Word: harun
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...through the centuries, Jews and Arabs got along with one another reasonably well; though Jews generally were treated as second-class citizens, they were respected as "people of the Book." They prospered as traders, artisans and scholars. One of the Prophet Mohammed's wives was Jewish. So was Harun al-Rashid's ambassador to Charlemagne, and Maimonides, court doctor to the great Sultan Saladin. Not until the 20th century did tensions begin to approach their present peak: with the formation of Israel in 1948, thousands of Jews began to leave their longtime Arab homes...
...designated no successor (caliph); his squabbling heirs split Islam into rival sects. For a time, independent Moslem states retained Mohammed's vigor. While Europe slept, great Arab universities flourished in Cordova, Baghdad and Cairo; in Spain, the Arab philosopher Averroes revitalized Aristotle. After the death of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in 809, the Baghdad caliphate plunged into civil war; in succeeding centuries, marauding Mongols poured into the Arab lands, killing people and wrecking schools. In two centuries, ending in 1291, Arabs fought off eight Christian Crusades. Gradually, the caliphs lost touch with their people, becoming decorative mollusks. Finally...
...smiled and said, 'It is yours.' " Unimpressed by its popular name, Pig Island, Wright promptly rechristened it Edena (for the Garden of Eden). He soon noted an unancient problem: newly prosperous Baghdad is rapidly filling up with automobiles. His solution is in the earthen ziggurats that Harun al-Rashid used in the 8th century to keep out invaders. In Wright's case the massive embankments serve as traffic roundabouts and parking areas to keep pedestrian ways free of traffic and open for fountains, gardens and walks...
...roads and bridges. Its new $30 million refinery provides Iraq with gasoline at 15? a gallon (though heavy taxes lift it up to 29? a gallon). Ancient, reeking Baghdad (pop. 550,000), which bears almost no resemblance to the flower-decked Arabian Nights pleasure dome that the Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809) shared so opulently with 2,000,000 subjects, is getting low-cost housing, a sewage system, some badly needed modern streets, and the promise of room to expand now that the Tigris can be curbed...
...people dwelt in plenty and exported wheat to Rome. Now the east bank cannot even support its 400,000 people, who get along only because London, for strategic reasons, ships in ?8,000,000 sterling a year to Jordan. Mesopotamia (now Iraq), in the fabled caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (786-809), supported 30 million people; Bagdad had a population of 2,000,000, and 30,000 public baths. Today, all Iraq barely supports 5,000,000 people, and last week a New York Times reporter described much of Bagdad as "a festering slum." An entire civilization once flourished...