Souq Al Saray

Al Saray Kubbah

Souq Al Saray is famous for Saray Kubbah, one of the oldest traditional dishes of Baghdad. Saray Kubbah Restaurant, established in the late 1930s, is considered one of the city’s key landmarks of traditional flavor. It still serves the original authentic recipe preserved by the family across generations, and visitors go there to taste the “flavor of the past” that has remained unchanged. The restaurant is an essential stop for visitors of Al Mutanabi Street every Friday, as part of the well-known rituals of reading, writing, and the cultural bazaar held there. Over the years, many political, cultural, and athletic figures have visited the restaurant. In the past, despite its small size, the shop was divided into two sections: one for selling kubbah and the other for selling raisin juice, before later specializing exclusively in kubbah. In previous decades, it attracted a large number of artists, social figures, and athletes, though such visits have become less frequent in recent years. Among the notable figures who regularly visited the restaurant was Queen Aliya, the mother of King Faisal II. It is said that she used to send her personal driver to buy kubbah from this well-known place.

The Owner of One Million Pencil

In the middle of Souq Al Saray stands a small, modest shop but it has become one of the market’s most notable stops and one of the places that attract the most visitors. The owner of this shop is Ali Al Mandlawi, who is famous for owning a massive collection of wooden coloring pencils, numbering nearly one million, which he has passionately collected since 1985. Inside his shop, only a small sample of this enormous collection is displayed on the wall, while he keeps the rest of the pencils he has accumulated over decades of searching and acquiring. Ali recounts that during certain difficult periods, he would borrow money just to buy the pencils he loved, until they became an inseparable part of his identity and daily life. The shop owner says that the simple pencil he holds in his hand is the one thing that brings people of all backgrounds together. Lawyers, engineers, doctors, government employees, and even illiterate individuals who buy pencils for their children all come to his shop to purchase writing and drawing tools. Al Mandlawi is no longer just a local phenomenon; tourists from different countries now visit him to hear his story with pencils and to discover the secret of the passion that turned a small shop into one of the cultural landmarks of Souq Al Saray.

Baghdad's First Book Bazaar

Beneath the stationery and school-supply stalls of today lies a deeper story: Souq al-Saray was Baghdad's original book market, where the city's bookshops clustered in late-Ottoman times before the trade spread to neighbouring Mutanabbi Street. Walk its brick-domed lanes and you trace the roots of the city's literary life.