al-Anbar

Al-Anbar: a town. According to al-Baladhuri it was so named because the granaries of the Persians were there, and the clients and dependants of al-Nu'man used to be given their provisions from it. ¹

Khalid besieged it after a raid on the market of Baghdad and the burning of its surroundings, and its people made peace with him. ¹

In the caliphate of Umar its district was made subject to a treaty for four hundred thousand dirhams and a thousand Qatwani cloaks a year, through the treaty of Jarir ibn Abd Allah al-Bajali. al-Baladhuri gives another report, introduced with "it is said", of eighty thousand. ¹

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry AL-ANBAR (its headword is misprinted in the harvest) describes a town with a Persian garrison and an Arab element in its population, and a Jewish centre of some importance. The tower there played a part in the Emperor Julian's campaign against Persia. Khalid took al-Anbar in 12/634, expelled the Persian garrison and made terms with the inhabitants; Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas built the third mosque in Iraq there, and when Umar asked him to found a garrison town in Iraq he rejected al-Anbar because of its fever and fleas. ²

Abu 'l-Abbas moved his seat to al-Anbar in 134/752 and built a city for his Khurasani troops half a farsakh above the old town, with a great palace at its centre; there he died and was buried. Al-Mansur resided there before the foundation of Baghdad in 145/762, and al-Rashid stayed there twice, in 180/799 and 187/803. The population partly consisted of descendants of the Khurasanis. ³

As the caliphate weakened, al-Anbar suffered from bedouin raids, and its capture and devastation by the Qarmatian Abu Tahir in 315/927 hastened its decay. Al-Istakhri describes it as a modest town where the buildings of Abu 'l-Abbas could still be seen; Ibn Hawqal says it was declining, and al-Muqaddasi that its population was small. It lived mainly by agriculture, and its position on the land and river routes to Syria kept some trade. ⁴

In 1262 the Mongol commander Kerboka plundered al-Anbar and killed many of its inhabitants. Under the Mongols it remained an administrative centre; Juwayni dug a canal from near al-Anbar to Najaf, and the town is still named as the centre of a district in the first half of the eighth/fourteenth century. A wall of sun-dried brick surrounded it. ⁴

The ruins lie about five km north-west of al-Falluja, extending north-west to south-east over about six km. In the north-east corner stand the remains of a square fortified building of Parthian sun-dried brick, and about a kilometre south-west is an early Islamic mosque. The Nahr al-Karma or al-Saklawiyya leaves the Euphrates west of the ruins; it is probably the pre-Islamic Nahr al-Rufayl, and it lost its importance in Islamic times. ⁴