The story
Origins
The College of Islamic Sciences claims that it originated in 1067 A.D. as Abu-Haneefa. The College of Law, the earliest of the modern institutions that were to become the first constituent Colleges (i.e. Faculties) of the University of Baghdad, was founded in 1908.
The College of Engineering was established in 1921; the Higher Teachers Training College and the Lower College of Education in 1923, the College of Medicine in 1927, and the College of Pharmacy in 1936. In 1942, the first higher institution for girls, Queen Alia College, was established. In 1943, proposals for further new Colleges appeared, leading to the foundation of the College of Arts and the College of Science in 1949, and Abu Ghraib College of Agriculture in 1950.
Foundation and expansion
In 1943, the first committee was formed to explore the possibilities of establishing an Iraqi university in Baghdad. The first resolution enacted in September in 1956 to establish the university. The building was commissioned by the royal government of Iraq in the late 1950s. and the University of Baghdad was formally established in 1957. Its buildings were designed by Walter Gropius, Louis McMillen and Robert McMillah, of The Architects' Collaborative, and were made from 1959 to 1960. The architects' master plan came for a new university campus, included the School of Engineering abd Liberal Arts, for a total 6,000 students
Upon the establishment of the university, the first rector was appointed along with the formation of a constituent council of the university to study the realities of existing institutes at the time and taking necessary steps to relate them to the university. In 1958, another resolution was passed stating that the University of Baghdad would have a council to manage administrative and scientific affairs, comprising the Faculties of Law, Engineering, Education, Medicine, Pharmacy, Arts, Commerce, Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine. Postgraduate institutes were later attached to the university—the Institute of Management Sciences, Institute of Language, Institute of Surveying Engineering, Institute of Higher Industrial Engineering and the Institute of Physical Education.
Due to increasing demands, the university expanded in terms of students and staffs, who can be involved in scientific works in other cities of Iraq, particularly in establishing the faculties of Medicine, Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Forestry, Pharmacy, Humanities, the Computer Institute in Mosul, as well as the formation of the faculties of Education, Law and Engineering in Basra, where early in April 1967, the aforementioned faculties became the foundation for the educational institutions of the Universities of Mosul and Basra.
The campus was expanded in 1982 to accommodate 20,000 students. Architects Hisham N. Ashkouri and Robert Owen developed the academic spaces program for the entire campus. The College of Administration and Economics underwent significant changes. The branches of public administration and business administration were merged into one branch, the administration branch, and the department included three branches instead of four: the management branch, the accounting branch and the commercial teacher preparation branch.
21st century
The University of Baghdad suffered during the war and subsequent occupation, with more than 90% of its students dropping out of some classes. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it escaped almost unscathed from the bombing. The university endured looting and burning by mobsters. The faculty of education in Wazireya was raided daily for two weeks; the veterinary college in Abu Ghraib lost all its equipment; two buildings in the faculty of fine arts.
In the immediate aftermath of the takeover of Baghdad by the U.S Forces, the situation looked possible to improve. A number of American university delegations toured Iraqi universities, to help revive a higher-education system depleted of resources and isolated. However, the escalation of civil-war in Iraq, had lasting impact on the educational sector. Estimates of the number of professors killed since the 2003 invasion range from 250 to 1,000. At the University of Baghdad alone, 78 professors were killed, according to the London-based Council for Assisting Refugee Academics. Mohammed A.F. Al-Rawi, the president of the university, was removed from his post after the invasion, as a par of de-Ba'athification process. Al-Rawi was a member and high ranked profile in the regime of Saddam Hussein, though he maintained low profile. On 27 July 2003, Al-Rawi was assassinated at his clinic by two gunmen.
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In September 2018, the university was listed in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, a yearly classification of the best 1,250 universities in the world, for the first time. In 2024, it achieved Pioneering Position in Times Higher Education Interdisciplinary Science Rankings. The Arab University Ranking for 2025 placed the university among the top Arab institutions, ranking it 14th with 588.3 points across the region. In September 2025, the university established Colleges of Excellence and Artificial Intelligence at the campus.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Baghdad, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4