In , the group renamed itself Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Isis and exploited a political stand-off between Iraq's Shia-led government and Sunni Arab community, whose members complained that they were being targeted in the name of combating terrorism.
In early January , after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki ordered security forces to dismantle protest camps that had existed for more than a year, Isis militants overran Falluja and much of Ramadi with the help of local tribesmen and Saddam loyalists. Six months later, Isis seized control of the second city of Mosul and much of northern and western Iraq. It then declared the creation of a caliphate and changed its name to Islamic State.
Iraqi security forces, Shia militias and Sunni tribal fighters besieged Falluja and its suburbs for several months before launching an operation to "liberate" the city. The UN has expressed serious concern for the safety of the 50, civilians estimated to be inside Falluja, who have faced acute shortages of food, medicine and other essential items. The Iraqi military has urged all civilians to leave Falluja and instructed those unable to escape to raise a white flag.
Image source, Reuters. Falluja is situated in Anbar province, about 65km west of Baghdad. Contractors killed. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Elliott Ackerman recalls fighting in the Battle of Fallujah. US forces launched two major offensives to retake the city in Birth defects. Thousands of residents were displaced by the fighting in Falluja in By the 14 th century, it had already acquired its nickname, al-Hadba, as evidenced by the description of Ibn Battuta.
Additionally, Mosul still has the remains of the so-called Citadel of Bashtabia that is also thought to have been built sometime during the 12 century AD, though various sources attribute earlier possible dates to the site.
Bashtabia is known to have played an important role in the various invasions and sieges of Mosul. Originally, it had a clearly defined and fortified structure with two main gates: one of the gates Bab al-Sir that led directly to the Tigris River, while the other gate Bab al-Qal'a opened to the city square.
When the Ottomans gained control of the city in , Mosul was rebuilt and was transformed into the region's commercial and administrative center. The largest segment of the architectural monuments was - and still is — private houses and palaces from the late Ottoman period 18thth centuries.
Mosul is considered as the only city along the eastern bank of the Euphrates that is predominantly built of stone and brick. The dominant form of its domestic architecture is houses with cellars sardib. Extensive use of local alabaster stone from Mosul itself gave its architecture a characteristic style by adorning the arcades, doors and windows of buildings.
A group of late Ottoman monumental buildings and the traditional central bazaar, with khans and qaysariyas, is situated on the southern edge of the Old City. The Old City of Mosul, with its intricate labyrinth of small streets used to be a very well-preserved heritage environment.
In contrast to other towns in Iraq, it had been little affected by modernization, and retained much of its traditional ethnic and religious heterogeneity. The network of streets, alleyways and cul-de-sacs represented one of the best examples of the spontaneously-grown pattern of cities in the Middle East. All of the buildings, together with the domestic architecture and medieval urban plan, gave Mosul a distinctive cityscape. Moreover, Mosul, and particularly its Old City, is the physical representation of the cultural diversity that characterized Iraq.
Other outstanding buildings such as palaces, mausoleums, etc. During the reigns of the Mongol and Turkic dynasties, as well as the early Ottoman period, Mosul was further improved by the building of numerous mosques and madrassas, especially in the southern part of the town.
Later on, shrines were built for the prophets al-Khidr, Seth and Daniel. The existence of the graves of five Muslim prophets in Mosul gave the town the honorable title of 'the town of prophets'. Criterion iii : Established in the 7 th century BC, Mosul reached the height of its influence in the 12 th century AD, when it was reigned by the Zangid Dynasty. The Old City of Mosul bears witness to the power and influence of the Zangid Dynasty with its iconic monuments.
It was then that the metal craftsmanship and paining schools were established in Mosul, yielding to a flourishing crafts industry by the 13 th century, and continuing throughout centuries. Porticos, with various facade styles, constitute Al-Rasheed Street; it adopts human-scale dimensions and has an integrated, harmonious architectural unity. Such environmental elements give enough protection for pedestrians against undesirable climates. The street reflects a cohesive alignment of buildings which contains the highest diversity in elevation, and its characteristics represent different types of architecture [ 32 ].
Therefore, Al-Rasheed Street reflects a panorama that vividly portrays the long history of buildings and the evolution of architectural patterns. Although crucial events occurred throughout the life of Al-Rasheed Street, each event tells its own story [ 32 ].
Al-Haidary states that there is a lack of important construction legislation and conservation monitor programmes for planning and urban design and a similar lack of commitment to restrict initiatives to ensure they adapt to traditional patterns. Concentrating more on the maintenance and restoration of significant heritage buildings within their urban context can be considered an essential factor that positively affects the old urban fabric, for example, Kifah Street, which, in , was orientated through Rusafa.
Its width is 50 metres, which includes 15 metres for commercial development on both sides, while its length is about 3. Unfortunately, this new route also caused severe damage in the traditional urban area of Rusafa. Urban space transformation in Baghdad. Source: [ 33 ], p. It developed a new definition of the relationship between private and public, while priority was given to the motorised-based scale rather than the human scale.
Adopting a fine-scale classification by analysing the street pattern seems to be a more efficient means of recognising the urban characteristics of streets over large-scale classifications. There is a definite pattern of activity about the classification process of compound parameters, which increase in an area or within defined spatial dimensions. In contrast, large-scale classification is affected by minimum or single parameters, and this can refer to the comprehensive analysis method of streets, which are likely to be irrelevant in creating distinctive urban characteristics for the whole city.
The entire spectrum when distinguishing the urban attributes of streets tends to seek difference rather than similarity [ 31 ]. Overall, in terms of its morphological dimensions, the main characteristics of Baghdad Street would be the level of difference and disparity between the original and modern streets. Both types, historical and modern, are subject to two different generative systems: spontaneous bottom-up approach and pre-planned top-down procedure.
The historic area of Baghdad witnessed an extraordinary change in the spatial structure of its street edges. Source: [ 10 ], pp. Hillier argues that there is apparently fear of doing anything in a historical part of a city, except to retain the old street system. However, the old street network emerged by incremental dynamic processes over time that reflected the growth and change through different generations.
Each generation tended to partially modify street networks to better meet their needs [ 34 ]. Regarding the old urban fabric in Baghdad, Alobaydi and Rashid state that, since its establishment as the capital of the Abbasid Empire to the end of Ottoman occupation in , the city was characterised by spontaneous urban growth.
Their key findings at the diachronic level are that the core of the old city of Baghdad manifested a robust correlation with its commercial centre until the s when modernist developments were undertaken throughout the city. Also, before the s, the nature of the relationship between the social dimensions and economic factors in the old patterns of Baghdad expressed a mutual correlation.
Later, the relationship was subjected to a considerable number of modifications that were instigated by comprehensive and modern development projects [ 35 ]. Apart from the degree of implementation and quality, a considerable number of plans were conducted to maintain the old areas and the historical urban form of the city. However, serious practical steps were needed, such as setting laws, regulations, guidelines, and financial resources and raising the level of awareness among communities about their own heritage.
Moreover, where existing buildings from the modern era become part of the urban context of the city, any attempt to deal with these buildings is achieved by composing a bridge between modernisation and heritage via a thoughtful conversion with the old environment. This enables such initiatives to be viable, dynamic, and resilient; they have the potential to involve development process with remaining historic essences that have heritage value [ 32 ]. The prevalent character of Baghdad becomes the scope of neglect for the old fabric, whether as an individual building or as a network system.
The deficiency of infrastructure and unhygienic conditions, irregularity, and the lack of maintenance can lead to the exploitation of an area for various unregulated purposes. In Baghdad, this resulted in chaos and the loss of priority in sustaining the meaning of civilised life, particularly in the old regions of the city, such as Rusafa and Karkh. Thus, the importance of preservation and maintenance should be considered, not only for individual units, such as houses or public buildings, but also for the urban fabric in general which represents a vital network system [ 32 ].
The old urban fabric and its morphologies were, formally or informally, influenced by the wave of modernism and replaced later by the new urban context, which resulted in the loss of the relationship between built forms and streets [ 36 ]. The urban renewal operation that took place as a part of a comprehensive development plan in Baghdad critically recognised the old urban fabric and determined an efficient process to preserve this vital sector of the city. Two dimensions identify any attempt to develop old areas: firstly, the entirely or partially neglected area of the old urban fabric, and secondly, the direct or indirect reliance on foreign technicians to deal with national heritage and historical, cultural dimensions that shaped the urban context of the old sector of Baghdad [ 32 ].
Most of the traditional urban areas have modest conditions and qualities but are still considered an attractive destination. However, the main concern is for functional transformation, which leads to topological depth alteration and can change morphological patterns in an old urban structure. The revolution against what humanity has produced through its long-rooted history has led to unpredictable and unsatisfactory results, with modernism at the forefront of such results [ 37 ].
Cities, however, have many places and sometimes only a few historic buildings or a cluster of outstanding features which merit preservation. These buildings and elements within their own context afford continuity with the past and lend diversity to cities. According to Cullen, the history of a city involves several historical layers, where most cities are constructed on old foundations, and their fabric exhibits evidence of different periods in their architectural and urban patterns and in the diverse accidents which are recorded and conserved by various layers of history [ 40 ].
It is possible to identify two essential perspectives that determine the relationship of the oldest urban area of Baghdad to the contemporary urban progress of the city. The first is the vertical perspective, which stands for the modernisation of the city centre itself and its adoption of the modern ideology.
The second is the horizontal perspective, which addresses the extended urban areas that are adjacent to the traditional centre of Baghdad.
This relationship, however, could include the fine scale of the city in examining the ability of the street to promote social interaction as a public space for people. Furthermore, different interfacing patterns could also be performed in the street.
Since the end of the Second World War, the rapid growth of Baghdad was partially uncontrolled, whether in the oldest zone or the surrounding regions. The built-up area increased from a mere 6 square kilometres in the first decade of the nineteenth century to about square kilometres in ; this will be extended in the future unless there will be more thoughtful planning.
This has since been achieved since starting the study. The more significant diffusion of Western ideas and the concept of modernity and technology coincided with the colonial and independent phases of Iraq that attempted to instil reform and development. The aim was to open up Iraq to the capitalist global economy by adopting Western patterns of society and their physical environments. The influence of such rapid growth on the old fabric was overwhelming during the last three decades of the twentieth century.
The growth of urbanisation generally led to an increase in demand for more physical environments, which severely damaged the old urban fabric of the Rusafa area. In contrast to Baghdad, a considerable number of other countries with ancient regions intentionally affected urban expansion outside the boundary of their historical regions [ 4 ].
The debate between modernity and identity in the scope of architecture has always been raised, whether by specialists or the public.
To a large extent, the concept of Westernisation is evidenced by modernisation and modernity [ 41 ]. The concept of cross-cultural references would be a more efficient way to drive an active role in reshaping and configuring both imported concepts and local objectives in the interaction between different cultures and counties or societies.
This could be considered a healthier transformation in the interrelationship and exchange of experiences among communities [ 41 ]. Reviewing the brief archaeology of firms that worked in Iraq, Doxiadis prepared the development plan for Baghdad in ; the concept adopted was to keep the compact pattern of the traditional central area and to construct new adjacent streets. However, these plans were not largely realised although some housing projects and an Army Canal were carried out [ 41 ].
Despite the storming of the Middle East by modernity, particularly in relation to lifestyle, architecture, urban design, and planning, the traditional themes still gave a sense of balance with their socio-climatic traditional components. However, in the s, Polservice designed traffic networks for Baghdad that disregarded the old urban fabric in the city centre [ 41 ]. A significant disadvantage in urban space is caused by the intersection between the historic fabric and the power of market orientation.
Also, the tendency towards augmentation regardless of the historical and cultural environment generally leads to the creation of a vacant area, which mediates between two contradictory contexts in terms of history, culture, and urban structure. The old fabric of the city splits into different sectors through creating new urban spaces that unfortunately work as segregation perimeters. The loss of system regulation, control, and monitors on urban development plans, besides the level of bureaucracy and administrative systems, collectively led to more devastation for traditional buildings and street patterns [ 8 ].
Reshaping the city to reflect the Iraqi identity entails a major preliminary survey and the first administrative framing of its heritage. However, a considerable number of architects tended to pervert such legacies by using modern techniques in design, materials, and construction within the framework of traditional Arab architecture. This procedure has been adopted many times by architects trying to gain acceptance for their designs [ 41 ]. Accordingly, some attempts have been made to employ a local, traditional vocabulary in decorating new buildings in order to reduce the disparity and develop a new iconographical strategy.
The Iraqi identity, in general, belongs to the history of ancient civilisations where part of its artefacts emerged as a fertile and fundamental basis for the nation that is undergoing a revival in the modern era. Considering the old area in Baghdad, urban public space can be described through monuments, which include emblematic statements that carry a new iconography through the synthesis of a national repertory with a modern style.
The notion of value in the old fabric of the city seems to be on the opposite side to high-rise buildings, which demonstrate inconsistency with the surrounding horizontal environment, particularly around the central area of Baghdad.
The moment that the new European style emerged under the terms modernisation and Westernisation, Baghdad no longer remained a typical Arab-Islamic city. Al-Haidary asserts that modernisation and the implementation of rapid, dramatic changes by increasing economic growth and population sizes resulted in unregulated buildings in the old urban fabric of Baghdad [ 32 ].
Pieri refers to urban identity as a language with a syntax that is composed of both built and natural and tangible and intangible realities. Thus, architectural themes have their own exclusive urban character [ 41 ]. Despite the paradox that the old urban fabric and its characteristics belong to its historical roots, its ability to survive within new urban developments is considered significant in so many countries.
The old structure in a city offers unique opportunities to deal with its urban components to promote and develop an urban environment that meets human need throughout its social, economic, and environmental qualities [ 42 ], cited in Al-Akkam Architecture and urban planning belong to cultural systems of representation and are part of long-term durability.
The urban and architectural history of Baghdad should be taken into consideration as part of global urban heritage. From this point of view, Baghdad faces a significant challenge to the reconstruction of the old part of the city. According to Pieri, this challenge must be settled for the long term, not only for urban and architectural patterns but also for the people who live in the city [ 43 ].
Mohammed Makiy calls this a micro-vision which plays a significant role in softening the aggressiveness of large-scale developments, where the ideology of the human scale provides a guiding route. The debate of the modern movement has often taken place in architectural reviews as one of the crucial transformation points in the history of architecture.
A cross-reading of the literature concerning the emergence and development of Baghdad to the present-day helps to outline the research gap. The awareness of the value of heritage and history, particularly in the oldest sector of the city, has increasingly become an essential kernel for the emergence and diversity of ideas, which help to maintain and develop this part of the city.
The characteristics of the old area reflect a considerable number of criteria, such as limited travel distances, lower car dependence, and greater opportunities for people to walk. These encourage community life with better surveillance that enhances public safety [ 45 ]. Thus, these characteristics, particularly in the old fabric of the city, underpin the quality of social life by reducing motorised-based use, minimising external pollution, concentrating activities, adopting multimodal street networks, mixing land use, enabling high occupancy rates, and highlighting the value of heritage and cultural elements.
Another incentive is to help forge a relationship between the old centre and the city that reflects the concept of a living museum, based on real, coexisting life. A living museum explicitly offers positive opportunities at all levels, such as entertainment, culture and historical experiences, economic support, and social activities; it provides an attractive location for people and helps to underpin tourism [ 46 ], p.
The traditional core has varied characteristics, which consist of many activities and ancient architectural components as well as a complex urban fabric [ 3 ].
The functional definition of the street is subject to the top-down approach to authority, even in the historical area of Baghdad that originally came from a long-established bottom-up approach.
Shamsuddin and Ujang state that streets in an urban context are places of economic and social significance; great cities are often identified by their main streets, and the nature of these streets reflects the image of the city. Furthermore, one of the key functions of the street is to convey the main characteristics of a city and its particular identity.
For fine-scale approaches, particularly in historic towns, the priority is the human scale, which is typified by the enclosure of spaces that are shaped by the boundary of buildings. The thoroughness of the building pattern combined with the design of the spaces is essential to give a sense of identity. In contrast, isolationism and introversion become the main features of modernist buildings. The influence of the modern wave was not only witnessed on the public space but also on the social and cultural meaning of space, where human aspects were not fully considered.
Therefore, transformations in the behavioural system can occur rapidly in comparison to alterations in buildings and the urban context.
Although this does not deny the role of the built environment and its influence on the community, the rate of change seems more explicit in human behaviour than in physical surroundings. For example, specific historical areas or buildings continue to exist as before, while each generation has their own experiences in an urban environment. Gehl and Svarre pose many questions about public life in a city.
These questions are based on the relationship of people to urban spaces and their interactions with the surrounding environment and other people. The final question concerns whether the city can generally provide specific knowledge of the type of activities undertaken [ 49 ]. This chapter addressed the emergence of Baghdad and the stages of its morphology and transformation. The oldest periods began with the Round City; this created the first nucleus that later formed Baghdad.
The city then moved from the west to the east riverbank of the Tigris. Moreover, the main historical characteristics of the urban structure survived until the British occupation in The physical environment was typified by two fundamental urban components: street network and Mahallas traditional neighbourhoods. These two elements have a close interrelationship and an overlapping pattern. Spontaneity follows the bottom-up approach, where the community manages its own built environment; this is derived from the order and regulation that informed the norms and values of inhabitants and their beliefs.
Morphologically, the historical region of Baghdad was distinguished by an organic pattern for both the street network and its built units. Moreover, the street pattern was also subject to a series of definitions according to the degree of privacy and other functions.
This chapter highlighted the main points that differentiate the historical pattern of the city and the modern era. Modern areas in Baghdad follow the top-down approach to generate neighbourhoods that are distinct from the fine-scale or micro level of street life.
However, this mainly depends on the expectations of future programmes through predetermined land use. Due to the new strategies and regulations introduced by master plans, the urban structure of Baghdad drastically changed, not only in the centre but also in the surrounding regions.
One of the main aspects of these transformations in the urban structure is its street life and how might people respond to the street edge and how their social interactions are influenced.
Furthermore, this impacts the underlying system in terms of its street pattern and the network characteristics, including the centrality value. First, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor Sergio Porta and his thoughtful guidance through this chapter. His experience in urban design, public space design, spatial analysis, urban regeneration, and adaptive urbanism had a significant effect on the formulation of the chapter.
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Built by scientists, for scientists. Our readership spans scientists, professors, researchers, librarians, and students, as well as business professionals. Downloaded: Abstract This chapter aims to address the emergence of Baghdad and the phases of its morphology and transformation. Keywords urban design historical urban perspective development plan street characteristics old fabric modern trend. Introduction Since the beginning of the last century until today, Baghdad in Iraq has remained one of the more unstable cities in the world.
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