An excerpt from the Safar-nama of Nasir Khusraw:
“The city has a large wall, except for the portion that faces the water, where there is no wall. The water here is all marsh. The Tigris and Euphrates coming together at the beginning of the Basrah district, the Tigris and Euphrates coming together at the beginning of the Basra distrct, and when the water of the Hawiza the confluence it is called Shatt al-Arab. From this Shatt al-Arab, two large channels have been cut, between the mouths of which is a distance of one league, running in the direction of the Qibla for four leagues, after which they converge and run another one league to the south.
From these channels numerous canals have been dug in all directions among palm groves and orchards. The higher of these channels, the one that is northeast is called Ma’gil channel, whereas the south-eastern one is called the Ubulla channel. These two channels form an enormous rectangular ‘island’; on the shortest side of which Basra is situated. To the southwest of Basrah is open plain that supports neither settlement nor agriculture. When I arrived, most of the city lay in ruins, the inhabited parts being greatly dispersed, with up to half a league from one quarter of the city to another. Nonetheless, the walls were strong and well kept, the populace numerous and the ruler with plenty of income. At that time, the Emir of Basra was the son of Aba-Kalijar the Daylamite, King of Fars. His vizir was a Persian, Abu Mansur Shahmardan by name.
Every day there are three markets in Basra. In the morning, commerce is held at a place called the Khuza’a Market; in the middle of the day at Uthman’s market; and at the end of the day at Uthman’s Market and at the Flintmakers’ Market. The procedure at the market is as follows: you turn over whatever you have to a moneychanger and get a draft in return; then you buy whatever you need, deducting the price from the money-changer’s draft. No matter how long you stayed in the city, you would never need more than a moneychanger’s draft.
When we arrived we were as naked and destitute as mad men, for it had been three months since we had unloosed our hair. I wanted to enter a bath in order to get warm, the weather being chilly and our clothing scant. My brother and I were clad only in old lungis with a piece of coarse fabric on our backs to keep out the cold. “In this state who would let us into a bath?” I asked. Therefore, I sold a small satchel in which I kept my books and wrapped the few rusty dirhams I had received in a piece of paper to give the bath attendant, thinking that he might give us a little while longer in the bath in order for us to remove the grime from our bodies.
When I handed him the coins, he looked at us as though we were madmen and said, “Get away from here! People are coming out of the bath.” As he would not allow us in, we came away humiliated and in haste. Even the children who were playing at the bathhouse door thought we were madmen and chased after us, throwing stones and yelling. We retired into a corner and reflected on the state of the world.
Now, as we were in debt to the camel driver for thirty dinars, we had no recourse save the vizier of the King of Ahwaz, Abu’l-Fath Ali ibn Ahman. He was a worthy man, learned in poetry and belles-letters and very generous. He had come to Basra with his sons and retinue and take up residence but, at present, had no administrative position. Therefore, I got in touch with a Persian, also a man of learning, with whom I had some acquaintance and who had access to the vizier but who was also in straightened (ordinary) circumstances and totally without means to be of assistance to me.
He mentioned my situation to the vizier and as soon as he heard, he sent a man with a horse for me to come to him just as I was. Too ashamed of my destitution and nakedness, I hardly thought it fitting to appear before him, so I wrote a note of regret, saying that I would come to him later. I had two reasons for doing this: one was my poverty and the other was, as I said to myself, that he now imagines that I have some claim to being learned but when he sees my note he will figure out just what my worth is, so that when I go before him, I need not be ashamed.
Immediately he sent me thirty dinars to have a suit of clothing made. With that amount I bought two fine suits and on the third day appeared at the vizier’s assembly. I found him to be a worthy, polite and scholarly man of pleasant appearance, humble, religious and well spoken. He had four sons, the eldest of whom was an eloquent, polite and reasonable youth called Rais Abu-Abdullah Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Ahmad.
Not only a poet and administrator; he was wise and devout beyond his youthful age. We were taken in and stayed there from the first of Sha’aban until the middle of Ramadan. The thirty dinars due the Arab for our camel were paid by the vizier and I was relieved of that burden. (May God thus deliver all his servants from the torment of debt!) When I desired to depart he sent me off by sea with gifts and bounteous good things so that I reached Fars in ease and comfort, thanks to the generosity of that noble man. (May God delight in such noble men!)
In Basra there are thirteen shrines in the name of the commander of the faithful Ali ibn Abi-Talib, one of which is called the Bani Mazin shrine. The Commander of the Faithful Ali came to Basra during Rabi’ al-Awwal in the year 36 AH [September 655 CE], while Ayesha was waging war against him, and married Layla, the daughter of Mas’ud Nahshali. This shrine was the house of that lady and the Commander of the Faithful stayed there for seventy-two days, after which he returned to Kufa. There is another shrine next to the Friday mosque called the Bab al-Tib shrine. Inside the Friday mosque, I saw a wooden post thirty cubits long and five spans, four fingers thick, although it is somewhat thicker at one end. This post is from India and the Commander of the Faithful is said to have picked it up and brought it there. The other eleven shrines are in different places and I visited them all.
After our worldly condition had taken a turn for the better and we each had on decent clothing, we went back one day to the bathhouse we had not been allowed to enter. As soon as we came through the door the attendant and everyone stood up respectfully until we went inside and the scrubber and servant came to attend to us. When we emerged from the bath, all who were in the dressing room rose and remained standing until we had put on our clothes and departed. During that time the attendant said to a friend of his, “These are the very young men we refused admission one day.” They imagined that we did not know their language, but I said in Arabic, “You are perfectly correct. We are the very ones who had old sacks tied to our backs.” The man was ashamed and most apologetic.
Now these two events transpired within twenty days and I have included the story so that everyone may know not to lament adversity brought on by fate and not to despair of the Creator’s mercy, for He is merciful indeed.”
Source: Thackston, W. Wheeler McIntosh, ed. trans., Nasir- i Khusraw’s Book of Travels (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2010), 115-119.
Basra is a town in lower-Mesopotamia, on the Shatt al-Arab, about 420 km to the south-east of Baghdad. Built probably on the site of ancient Diriditis, and more certainly on the site of the ancient Persian settlement, the town of Basra can be considered as a new construction. We may distinguish between the Old Basra, marked today by the village of Zubayr, and the New Basra, founded in the 11th AH / 18th CE century in the proximity of the ancient al-Ubulla, the starting point of the modern town of Basra. The discovery of oil to the west of Zubayr led to rapid economic growth and development of the city in the 20th century.
The Arab Conquest of Basra: The troops of second Muslim Caliph ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (d. 24 AH / 644 CE) established a military camp on the ruins of the old Persian post called al-Khurayba (“the little ruin”) in 17 AH / 638 CE. The town then developed gradually. At the outset, the dwelling places were simple huts with low walls. The Umayyad military general Ziyad b. Abu Sufyan (d. 53 AH / 673 CE) began to replace the humble structures with baked bricks, and Basra began to assume town-like appearance with a new Great Mosque and a residence for the Governor. At all times, Basra’s supply of drinking water posed a grave problem. Despite the digging of canals and utilisation of the bed of the Ancient Pallacopas to provide the town with a river port, the inhabitants were forced to go as far as the rover Tigris to get their water supply.
This inconvenience, in addition to the rigours of the climate, would have been enough to prevent the military encampment becoming a great city, but political and economic factors were sufficiently strong to keep the people of Basra in the town to whom the town owed its development. The Mongol invasion of Basra in the 7th century AH / 13th century CE, debilitated the city. Basra then fell into the hands of Ilkhanids (r. 654-754 AH / 1256-1353 CE). In the mid-8th AH / 14th CE century, Ibn Batuta found the city largely in ruins.
The Ottoman conquest of Iraq: In 941 AH / 1534 CE, two expeditions from central Iraq succeeded in establishing the Ottoman Sultan’s authority against powerful local (tribal or urban) candidates for power in Basra. However, the city’s restoration to the Empire remained incomplete until after a further full generation of local uprising and Persian penetration. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Basra remained the metropolis of Southern Iraq, the country’s sole port. However primitive, and ill-equipped, Basra continued to serve as the base for a decayed and microscopic fleet; a centre of date trade and as a harbour to the tribes and princes of Arabia, Khuzistan and the Persian Gulf.
With Improved security conditions and establishment of commercial links with Europe and America, Basra became an Ottoman wilayat (province) in 1850. During the British mandate in Iraq (1920-32), Basra rapidly got transformed into its most modern form. The industry developed rapidly, on a major scale, and soon became Basra’s greatest source of technical education and employment as well as its wealth. A small oil refinery was completed at Muftiyya in 1952. Meanwhile the city and district continued to benefit greatly from the enrichment of the central government of Iraq through its oil reserves. Important developments in flood-protection, land reclamation and perennial irrigation were planned in the vicinity of the city.
Citation:
“Al-Basra.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online, 2012.
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Daftary, Farhad. A short history of the Ismailis. (Princeton, NJ: M. Wiener, 1998).
Hunsberger, Alice C. Nasir Khusraw, the ruby of Badakhshan. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000).
“Basra.”’Encyclopaedia Iranica Online. 2013
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/basra-ar [accessed June 2013]
