Reading through the full, fully-revised text for the next edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine (not due out until sep 06 alas, not sep 05, so long is the manuscript and so impossible to lay out in advance), I came across this entry which seems almost incredible in the context of today's news bulletins:
Baghdad, the capital of modern Iraq, was founded by the first Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, in ad 762. Early in its history the city became the focus of a Bacchic culture (see Arab poets), celebrated most eloquently by the poet Abu Nuwas. Although wine was...