshly-painted and sparkling shops with Fairy lights garlanded the ornate brick facades and wrought iron balconies. It contains art exhibitions, gallery openings, book fairs, festivals and cafés such as Shabandar Café as well as an entrance to the Qushla. Over the decades, al-Mutanabbi Street evolved into a symbol of intellectual freedom, attracting writers, artists and dissenting voices from across the country. It gave birth to the well-known Arab saying “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads."Stretching for just under one kilometer, the street begins with an arch adorned with the poet’s quotes and ends with a statue of al-Mutanabbi built by sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat overlooking the Tigris River.
Historical background
Early establishment and significance
The history of the street goes back to the Abbasid Caliphate where it became the first book traders' market in Baghdad. The street served as a contemporary witness to the political and cultural changes taking place in the region. Al-Mutanabbi Street was first inaugurated in 1932 by King Faisal I and named after the celebrated 10th-century poet Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, an Abbasid period poet. The street began to attract business such as printing houses and bookshops, which were nestled alongside the government offices and courts and over time it began to build its own identity as book sellers started to come in. Although, over time with the many regimes Iraq witnesses, many of its books reflected the ideologies of said regimes. During the era of Abd al-Karim Qasim, most of the books available were Marxist writings. After that, the street witnessed three decades of nationalistic Pan-Arabic works that traders were only allowed to sell to that glorified the Ba'ath ideology and later former-President Saddam Hussein.The Street is also the home to the Shabandar Café which was opened in 1917. Ever since its establishment, it became a meeting place for Iraqi politicians and intellectuals. As well as being a starting point for the demonstrations taking place in the country throughout its modern history, condemning the British occupation of Iraq and some of the treaties concluded by the governments of Iraq at that time such as the Portsmouth Treaty in 1948. Among the people who are associated with the café is former-Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said who used to frequent it. Nuri al-Said's frequent visits had a big significance in making the café a gathering place for Iraqi politicians.
Under Saddam Hussein's reign, many books were banned for decades due to not agreeing with the government's standards. Some of them were replaced with to be replaced by books dealing with the history and present of Iraq. Today, books such as "The American Iraq" by the thinker Hassan al-Alawi, the books of the Palestinian historian Hanna Batatu, and the books of the Iraqi sociologist Ali al-Wardi are being sold in the street. Until 2003, these books were sold in secret, fearing arrests and suppression.
Revival after 2003
During the Iraq War, a car bomb or suicide bomb exploded and killed 26 people on al-Mutanabbi Street on March 5, 2007, leaving the area littered and unsafe for shoppers, and destroying many businesses. In response to the bombing, Deema Shehabi and Beau Beausoleil edited an anthology in 2012 called Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here of people's responses to the bombing. The 100 contributors included Yassin Alsalman and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid, among others. On December 18, 2008, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki officially reopened the street after a long period of cleanup and repair.The street remains open with various renovations including redoing the street and pavements in stone, installing a new lighting system, and painting the buildings on the main street. Before the renovations, the street was described as dark and full of stray dogs. Although some of the sellers on the street criticized the renovations due to not looking like what the street used to look like.