ABSTRACT
The Muhawwal Gate appears to have stood uninjured for fully five centuries, for it existed in the time of the last Abbasid Caliph, and long after the neighbouring Kufah Gate of the City of Manusr had disappeared with the ruin of West Baghdad. The quarter of the Dar-al-Kazz or Silk House is described by Yakut as a large suburb which in his day stood a league distant from the quarters of West Baghdad at the Basrah Gate. The houses in the outskirts of the Baghdad suburbs extended as far as this point on the Karkhaya Canal, which last is described as entering the City limits at the Abu Kabisah Gare. It is certainly curious that the common epithet applied to a cat in modern English should be derived from the name of a man who was a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad and governor of Mecca in the seventh century.
