PEOPLEthe 'Amr on the side of the rebels in spite of the efforts of al-Minjab
ibn Rashid to keep them neutral. Although Ka'b ibn Sur tried to keep
the Azd out of the conflict, most of the Yam an is in Basra joined the
rebels. The Azd formed a separate tribal contingent in the rebel army,
while those of the 'Abd al-Qays and Bakr ibn Wa'il who did not go
over to 'AII formed a single contingent. In 'AII's army, there were
separate tribal contingents of the 'Amir, Gha~afan, QUQa'a, and Bakr
ibn Wa'il. The Azd who joined 'Ali: were led by Ka'b ibn Sur. Al-
Khirrit ibn Rashid, who went over to 'AII with three hundred men
of the Banii Najiya clan, led the contingent of MUQar tribes in 'Ali's
army. The Qays tribes of Hawazin and Sulaym formed another con-
tingent led by Mujashi' ibn Mas'ud of Sulaym.
Over thirty thousand Basrans fought on both sides at the Battle of
the Camel and they are said to have suffered as many as seven thousand
casualties, although these losses may be exaggerated.^96 In the following
year, 657, 'Ali registered sixty thousand fighting men in Basra, as well
as their sons, slaves, and mawalz.^97 By the time of Ziyad, the military
population of Basra had grown to eighty thousand men with one
hundred and twenty thousand dependents.^98 Ziyad also sent twenty-
five thousand Basrans to Khurasan in 665.^99 The military organization
of Basra appears to have been tightened under Mu'awiya by the
formation of five tribal contingents for the center of the army, which
consisted of the Bakr ibn Wa'il, 'Abd al-Qays, Tamim, Azd, and Ahl
al-'Aliya.10o Although these tribal military divisions appear to parallel
the settlement pattern at Basra more closely than at K1,lfa, they were
only identified as such in 686 in the army of Mu~'ab ibn az-Zubayr
and did not constitute his entire army.
The immediate effect of the settlement of the victorious Muslim
armies at Kufa and Basra after the first successful wave of conquest
was the concentration of the Arab population, both old and new, in
cities in southern Iraq. Most of the new arrivals from the peninsula
contributed to the seventh-century shift in population to southern Iraq.
Even outside of these new urban centers, Muslim Arabs at first tended
to concentrate in cities and towns.
96 Ibn al-Faqih, Buidan, p. 169; Pellat, Milieu ba?rien, p. 5; Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 3156,
3224,3180.
97 Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 3370.
98 Baladhuri, Futu~, p. 350.
99 Tabari, Ta'rtkh, n, 8I.
100 Pellat, Milieu ba?rien, p. 23; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, 11, 720.