The Founding of Kufa

A flat alluvial plain at the western edge of the lower Euphrates floodplain, with the river visible as a green thread in the middle distance. The terrain is the Mesopotamian plain at the transition between the river-lands and the desert, central Iraq, not Syria, not Persia.

At the centre of the laid-out site, the foundations of a great congregational mosque are being marked out: a vast square enclosure of beaten earth with the qibla wall demarcated by stakes and rope to the south-west, toward Makkah. The plan is the early hypostyle mosque pattern, open court with a shaded portico, at the city's largest possible scale.

Around the mosque, surveyor's ropes and pegs are laying out broad streets radiating from the central plaza. The pattern is recorded in the early Sunni historical sources (al-Tabari, al-Baladhuri) as deliberate: wide central avenues with named tribal quarters along them, a planned city of the new garrison type rather than an organic Mesopotamian town.

Reed-mat shelters, goat-hair tents, and a few early mud-brick walls indicate that the population, the Muslim Arab tribes of the conquering army, has only just begun to settle the plot. The Sirah of the conquests records this transitional moment: the army moves from the campaign camp at al-Mada'in (Ctesiphon) to a healthier high-ground site, and the new city is laid out on that ground.

At the centre of the marked-out ground an archer draws his bow: the early sources record that a powerful bowman was set in the middle of the site to loose an arrow toward each of the four directions, and that nothing was to be built within the fall of the arrows, so that the bowshot fixed the bounds of the great mosque's open precinct. The city's founder, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas (radiyallahu 'anhu), commander of the conquest of Iraq and appointed by 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (radiyallahu 'anhu), was himself famed as the first man to shoot an arrow in the path of Allah; the surveyors' rods and ropes around him set the prescribed street widths (recorded at 40, 30, and 20 cubits).

Beyond the laid-out town, the great ruined arch of the Sasanian palace at al-Mada'in (Ctesiphon, the Taq Kasra) is visible on the far eastern horizon across the Tigris. The army has just come from there; al-Mada'in was found unhealthy, and the Caliph 'Umar (RA) ordered a new garrison city on higher western ground. The historical relationship between the two sites is the scene's strategic context.

The light is clear central-Mesopotamian spring sun. The year in the Arabic calendar is the seventeenth after the Hijrah, corresponding to 638 CE, the year in which the principal Rashidun garrison cities of Iraq, Kufa and Basra, were founded as the administrative and military framework of the new Muslim east.

No royal palace, no king's hall, no Sasanian iwan in the new plan: at the centre of the city is the mosque, and around it the city's life is organised. The early garrison-city plan would become the architectural-administrative model for the wider conquest, replicated at Fustat in Egypt three years later and at Basra at approximately the same time as Kufa.

al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-al-Muluk (early 10th c.): Principal early Sunni historical source for the conquest of Iraq and the founding of the garrison cities. Preserves the day-by-day account of the move from al-Mada'in to Kufa, the deliberate logic of the founding under 'Umar (RA), and the role of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas (RA).

al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan (9th c.): Standard early Sunni geographical-conquest history. Preserves the prescribed street widths, the named tribal quarters, the supervisor of the surveying, and the early administrative organisation of the city.

Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh (early 13th c.): Synthesises the earlier reports into a coherent narrative of the founding and the early growth of the city. Used for the political consequences in the years following.

Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya: Standard major Sunni history. Confirms the chronology and the named participants of the founding.

Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra: Used for the biographical detail on Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas (RA) — founder of the city and, in the tradition, the first man to shoot an arrow in the path of Allah — and the Companions who settled the new city. His standing as an archer and the Prophet's words to him at Uhud ('Throw, Sa'd...') are recorded in the Sahih collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim; the arrow-shot marking of the mosque precinct is in al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari.