Iraqi History · Chronicle IX of XII
Early Islamic Iraq
The Arab conquest, the garrison cities, and the tragedy of Karbala.
Arab ConquestMilitary
An Arab Muslim army destroys the Sasanian host at al-Qadisiyyah, opening Iraq to the conquest.
Over several days near the edge of the desert, the general Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas broke the great Persian army and its war-elephants. Al-Qadisiyyah ranks among the most decisive battles in history: it shattered Sasanian power in Mesopotamia and carried Islam into the heart of the former Persian empire.
Arab ConquestMilitary
The Arabs take the Sasanian capital, and its fabulous treasures are carried off as the last king flees east.
The conquerors entered Ctesiphon in wonder, praying in the great vaulted hall of the Sasanian kings and dividing spoils beyond imagining — including a jewelled carpet, the 'Spring of Khosrow,' cut into pieces. The imperial city that had ruled Mesopotamia for four centuries fell, and with it the last Persian empire of antiquity.
Rashidun CaliphateCultural
The Arabs lay out new garrison cities at Kufa and Basra, which grow into the twin capitals of Iraq.
Rather than settle in conquered cities, the Arabs founded new camp-towns (amsar) at the desert's edge. Kufa and Basra swelled with soldiers and their families, tribes and clients, and became the great cauldrons of early Islam — centres of Arabic grammar, law, poetry, theology, and endless political ferment.
Rashidun CaliphateMilitary
Near Basra, Caliph Ali defeats an army led by the Prophet's widow Aisha in the first Muslim civil war.
The murder of Caliph Uthman plunged Islam into the First Fitna. Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, moved to Iraq and defeated his opponents outside Basra in a battle named for the camel around which Aisha's supporters fought. It was the first time Muslim armies had met in open war — and Iraq was its battleground.
Rashidun CaliphatePolitical
Ali rules the Islamic world from Kufa and fights the indecisive Battle of Siffin against Muawiya of Syria.
For the only time in history, Kufa in Iraq was the capital of the whole Islamic caliphate. But Ali's war with the governor of Syria ended not in victory but in a fateful arbitration, which split his own followers: the Kharijites, who rejected the compromise, turned against him and would soon take his life.
Umayyad CaliphateReligious
Ali is struck down in the mosque of Kufa; the Umayyads take the caliphate, and the roots of Shia Islam are laid.
A Kharijite assassin killed Ali as he prayed. Muawiya, founder of the Umayyad dynasty, took power and moved the caliphate's capital to Damascus. But the memory of Ali endured in Iraq among the Shiat Ali, 'the party of Ali,' who held that leadership belonged by right to the Prophet's family — the seed of the Shia branch of Islam.
Umayyad CaliphateReligious
Husayn, grandson of the Prophet, is killed with his followers at Karbala — the defining moment of Shia Islam.
Answering a call from the Shia of Kufa, Husayn ibn Ali marched into Iraq against the Umayyad caliph Yazid, only to be surrounded and slain with his small band at Karbala. His martyrdom became the central drama of Shia Islam, mourned every year at Ashura, and his shrine at Karbala one of the holiest places on earth.
Umayyad CaliphateReligious
At Kufa, Mukhtar leads a rising to avenge Husayn, championing the cause of the Prophet's family and the oppressed.
Mukhtar's revolt seized Kufa and much of Iraq for a time, drawing support from the mawali, the non-Arab Muslim converts who resented Umayyad Arab privilege. Though crushed within two years, it showed the explosive power of Shia sentiment and non-Arab grievance in Iraq — forces that would one day sweep the Umayyads away.
Umayyad CaliphatePolitical
The iron governor al-Hajjaj crushes revolt after revolt and builds a new garrison city, Wasit, to hold Iraq down.
The most feared of Umayyad governors, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf ruled Iraq with a heavy hand, planting a Syrian garrison at his new city of Wasit, midway between Kufa and Basra. He also patronized the improvement of Arabic script and standardized the coinage — order imposed at the point of a sword on a rebellious province.
Abbasid RevolutionPolitical
A revolution sweeping out of the east overthrows the Umayyads, and the new Abbasid caliphs turn to Iraq.
The black banners of the Abbasids, riding the resentments of the mawali and the Shia, defeated the last Umayyad caliph at the Battle of the Zab in northern Iraq. The victors claimed descent from the Prophet's uncle Abbas and looked not to Syria but to Iraq — where they would soon build a new capital that changed the world.
2 more entries, to AD 750
