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By 766 Mansur’s Round City was complete. The general verdict was that it was a triumph. The ninth-century essayist, polymath and polemicist al-Jahiz was unstinting in his praise. “I have seen the great cities, including those noted for their durable construction. I have seen such cities in the districts of Syria, in Byzantine territory, and in other provinces, but I have never seen a city of greater height, more perfect circularity, more endowed with superior merits or possessing more spacious gates or more perfect defences than Al Zawra, that is to say the city of Abu Jafar al-Mansur.” What he particularly admired was the roundness of the city: “It is as though it is poured into a mould and cast.”
