BAGHDAD ARCHITECTURE.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Republic of Iraq, The Mayoralty of Baghdad: Conservation and Redevelopment of the area around the Gaylani Shrine at Bab-al-Sheikh, Baghdad. First and sole edition, rare: this the only copy to appear on auction records and we trace just one institutionally, at Harvard. This impressively produced report concerns the historic Bab al-Sheikh neighbourhood in the Rusafa district of Baghdad, a sensitive site that includes the mausoleum of Abdul-Qadir al-Gilani (c. 1077-1166), founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi order.In 1980, the Mayoralty of Baghdad initiated plans to integrate Bab al-Sheikh into a wider development project. Previously, some areas had been thoughtlessly levelled to make room for parking lots, so local government consulted the distinguished Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji, who opposed random redevelopment without consideration for older structures. To lead the project, Chadirji brought in two Britons, architects and planners John Warren and Professor Roy Worskett, and architect Mahmood al-Ali, who had previously made water liability studies in the area, alongside "colleagues in Horsham, London, and Baghdad" (foreword). Chadirji remarks that "Warren's planning studies were of remarkable quality and insight as regards the conceptual requirements" (Chadirji & Mutschler, p. 57).When it came to the Bab al-Sheikh, Warren identified for conservation some twenty "houses of quality", as Chadirji calls them, and Mutschler remarks that "Bab al-Sheikh is an old residential quarter

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