Baghdad

There have been several rival proposals as to its specific etymology. The most reliable and most widely accepted among these is that the name is a Kurdish and Turkish compound of Bağ "garden" + dād "fair", translating to "The fair Garden", or Sanskrit compound of Bag[a] "god" + dād "given", translating to "God-given" or "God's gift", whence Modern Persian Baɣdād. Another leading proposal is that the name comes from Middle Persian Bāgh-dād "The Given Garden". The name is pre-Islamic and the origins are unclear, but it is related to previous settlements, which did not have any political or commercial power, making it a virtually new foundation in the time of the Abbasids. Mansur called the city “Madinat as-Salam”, or “City of Peace”, as a reference to paradise. This was the official name on coins, weights, and other things.