باب الفيل

باب الفيل

A gate of Kufa's mosque; in al-Baladhuri the Muslims took an elephant at al-Mada'in's conquest, wrote Umar who ordered it sold — a Hira man bought and toured it through the villages, and Umm Ayyub bint Umara ibn Uqba, al-Mughira's wife, wished to see it; it stopped at the mosque gate while she looked and gifted its keeper, then a few steps on fell dead — hence the Elephant Gate. It is also said the viewer was al-Walid ibn Uqba's wife, that a magician conjured an elephant on a donkey from the gate — dismissed as false — that the mosque's basin was carried in on an elephant, or that a governor's elephant breached it; the first account is the firmest.