ADMINISTRATIVE GEOGRAPHYsurvived the conquest at the district and sometimes at the subdistrict
levels but were significantly altered or reoriented at the provincial level.
ARDJUKHA
The southern border of the province of Mawsil corresponded roughly
to the line between the Assyrian highlands and the Babylonian plain.
Below this border the alluvial region of lower Mesopotamia was or-
ganized as the province of Asoristan under the Sasanians. This was
the region and province called Assyria by the Byzantines, Beth Ara-
maye or Balad an-Nab at by native Christians, and Iraq or the Sawad
by the Arabs. The Arabic-writing geographers describe this region as
extending in length from T akrit, or the border of the province of
Mawsil, to 'Abbadan and in width from Qadisiyya to Hulwan. It was
bounded in the northwest by a line from Anhar to Takrit, on the
southeast by the desert of northern Arabia, and on the northeast by
the Zagros mountains.57
. Although this province was governed by a marzbiin as late as the
early sixth century,58 its districts were divided between the quarters
of the West and South in the reorganization of the sixth century, and
new districts were created in this region. It is important to note that
there was no administrative unit corresponding to later definitions of
the Sawad in the late Sasanian period.
The provinces and districts of the Sasanian quarter of the West
below Ard al-Mawsil tended to follow the riverine and canal systems.
The province called Ard Jukha by the Arabs, which was irrigated by
water drawn from the Tigris river and its tributaries, lay east of that
river and extended as far as the border of Iraq along the foothills of
the Zagros mountains. According to Yaqut, the Nahr Jukha and its
kura extended from Khaniqin as far as Khuzistan.^59 This had been
one of the most fertile provinces of the Sawad before the lower Tigris
began to shift away from its southeastern part in the mid-fifth cen-
57 Ibn Rustah, A'liiq, pp. 104-5; Igakhri, Masiilik, pp. 78-79; Mas'iidi, Tanbth, p.
36; Qazwini, Kitiib al-athiir ai-Mad (Giittingen, 1848), p. 280.
58 Scher, "Histoire nestorienne," Il(l), 154. He was stationed at Radhan. There is
also a reference to the finance director or tax collector of Beth Aramaye in the early
sixth century (Braun, Persischer Martyrer, p. 191) and to a radh and a mobadh of Beth
Aramaye in the time of Khusraw Aniishirvan (Braun, Persischer Martyrer, pp. 200-
202; Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer, pp. 81, 88).
s. Yaqiit, Buldiin, IV, 143.