City · The Abbasid caliphate: al-Nasir's Iraq and Khuzistan · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Wasit

The Umayyad garrison city founded by al-Hajjaj about 702, built on both banks of the Tigris (then flowing past it) and joined by a bridge of boats.

In 1200 it is still a busy town, the market of the rice and fish country and the gate to the marshes, and a centre of Qur'an reading and Sunni learning; the caliph uses it as a place of confinement for disgraced men (Ibn al-Jawzi was held here from 590 to 595).

Who holds it

Title
Governor for the caliph
Since
not pinned
Born
not pinned
Family
not pinned
Confidence
low

No source read names the officer in the winter of 1199-1200.

Lord in 1200

the caliph's governor of Wasit and the marshes (not pinned)

Overlord

the caliph's governor of Wasit and the marshes (not pinned)

How things stand that morning

Governed for the caliph; governor not pinned.

Wealth

Rice, dates, fish, reed mats and cloth; river trade between Baghdad and Basra.

Council

No commune. The qadi, the Qur'an readers and the Sunni scholars (Shafi'i and Hanbali), with Shi'is in the countryside; names not pinned.

Communities

Arab and Nabataean peasants of the Sawad, marshmen, Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Fairs and markets

River markets; the rice harvest of the marsh edges.

Militia

Town guards.

Walls and castle

Walled double town on the two banks; state in 1200 not pinned.

Trade and crafts

Rice, dates, fish, reed mats and cloth; river trade between Baghdad and Basra.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The town is well known; its officers in 1199-1200 are not named in the sources read.

On the map: The Tigris later left Wasit for its eastern bed; in 1200 it still flowed past the town (the course called the Shatt al-Gharraf below it).

Primary sources for Abbasid Iraq

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, Gregory Bar Hebraeus (Abu'l-Faraj) (about 1275 to 1286). A later compilation that for 1200 relies on Michael the Syrian and Ibn al-Athir, but adds the Jacobite church's own memory of the Jazira, Mosul, Melitene and the Artuqid and Zangid courts, and carries Michael's story past 1195: the Seljuk brothers' war in Rum, the Khwarazmian and Ghurid wars in the east, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah, and the caliph al-Nasir. Read online
  • The Complete History, Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (about 1200 to 1231, at Mosul). The widest Muslim narrative for the years 596 to 597 AH (1199 to 1201): al-Adil's entry into Cairo and his taking of the sultanate from his nephew al-Mansur Muhammad early in 1200, the quarrels of the Ayyubid princes at Damascus, Aleppo and Hama, the Nile failure and the great famine of Egypt, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah and the Jazira under Gokbori and the Artuqids, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, the Khwarazmshah Tekish's death in 1200 and Muhammad's accession, the Ghurid wars in Khurasan, the Eldiguzids and Georgia, the Almohads in the west, and the Seljuks of Rum in passing. Read online
  • The Mirror of Time, on the History of Notables, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (Shams al-Din Yusuf) (about 1240 to 1256, at Damascus). A Damascene preacher's year-by-year chronicle with obituaries, written by a grandson of the Baghdad scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, so it carries both the Baghdad view (the caliph al-Nasir and his court) and the Damascus view (al-Adil's court, the famine refugees of 1200, prices, the plague of 1201). Read online
  • Comfort of Hearts and Sign of Joy: a History of the Seljuks, Muhammad ibn Ali al-Rawandi (Ravandi) (1203 to 1204, dedicated to Kaykhusraw I of Rum). A history of the Great Seljuks from their origins to the death of the last sultan Toghril III in 1194, begun at Hamadan and finished for Kaykhusraw of Rum when the author moved to Anatolia. Read online
  • The Life of Sultan Jalal al-Din Mankubirti, Shihab al-Din Muhammad al-Nasawi (about 1241, at Aleppo). A Khwarazmian secretary's life of the last Khwarazmshah. Read online
  • Dictionary of Countries, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Aleppo). An alphabetical gazetteer of every place Yaqut had read of or seen: he travelled as a bookseller's agent through Syria, Iraq, Persia, Khurasan and Khwarazm (about 1213 to 1220) and settled in Aleppo. Read online
  • Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
  • The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, Benjamin of Tudela (about 1173). A generation before 1200 but the only survey of its kind: the Jewish communities and their heads from Navarre through Provence, Italy, Constantinople and the Aegean, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, with notes on rulers, trades, the exilarch at Baghdad, the Assassins of Syria and Persia, and hearsay on India, Ceylon and China. Read online

1 more in the sources library for Persia and the Eastern Islamic World.

Sources and studies

  1. G. Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (1905)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.