The Founding of al-Ramla

تأسيس الرملة

c. 715 CE · c. 96 AH

al-Ramla

In al-Baladhuri: al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik gave his brother Sulayman command of the Filastin jund, and he settled at Lydda then founded the city of al-Ramla and made it an amsar — the first thing he built being his palace and the house known as Dar al-Sabbaghin with a central cistern, then he laid out the mosque's plan and built it, taking the caliphate before completing it and finishing it in his reign, Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz completing it while reducing the plan, saying 'the people of al-Ramla are content with this measure'; when Sulayman built for himself he gave people leave to build and they did, digging the canal called Barada and wells for them, a Christian clerk of Lydda named al-Batriq ibn al-Nakka overseeing the expenditure on the works and the congregational mosque; the city of al-Ramla did not exist before Sulayman, its site being a sandy tract; the Umayyads spent on its wells and canal after him, then the Abbasids did likewise, the charge issuing yearly from caliph to caliph until al-Mu'tasim entered it in the register, whence it became a standing annuity reckoned to the claimants.