ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICEto resemble a city (Ar. mad"inat ar-rizq) with four iron gates.m The
dar ar-rizq at Kufa was at Shumiya on the Euphrates river opposite
Buwayb and does not appear to be mentioned before the events of
695-96.124 There was a similar installation at Wasit, which was founded
in the early eighth century, where three million dirhams, weapons,
food for thirty thousand men and fodder for twenty thousand riding
animals for a year were found in the storehouses (Ar. khaz(i'in) when
the city fell to the 'Ab basis in 750.125
Such concentrations of surplus wealth in treasuries and storehouses
also provided convenient targets for resentful taxpayers or soldiers
and were vulnerable to attack by deprived or greedy people.^126 During
the conquest, local peasants and the Muslim army helped themselves
to the provisions stored at Nirsiyan after the defeat of Narsi at the
Battle of Kaskar in 634.127 In 656 the supporters of Tali.la and az-
Zubayr killed the guards at the treasury in Basra and divided its
contents among themselves. After he took Basra in the same year, 'An
also divided what was left in the treasury equally among his own
supporters at five hundred dirhams apiece. When supporters of al-
Mukhtar occupied the provision depot in Basra in 685, they slaugh-
tered the camels there.12s Raids on the treasury usually reflect desires
to equalize and redistribute wealth or the desire of one faction to
enrich itself at the expense of others.
Thus, in the decades following the conquest, the organizational
arrangements arising from ad hoc solutions to practical needs were
gradually coordinated with the main outlines of the Sas ani an system
of military administration in Iraq and with the kind of officials who
ran it. The office of military scribe, the muster roll, the formal military
123 Baladhuri, Ansab Gerusalem, 1971), IVa, 186; Tabari, Ta'rzkh, 11, 77, 681. This
description is given during the events of A.H. 66/A.D. 695. 'Abdullah ibn al-I:Jarith ibn
Nawfal was put in charge· of the dar ar-rizq at Basra by Ziyad in 669, followed by
Ziyad's cousin Rawwad (or Da'iid) ibn Abi Bakra (Baladhuri, Ansab IVa, 186; Ibn
'Abd Rabbihi, 'Iqd, V, 9). 'Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad put 'Abdullah ibn I:Jarith in charge
of the madlnat ar-rizq and the military stipends at Basra; see Baladhuri, Ansab (Beirut,
1398/1978), Ill, 298.
124 Tabari, Ta'rfkh, I, 2190; 11, 911, 966. Shumiya is identified as the location of the
dar ar-rizq during the events of 634, but there is no indication that it actually existed
at that time.
125 Dinawari, Akhbarat-tiwal, p. 370.
126 Thus I:Jujr ibn 'Adi, supported by two-thirds of the crowd in the masjid of Kufa,
complained that al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba was withholding their rations and stipends
from them and demanded that he distribute them (Tabari, Ta'rzkh, 11, 113).
127 Tabari, Ta'rfkh, I, 2170.
128 Ibid., I, 3135, 3227; 11, 681.