Present-day Buṣrā is the administrative centre of a sub-district of the same name in the Syrian Republic, and now falls under the jurisdiction of the district of Darʿā. In 2004 the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics stated that it had a population of 19,683 persons. It is close to the intermittent streams of al-Zaydī, al-Raqīq and al-Zaʿtarī, with a small spring called al-Juhayr nearby (al-Muʿjam, 2/319). Buṣrā is on the road joining Darʿā in the west to Ṣalkhad (Biblical Salcah, Roman Salcha) in the east. It was regarded by Muslim geographers as part of the third ‘clime’ (iqlīm), the cent…