Al-Qadisiyyah (historical city)

Al-Qadisiyyah is a historical city of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, lying southwest of the towns of al-Hillah and al-Kufah near the Euphrates River. It is best known as the site of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, fought around 636, in which an Arab Muslim army under Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas defeated a larger Sasanian force led by Rostam Farrokhzad and so opened the conquest of Persia. Before the Arab conquest it was a small village on the western side of the Euphrates, close to an old castle at `Udhayb and possibly part of the Wall of the Arabs. In the centuries that followed it grew into a noted stop on the highways of commerce leading to Baghdad and Mecca. A second, separate Qadisiyyah is recorded on the Tigris between Baghdad and Samarra, and medieval geographers such as Ibn Khordadbeh describe both. Recent scholarship has worked to locate the conquest site precisely on the ground.