“Baghdād for lovers lies not far away”. This lineof poetry by the Ottoman poet Sīdī ʿAlī Reʾīs(better known as Kātib-i Rūm, d. 970/ 1562–3) hasbeen quoted on frequent occasions, after a freeadaptation of the whole poem was incorporated byJohann Wolfgang von Goethe into his West-EasternDivan (1819). Taken from this source, thequotation “Für Liebende ist Bagdad nicht weit” isnow probably the most famous German proverb onBaghdād. The words have travelled around the worldand are still continuing their journey, serving asan example for the influence of Oriental poetry onGerman literature, as a declaration of love forBaghdād, the “City of Peace”, or as a symbol ofcompassion for the Iraqi people. Although some ofthe quotations and adaptations seem to be theresult of a misunderstanding of the original senseof the statement—the Ottoman poem does not speakof Baghdād as a city where lovers should go, butonly of it as a symbol of distance and space—theirsheer quantity testifies to the relevance ofBaghdād, even in today's literary and politicaldiscourse. A modern adaptation of Goethe's wordsby an Iraqi poet may illustrate this:

Indeed, most classical and modern Arabic sourcesshow two contradic- tory faces of Baghdād: Thevirtues of the city as well as its downsides.5 Inmodern Arabic literature, as for instance in thelyrics of Badr Shākir al- Sayyāb, the negativepicture even seems to predominate. But the yearn-ing for Baghdād as a place of desire was for along time expressed in Arabic literature. Numerousexamples for the ḥanīn ilāBaghdād can be traced back to the textsand poems on the praise—and dispraise—of Baghdādcompiled by Yāqūt al-Rūmī (d. 626/1229) in hisMuʿjam al-buldān.