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Būrān, or Khadīja (d. 271/884), was a wife of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–833) and the daughter of his agent in Iraq, al-Ḥasan b. Sahl. She was born in Ṣafar 192/December 807 and betrothed to al-Maʾmūn at an early age. Their marriage, at Fam al-Ṣilḥ in Ramaḍān 210/December 825 or January 826, was a seventeen-day celebration of ʿAbbāsid glory and reconciliation. Chroniclers recalled the opulence of the festivities and the generous gifts exchanged. Zubayda, widow of al-Maʾmūn's f…

Basra (al-Baṣra), on the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, is Iraq’s major port city. The mediaeval city was built on the site of a Persian settlement called, in Middle Persian, Vahishtabadh Ardashīr. In the eleventh/eighteenth century, a new city was built near the site of the ancient al-ʿUbulla. ʿUtba b. Ghazwān, a Companion of the Prophet, reportedly founded Basra as a military camp, on orders from the caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–44), allowing Muslim troops to control the route from the Persian Gulf and launch campaigns to the east. Basran t…

From the perspective of the Īlkhānids, who seized Iraq in 656/1258, Basra was peripheral. In the mid-eighth/fourteenth century, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770/1368–9 or 779/1377) found the city largely in ruins, its canals deteriorating. Basra was already moving towards its modern location at al-ʿUbulla. By the early tenth/sixteenth century, the move was complete and the city began an important period in its history. Basra was of strategic significance in the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries because…

ʿAbdallāh b. Jaḥsh (d. 3/625) was a leader among the early Muslims who migrated with the prophet Muḥammad to Medina in the year 1/622. His sister Zaynab, who married the Prophet in the year 5/626 after her divorce from his adopted son Zayd b. Ḥāritha, was also part of this group. ʿAbdallāh b. Jaḥsh belonged to the Banū Asad b. Khuzayma and was a confederate (ḥalīf) of the Banū Umayya of Quraysh. His mother was Umayma bt. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the aunt of the Prophet. ʿAbdallāh’s two brothers, ʿUbaydallāh and Abū Aḥmad, took part in the migration of early Muslims …