RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIEScongregational worship. The masjid tended to replace the tribal majlis
as the center of group life. The tribal and congregational masjids of
the garrison cities were places of worship, political assembly and de-
bate, commerce, judgment, and education. Originally they were not
sanctified buildings in the same sense that pagan temples, Magian fire-
temples, or Christian churches were, but were more like Jewish syn-
agogues. They were only established at places where Muslims settled
in Iraq. Because Muslims at first tended to cluster in newly founded
settlements, there was no immediate continuity of sacred location.
Existing shrines were not appropriated for Islamic worship. At Kufa,
for instance, the monastic buildings of <Aqola either survived with
their former occupants or were put to secular use.
There is only one example of veneration by Muslims at an existing
shrine at the time of the conquest. This incident is important because
it strengthens the impression that at first Muslims only accepted things
that were supported or justified by the Qur'an. In this case, reinforce-
ment was provided by the affinity between the Qur'anic and Talmudic
accounts of how Abraham had abandoned or broken the idols and
was thrown into a fiery furnace at Kutha. During the conquest of Iraq,
when the Muslims were pursuing the Sasanian army to Mada'in after
the Battle of Qadisiyya, Sa<d ibn AbI Waqqa~ is said to have taken
time to stop at Kutha. There he found people who proclaimed Abra-
ham, went to the place where Abraham was supposed to have sat,
saw the house where Abraham had been imprisoned, and prayed there
for MUQammad, Abraham, and the prophets.^2 This tendency is indi-
cated in a negative way by the story that <All refrained from praying
near the mound at Babil. The unholy reputation of this site for Muslims
came most immediately from the Qur'anic reference to Hariit and
Mariit, two angels in Babil who revealed magic to the Jews.^3
The first congregational masjid established in Iraq was at Mada'in
after that city fell to the Muslims in 637. Sa<d set up a pulpit (Ar.
minbar) in the great Sasanian audience hall (the Iwan Kisra), and no
one objected to the presence of plaster images of men and horses found
there.^4 One reason for using the Iwan as a place of worship was that
2 Tabari, Ta'rlkh, I, 2424.
3 Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat, VI, 169; Qur'an 2:102. Jews and Christians at Babil held festivals
during the year at a well of Daniel, also called the well of !:Iariit and Mariit (Qazwlni,
Athar al-bi/ad, 11, 202).
4 Tabari, Ta'rzkh I, 2442, 2443~4. A painting, bas-relief, or mosaic on the wall of
the Iwan depicted the siege of Antioch by Khusraw Aniishirvan in 540 (Creswell, Early
Muslim Architecture, pp. 22-23; Qazwini, Athar al-bilad, II, 304).