Al-Mutanabbi Street is Baghdad's literary quarter — a long street of bookshops, outdoor book stalls, and print dealers that has been the centre of Baghdadi intellectual life since the 8th century. It is named after the 10th-century Arabic poet Al-Mutanabbi, one of the greatest poets of classical Arabic literature, and it remains a working book market where booksellers display titles on tables and hang them from the walls of their shops.
The street runs near the old quarter of Baghdad, close to the Tigris and the historic Abbasid city core. On a Friday morning the book market is at its busiest, with browsers ranging from students to scholars. The survival of the street as a functioning place of commerce and culture, through everything Baghdad has endured in recent decades, is itself remarkable.