By Glaire Anderson / The Conversation
Gamers the world over will be familiar with the incredibly detailed historic cityscapes the Assassin’s Creed franchise has produced so far. Following earlier forays into ancient Damascus and Athens, the forthcoming instalment, Mirage, takes players into ninth-century Baghdad , the capital of the Abbasid caliphate.
As an expert in Islamic architecture , art, and history, I worked with world design director Maxime Durand and Mirage historian Raphaël Weyland to bolster the game’s historical grounding, including the new educational feature , entitled The History of Baghdad. Gamers will be able to explore, in an interactive way, the economy, government, arts, beliefs and daily life of the time.
Little of medieval Baghdad remains today. In the 13th century, the city was sacked by the Mongols and mostly destroyed. To my mind, though, this very absence of archaeological evidence from the ninth century has been an opportunity to showcase the diversity of Islamic art and architecture.
A map of the Round City, a.k.a. Baghdad, from 1883. ( Public domain )
Baghdad, the Round City
Generations of medieval scholars described, in minute detail, what Baghdad had been before the Mongol invasion in 1258. Founded in 762 by al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph or ruler, Baghdad was one of the largest and most important cities of the medieval globe. It was a focal point of international politics, intellectual life, the arts and a booming global economy….
