حفر نهر ابن عمر

حفر نهر ابن عمر

البصرة

Abdallah ibn Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, Yazid ibn al-Walid's governor, received the Basrans with two flasks — Basra water and batiha water — and saw the difference: 'dig us a canal and we drink this sweet'. He wrote Yazid, who answered 'if the canal's cost reaches Iraq's kharaj, spend what we hold on it'; Nahr Ibn Umar was dug, and when a man guessed the cost at three hundred thousand, Ibn Umar said 'were it Iraq's whole kharaj, I would spend it'.