Mutanabbi Street

Mutanabbi Street has been the book market of Baghdad for centuries, named for the tenth-century poet, and the Friday morning market is the thing: booksellers lay out stock on tables and on cloths along the pavement, new and second-hand, Arabic and foreign, textbooks, poetry, religious works and old magazines, and the street fills with browsers, students and writers. At one end stands the Qishla and the old Ottoman quarter; at the other, the Shabandar café, a century-old coffee house with photographs covering the walls, which has long been where the literary crowd sits. A saying holds that Cairo writes, Beirut prints and Baghdad reads.

History

The street goes back to the Abbasid Caliphate, when it became the first book traders' market in Baghdad, and it was inaugurated under its present name in 1932 by King Faisal I, after the 10th-century poet al-Mutanabbi. The Shabandar Café opened here in 1917 and became a meeting place for intellectuals (Wikipedia, Mutanabbi Street).

What's there

• The Friday book market - stalls and cloths spread along the pavement.
• Shabandar café - the old coffee house at the end of the street.
• The Qishla - the Ottoman clock tower and courtyard nearby.
• Old Baghdad streets - the surviving fabric near the river.

When to go

Friday morning is when the market runs and the only time to see the street properly; the rest of the week the shops are open but the pavement market is not. November to March for comfortable weather.

Things to know

Outside Friday morning the street is much quieter and the market is absent. It is crowded and dense when the market is on. Photography of people needs asking. Most books are in Arabic. Traffic and parking nearby are difficult.

Nearby

The Qishla is at the river end; the Iraq Museum lies west.

Key facts