Iraq after the Muslim Conquest - Michael G. Morony

ADMINISTRATIVE GEOGRAPHY

sions of Ard Kufa were defined in the early Islamic period is provided

by the description given by 'Ammar ibn Yasir to the caliph 'Umar I

in 643 about the territory under his authority as the amzr of Kufa. He

defined the region he ruled as consisting of Hira and its land (arq.) ,

Babil and its land (arq.), Mada'in and its surroundings (Ar. ma ~aw­

iaha), and Mihrajanqadhaq and its land (arq.).183 As a practical matter,

Ard Kufa was originally simply the region carved out by the conquests

of the army of Sa'd ibn AbI Waqqas, which, in their main thrust,

followed the arterial road from Hira to Mada'in to Hulwan.

ARD KASKAR

The territory along the lower Tigris below Fam Silh was, in the
largest sense, the region of Mesene (Maysan) which had formed the
kingdom of Characene in the late Parthian period.^184 Although Maysan
survived as an administrative jurisdiction under the Sasanians, the
district of Kaskar was carved out of it, possibly as a crown district.
Shapiir I is credited with founding a city called Shadh Sabur in Maysan,185
and the kura of Shadh Sabur is also identified as the district of Kas-
kar.186 The existence of Kaskar as an administrative jurisdiction in the
middle Sasanian period is indicated by a reference to an ostandar of
Kaskar in the Babylonian Talmud.187
The expansion of the district of Kaskar into an important province
in the quarter of the West in the late Sasanian period reflected signif-
icant changes in the hydrography of the lower Tigris and in the local
irrigation system. Until the fifth century, the main course of the lower
Tigris is said to have gone through Jukha from Fam Silh to Bahandaf,
Badaraya, Bakusaya, Famiyya Iraq, Badhibin, Dabarbi, Qarqub, Tib,
Shaburzan, Darmakan, Nahr Jur, and 'Abdasi to Madhar.188 Begin-
ning with floods in the time of Bahram V (420-38) the main course
of the Tigris below Kut Amara began to shift to a channel that went
by Kaskar without entirely abandoning its former course.1^89 The im-

183 Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2677.
184 S. A. Nodelman, "A Preliminary History of Characene," Berytus 13 (1960),104.
185 I:Iamza, Ta'rlkh, p. 45; Tha'aJibi, Ghurar, p. 494; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, I, 830. The
Nabati name of Shadh Sabur is said to have been either Dima or Wabha.
186 Ibn Khurradadhbih, Masiilik, p. 7; Yaqiit, Buldiin, 1II, 227.
187 Babylonian Talmud, B. Gittin 80b.
188Ibn Rustah, A'liiq, pp. 94-95; Mas'iidi, Mumj, I, 120; idem. Tanbih, pp. 40,
54.
189 Yaqiit, Buldiin, I, 669.