an-Nīl was a city of medieval Iraq, located at the modern site of Niliyah. [1] [2] It was founded by Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the Umayyad governor of Iraq, on the canal known as the Shatt en-Nil, which was named after the Nile river. [3] Both the canal and the city were built as part of a land reclamation project intended to increase the population of the area. [4]
In the late 10th century, the Christian bishopric of Nippur, 50 km to the southeast, was relocated to Nīl. [5]
Nīl survived the Mongol conquest of Iraq in 1258 and continued to flourish for nearly a century thereafter, even while most other settlements in the area declined. It appears to have been abandoned around 1350. [6]
The ruins at Niliyah show that medieval Nīl was a large city, with settlement on both sides of the Shatt en-Nil for over 1 km. A bridge made of baked bricks, identified as the Qanṭara al-Māsī, joined the two sides. To the southeast were a brick factory and a small square tomb. [7]
References
Sources
- Adams, Robert M. (1981). Heartland of Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-00544-5.
- El-Babour, Mansour M. (1981). Urban Networks in Eastern Abbasid Lands: An Historical Geography of Settlement in Mesopotamia and Persia, Ninth- and Tenth-Century A.D. University of Arizona
- Gibson, McGuire (1972). The City and Area of Kish. Miami: Field Research Projects. pp. 53–55, 155.
- Le Strange, Guy (1905). The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 458169031.