Design

Flashback: When Baghdad Was a Party City

The 11th century, Islamic Golden Age of science, medicine, math, and partying.
G. Eric and Edith Matson Photo Collection

From the 8th to 13th centuries, Baghdad was the seat of the powerful Abbasid Caliphate, the scene of remarkable advances in science, medicine, engineering and mathematics, inventions and discoveries that would not reach Western Europe for centuries.

It was also, apparently, a town full of party-crashers.