ADMINISTRATIONkingdom and an-Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir is said to have appointed
Sinan ibn Malik as its governor. Sinan is also said to have been the
'ami! for Khusraw Parvlz^234 who also put Qays ibn Mas'iid ash-
Shaybani in charge of the frontier oases there (Taff Ubulla) to keep
the bedouin from raiding the Sawad.235 At the time of Khiilid's raid
in 633, the Persian general, Hurmuz, was in command at Ubulla and
over the frontier,236 and after defeating him Khalid is said to have
divided the sawad of Ubulla among four of his subordinates.237 Islamic
administration at Ubulla in the seventh century appears to have been
more fiscal than military and was concerned with collecting the taxes
on the Indian trade.
Although Basra was founded by the Muslims at the site of aban-
doned Persian frontier posts in about 637-39,238 this new city more
than replaced the local administrative centers in its vicinity. In the
early Islamic period, Basra was a regional capital for those parts of
southern and eastern Iran conquered by the Basran army as well as
for eastern Arabia. In the caliphate of Mu'awiya, the taxes of Ni-
hawand (Mah of Basra) were also assigned to Basra.239 Although the
Sawad of Basra included the territory around Ubulla, the Kuwar Dijla,
and Khuzistan, as a regional capital Basra was much more important
than Ubulla, Furat, or Madhar had been. It is worth noting, however,
that the division of lower Iraq between the Sawad of Kufa and the
Sawad of Basra at the border between the kura of Kaskar and the
kura of Maysan/Kuwar Dijla may have preserved the former border
between the late Sasanian Quarters of the West and the South.
Nevertheless, the ultimate effect of the Muslim conquest, in terms
of administrative geography, was to break up the former Sasanian
quarters and to reconstitute the older province of Asoristan in the
form of the Islamic province of Iraq. This began in the caliphate of
Mu'awiya, when the governorship of Basra and Kufa and their ter-
ritories was combined in the person of Ziyad from 669 until 673.^240
234Ibn Qutayba, Ma'arif, p. 264; Kister, "AI-I:Iira," p. 159.
235 Bala:dhuri, Futu/J, p. 372; Kister, "AI-I:Iira," p. 151.
236 Tabari, Ta'Ttkh, I, 2022.
237 Ibid., i, 2057-58.
- 238 Dinawari, AkhbaT at-tiwal, p. 123; C. Pellat, Le milieu ba~rien et la formation de
Ga/Ji? (Paris, 1953), pp. 2-7; Ya'qiibi, Les pays, p. 7; Ya:qiit, Buldan, 11, 429.
239 Bala:dhuri, Futu/J, p. 306. When Mu'a:wiya made Ziyad governor of Basra and
its dependencies in 665, the territory under his authority included Fars, Khurasan,
Sijistan, Bahrayn, Uman, and the Indian frontier (Bala:dhuri, Ansab, I, 492-93; Ibn
Qutayba, Ma'arif, p. 346; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, 11, 73).
240 Dinawari, Akhbar at-tiwal, p. 238; Tahari, Ta'rtkh, 11, 86, 94, 156; Ya'qiibi,