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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…

Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, amīr (known in Western sources as Grand Sharif) of Mecca from 1908 to 1916, and king of the Ḥijāz from 1916 to 1924, proclaimed the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and sought the title of caliph, but lost his kingdom to the Saudi dynasty. Ḥusayn was a member of the ʿAwn branch of the Meccan Hāshimite sharīfs who, as descendants of the prophet Muḥammad, shared rule in Mecca and parts of the Ḥijāz with the Ottoman governors of that province. Born in Istanbul in 1853 or 1854, Ḥusayn passed his youth partly in the Ḥijāz and partly in Istanbul, where after 18…

[English edition] كانت البصرة في أنظار إيلخانيان الذين استولوا على العراق سنة 656هـ/1258م إحدى مدن الأطراف. وفي منتصف القرن الثامن الهجري/الرابع عشر الميلادي وجد ابن بطّوطة (ت.770هـ/1368م 9 أو 779هـ/1377) المدينة في خراب كبير وقنواتها متلفة. وقد سبق أن أخذت البصرة في الاتّجاه نحو موقعها الجديد في الأبلّة. وفي مطلع القرن العاشر هجري/السادس عشر اكتمل هذا التوجّه وعرفت البصرة حركة شاملة ودخلت المدينة فترة مهمّة من تاريخها. لقد كان لها أهميّة استراتيجية في القرنين العاشر والحادي عشر هجريّا /السادس عشر …