The Founding of Kufa

تمصير الكوفة

15 AH

Some said that Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas founded Kufa as a garrison town in the year fifteen, and that Ibn Buqayla showed them its site, so they settled on the place that became known by it ¹. According to al-Baladhuri, Umar wrote to Sa'd ordering him to take for the Muslims a home of migration and a garrison, and not to put a body of water between himself and them. He came to al-Anbar and meant to make it his residence, but flies gathered thickly over the people, so he moved to another place, which did not suit them, then moved to Kufa, laid out its plots, allotted the plots, settled the tribes in their places and built its mosque, in the year seventeen. Mosquitoes then afflicted them, and Sa'd wrote to Umar that the people had been bitten and harmed. Umar wrote back that the Arabs are like camels, and only what suits camels suits them: he told him to seek out for them a firm, settled place, and not to put a body of water between himself and them. He entrusted the laying out of plots to Abu al-Hayyaj al-Asadi, 'Amr ibn Malik ibn Ja'da. Then 'Abd al-Masih ibn Buqayla came to Sa'd and said he would guide him to land that descends from the wilderness and rises above the low ground, and he led him to the site of present-day Kufa, which had been called Surasatan. When he reached the site of its mosque, he had a man climb up and shoot an arrow toward the quarter of the qibla wind, and marked the spot; he did the same toward the north wind, the south wind and the saba wind. He then set the mosque and the house of government on the high ground and around it, and cast lots between Nizar and the people of Yemen with two arrows, on the terms that whoever's arrow came out first would have the left side, the better of the two. The arrow of the people of Yemen came out, so their plots lay on the eastern side and those of Nizar on the western side beyond those marks, and what lay short of them was left as an open space for the mosque and the house of government. Al-Sha'bi said that the people of Yemen numbered twelve thousand and Nizar eight thousand. Then al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba enlarged the mosque; Ziyad built it solidly and built the house of government. Ziyad used to say: I spent eighteen hundred on each column of the mosque of Kufa. Amr ibn Huraith al-Makhzumi built in it, and Ziyad would appoint him as his deputy in Kufa when he went out to Basra. The reason for scattering pebbles in it and in the mosque of Basra was that people used to pray, and when they raised their hands, which had gone dusty, they shook them off. Ziyad said: how I fear that people in ages to come will think that shaking off the hands is a sunna in prayer! So he enlarged and widened the mosque, and ordered the pebbles gathered and cast into its courtyard. Abu Ubayda said the founding (takwif) of Kufa was in the year eighteen. Ziyad had made a maqsura in the mosque of Kufa, and Khalid ibn Abd Allah al-Qasri renewed it. It is said that the Muslims first settled at al-Mada'in, laid out plots there and built mosques, then found it unwholesome and pestilential; Sa'd wrote to Umar, and he wrote back that they should be settled in a site to the west. They sent out Kuwayfa ibn Umar to scout, and finding water all around, they went on until they reached the site of present-day Kufa, the high ground called Khadd al-'Adhra', where lavender (khuzama), chamomile, wormwood, southernwood and anemones grew; they laid out plots there. The land between Kufa and al-Hira was called al-Mulatat. Sa'd had made a wooden gate with a door and fenced his palace with a reed screen. Umar sent Muhammad ibn Maslama (may God be pleased with him) al-Ansari, who burned the gate and the screen, and kept Sa'd within the mosques of Kufa.