The Founding of Wasit

تأسيس واسط

In al-Baladhuri: al-Hajjaj founded the city of Wasit in year 83 or 84, building its mosque, palace and Green Dome — it was reed-land, whence 'Wasit al-Qasab', equidistant from al-Ahwaz, Basra and Kufa; Ibn al-Qirriyya quipped 'he built it in a land not his own and will leave it to sons not his own.' A Wasit shaykh related that when finished al-Hajjaj wrote Abd al-Malik: 'I have founded a city in a karsh of land between the mountain and the two garrison towns and named it Wasit' — hence the Wasitis are called al-Karshiyyin. Before founding it he had meant to move al-Sin's people from Kaskar and dug Nahr al-Sin, then reconsidered, founded Wasit, dug the Nil and Zabi canals, revived their lands and founded the city called al-Nil. He seized Abdallah ibn Darraj's estates — reclaimed deadland, stagnant waters, springs and reed-beds marked with milestones under his Kufa kharaj office with al-Mughira — cleared their reeds and took them for Abd al-Malik, cultivating them; and he stripped doors from Zantaward, al-Dawqara, Dar Awsat, Dayr Masarjasan and Sharabit for his palace and Wasit's congregational mosque — those cities protested 'you have preferred us over our own cities and wealth,' and he paid them no heed.

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Abd al-Malik's Coinage Reform

Heraclius's dinars and the Persian Baghliyya dirhams reached Jahiliya Mecca and traded only as bullion: their mithqal twenty-two qirats less a fraction, ten dirhams seven mithqals, the ratl twelve uqiyyas of forty dirhams — weights the Prophet confirmed, and Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, and Mu'awiya after him. Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr struck a few dirhams under Ibn al-Zubayr, later broken; then Abd al-Malik asked and tested, wrote al-Hajjaj to strike dirhams at fifteen qirats of the dinar-qirats, and struck the Damascene dinars — which came to Medina with Companions and Followers there and none objected. Al-Hasan ibn Salih: the Ajam dirhams ran great and small — twenty, twelve, ten qirats — and when Islam needed the mean for zakah they summed forty-two and struck the third, fourteen qirats, so ten Arab dirhams weigh seven mithqals. Quraysh's weights: the dirham for silver, the dinar for gold, ten dirham-weights to seven dinar-weights, the sha'ira a sixtieth of a dirham, the uqiyya forty dirhams, the nashsh twenty, the nawa five — all confirmed when the Prophet entered Mecca. And Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab, asked who first struck engraved dinars, said 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan — dinars came Byzantine, dirhams Kisrawi and few Himyari'.

The Founding of Wasit

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Abd al-Malik's Coinage Reform