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ketsbaia
@itsbruce
Recently restarted "Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood" by Justin Marozzi, after having to shelve it because too much real life shit got in the way. Basically a chronological history of the city from its foundation to c21, but he's spent years there and most chapters start by tying it in to life in Baghdad today.
He's a good story teller and Baghdad is almost the home of story telling (e.g. One thousand and one nights), so there's plenty to entertain. Like the bake-off scene where a random member of the public is pulled off the street into a palace and asked to judge dishes cooked by the Caliph, the Caliph's brother and the city's chief judge, without knowing which is which. Possible head-on-a-spike time, but the guy still has the balls to point at one dish (from the chief judge) and say "This guy used raw shit instead of onions".
I'm currently only at the tail end of the Islamic Golden Age and I know things are only going to get more depressing - I mean, there's the Mongols and Tamerlane to come, way before we get to Saddam. Still, would recommend.