Al-Mutanabbi Street: Baghdad's Street of Books
Every Friday, booksellers, poets and readers fill a narrow street near the Tigris in old Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is the heart of the city's reading life.
Al-Mutanabbi Street runs from al-Rashid Street towards the Tigris in the old centre of Baghdad, close to the Ottoman-era Qishla and the Mustansiriya Madrasa. It is named after Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, the tenth-century poet born in Kufa whose verses are still memorised and quoted across the Arab world. For decades the street has been the city's book market, and in many ways the centre of its intellectual life.
Friday on the street
On weekdays the street is a working market of bookshops, printers and stationers. On Fridays it changes character. Stalls spread along the pavements, selling everything from new novels and university textbooks to old magazines, religious works, children's books and secondhand editions printed decades ago. Families, students, writers and collectors browse, argue and meet friends. Poetry readings and small cultural events take place at the end of the street near the river, where a statue of al-Mutanabbi stands.
Cafés and conversation
Close by is the Shabandar Café, a historic coffee house that has served tea to writers, lawyers and politicians for about a century. Its walls are covered with old photographs of Baghdad, and on Friday mornings it is crowded with people talking about books, politics and the city. The café is part of the experience of the street as much as the bookshops.
Damage and renewal
The street has suffered. In March 2007 a car bomb killed and injured many people there and destroyed shops and buildings, including the Shabandar Café, whose owner lost several members of his family. Booksellers rebuilt, the street reopened, and writers and artists around the world later organised readings and projects in solidarity. In recent years the area has been renovated again, with restored facades and pedestrian space.
"Baghdad reads"
An old saying, often repeated in the Arab world, holds that Cairo writes, Beirut prints and Baghdad reads. Like most proverbs it simplifies, but Al-Mutanabbi Street gives it substance. It continues the tradition of Baghdad's medieval booksellers and copyists, and the Abbasid scholars described in our article on the House of Wisdom.
Visiting
- Go on a Friday morning, when the street is at its busiest and most lively.
- Combine it with the Qishla, the Mustansiriya Madrasa and the Souq al-Saray stationery market nearby.
- Bring small banknotes; many stallholders deal in cash.
- Ask before photographing people, especially at the cafés.