ADMINISTRATIVE GEOGRAPHYunderstood as a reference to this territorial subdivision of the province
of Mawsil. Ibn J:Iawqal speaks of Ard Hazza and its rasiitzq.36
The only subdivisions of Adiabene proper that seem to have existed
in the late Sasanian period with any degree of certainty as adminis-
trative districts and to have survived into the Islamic period are those
of Haditha, Beth Begash, and Ramin. The subdistricts of Ma'alla and
Hiftun on the Greater Zab below Beth Begash are only known from
the time of the conquest onwards.
Nineveh, with fortresses on both sides of the Tigris, appears to have
been a local center of some importance at the end of the Sasanian
period. When 'Utba ibn Farqad came to Nineveh in 641 the people
resisted him, so he took the eastern fortress by force.^37 Nineveh appears
to have been replaced even as a local administrative center immediately
after the conquest with the foundation of Mawsil across the Tigris,
and Ibn J:Iawqal describes it as a rustiiq of Mawsil,38 Ba'ashiqa, east
of the Tigris above Nineveh, and Hannana, west of the Tigris, appear
to have been sub districts of Nineveh at the time of the conquest and
became subdistricts of the capital district of Mawsil afterwards.^39
Likewise, the sub districts of Bahudhra (Beth Nuhadhra), on the left
bank of the Tigris above Nineveh, Ma'althaya, north of Bahudhra,
Margha, northeast of Bahudhra and above the Greater Zab, and Dasin
on the right bank of the Greater Zab above Margha all appear to have
been subdistricts in the late Sasanian period that survived into the
Islamic period.
The district of Garmekan or Bajarma between the Lesser Zab and
the Diyala rivers and above the J abal Hamrin^40 had been combined
with or subordinated to Adiabene in the late Sasanian period, as we
have already seen. It survived with its capital at Kirkuk in the Islamic
period as one of the districts of Ard Mawsil. Khanijar, Mahoza dhe
Ariwan, Sinn Barimma (Beth Ramman), Karkh Juddan, and Shahrzur
appear to have been the centers of subdistricts in both the Sasanian
and Islamic periods.
The district of Tirhan on both sides of the Tigris below Sinn Ba-
rimma, with its capital at Takrit, may have already belonged to this
36 Ibn I:Iawqal, Surat al-arrj, p. 217.
37 Baladhuri, Futu~, p. 331.
38 Ibn I:Iawqal, Surat al-arrj, p. 216.
39 Yaqiit, Buldiin, I, 472; Il, 346.
40 For the geographical extent of Beth Garme see Fiey, Assyrie chretienne (Beirut,
1968), Ill, 13; Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer, pp. 43-44, 253-77; and Thomas of
Margha, Governors, Il, 44-45.