Entrace to Imam Ali mosque
(click to enlarge)
Najaf, Kufa
The following is a description of Najaf as recollected by Gavin Young from his book "IRAQ Land of Two Rivers."
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Entrace to Imam Ali mosque (click to enlarge) |
On the road to Najaf, at a distance, a dark line accompanies the almost straight road to the great city where Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law and cousin, lies buried. The line of palms signals a great swathe of rich agricultural land astride the Euphrates on the left. To the right, desert: a few black tents, two or three high-wailed khans or caravanserais with no historical importance that I know of. A sand-storm obliterated the sudden sun-burst effect the golden dome of Ali can make. On a clear day they say it is visible from forty miles away. Unlike Kerbela, a place of gardens, Najaf has the sterner face of a desert city.
I made a bee-line for the office of the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Mudir el Awqaf), a friendly former teacher called Mahmoud Sha'ban. He provided some facts and figures.
Worshipers at Imam Ali Mosque (click to enlarge) |
Imam Ali Mosque (click to enlarge) |
Historians say the tomb of Ali at Najaf was very likely built by Azoud ad Dowleh in 977; that it was burnt later and rebuilt by the Seljuk Malik Shah in 1086; and rebuilt yet again by Ismail Shah, the Safawid, in about 1500. No doubt numerous other hands have tinkered with it since. The tomb has the same style as those of Kerbela, Samarra and Kadhimain. It is a rectangular enclosure surrounding a two-storied sanctuary, containing the tomb, with a great dome over it. Infidels are not admitted.
The facade of Ali's tomb, seen from the main or northern gateway, is richly beautiful- the gold tiles have darkened handsomely with age. And through the doorway to the tomb itself you can see the glistening stalactite effect of mirrors and the harsh neon lights that are features of all the major shrines of Iraq. Pink, blue and yellow patterns of birds and flowers bedeck the archways into the courtyard which will soon be floored with marble brought from northern Iraq. Heavy wooden and gold doors lead in from the street opposite the covered suq, where you can buy 'worry-beads' (sibhas), finely worked gold ornaments, or ankle-length cloaks for winter or summer, some hemmed with gold braid.
At the back of the suq, there are religious schools worth visiting- the Medresa, for instance, of Sayyid Mohamed Kadhim al Yazdi, a leader, I am told, of the rising against the British occupation forces in 1920. In 19 18, a handful of men of Najaf walked into the office of the British Political Officer there, Captain Marshall, and murdered him at his desk. Before the British came in 1916, the Turkish administration had to put up with regular outbreaks of revolt from Najaf and Karbala, both hot-houses of nationalist fervor, and faced a particularly nasty outburst, not surprisingly, when it tried to impose conscription on the male population of Najaf during the First World War.
The al Yazdi Medresa has sixty or seventy rooms, immensely deep cellars and brick-lined wells that plummet down some one hundred feet. Young divines with beards, cropped hair, skullcaps or turbans, sit about, read, or wash their faces, feet and arms before praying. They are pale from studying away from the sun; many of them come from Afghanistan or Iran. They look curiously at visitors.
Deep cellars like those of the Medresa are a special feature of many Najaf houses. These sirdabs are three-, four- or even five-storied affairs, approached through courtyards of old houses in which you find small doors that open onto narrow stairways plunging into the bowels of the earth. Romantically sinister, you may think, and you are right. They were, indeed, used throughout the somewhat alarming history of Najaf, as places of concealment and as means of flight from political opponents, or for violent crimes and the secret disposal of bodies. Now they are used to escape the summer heat. There are wells down there under the city, so the cellars make excellent larders. You can keep fruit and meat cool in them; people grow melons there. Mahmoud Sha'ban, the very human Mudir el Awqaf, led me down one of them, lighting the steep stairway with a torch, although there is also electric light these days, He pointed out, when we came up again, how well adapted the older houses of Najaf are to the prevailing climate: wide, open courtyards to sleep in under the stars; balconies to sit on out of the sun; vaulted ceilings and thick walls against the heat. Above all- the priceless thing most modern Iraqi houses lack- space to spread oneself, solid walls that will not crack and leak and look shoddy after a few years.
Wadi es salaam (click to enlarge) |
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing in Najaf is the graveyard. How many Muslims over the centuries have been brought here for burial from all parts of the world of Islam? Surely millions. So Najaf is embraced by a vast semi-circle of graves- by an immense City of the Dead- and still, day after day, people bring their loved ones to be interred here. The cemetery is called al Wadi es Salaam, the Vale of Peace (as in Kerbela), and you can drive a car through its 'streets', winding through the countless brick and cement tombs, some modest, some the size of small mosque-shrines. Some are gaily painted pink or green; some display photographs of the dead: turbaned graybeards or bright-eyed youngsters with proud moustaches and hair in fashionable quiffs.
'History has stopped since that day [of Hussein's martyrdom] in Kerbela and Najaf,' Freya Stark wrote in 1937. 'When you cross the bridge of boats to Kufa, you step from Babylonia into the history of Islam.' History has moved on since 1937 in the sense that the modern suburbs of Najaf straggle to join up with Kufa, several relatively unobtrusive factories have been built, and the bridge of boats to Kufa has been replaced with a new conventional one. There is also a good tourist hotel in Najaf. Nevertheless, it is true still that Kufa is surrounded by hillocks of sand under which the Bedu Muslim conquerors lie buried. And not only those slain at Kerbela.
The Prophet Mohamed had died in 632 at Medina. In 633, his general, .nicknamed Sword of Islam, the great Khalid ibn Walid, crossed the Arabian desert at the head of a Bedu army inspired with an almost uncontrollable religious inspiration. Iraq was then a province of the Great King of Sassanian Persia; the western regions were ruled by a Persian satellite Christian Arab prince of the Lakhmid dynasty, which had its capital at Hira, near Kufa. A large Bedu tribe, the Beni Bekr ibn Wail, forerunner of the modern Arab tribe of Aneza, was in revolt against the Shahinshah; and its chief, Muthanna ibn Haritha, joined Khalid ibn Walid and professed Islam. In 633 the joint Muslim force occupied the AI Hafar wells outside modern Kuwait. Hira was soon taken, so was Ain al Tamr. Hira became Khalid's base of operation. He was soon called to help in the conquest of Syria but Muthanna remained, defeating the Persians in minor engagements near Babylon but witnessing a bitterly expensive Arab defeat on the Euphrates that came to be called the Battle of the Bridge. Muthanna died of wounds in 635, just after a smallish victory at a place called Buwaib had saved the situation. Muthanna's successor was an even more extraordinary leader, Saad ibn abi Waqqas, a cousin of the Prophet and a veteran soldier. The Persians by this time had gathered together an enormous army under their most renowned commander, Rustem. They had a 'secret weapon' to use against the Arabs in the form of thirty-three elephants carrying massive howdahs packed with archers on their backs. A decisive battle took place on the Euphrates- a battle that changed the history of Iraq. It was fought at Qadisiya, somewhere between Najaf and Abu Sukheir, though there is nothing to see there now.
The Koran was read out to the Muslim troops: 'O Prophet, urge on the believers to battle. If there be of you twenty steadfast, they shall conquer two hundred . . .' Saad dealt with the elephants by forming special 'commando' teams who ducked under the great, lumbering creatures and either cut their girths to send the laden howdahs crashing to the ground, or pierced the elephants' eyes with spears, so that they rushed about in pain and panic, wildly trumpeting, colliding with other elephants and trampling Persians as well as Arabs. The result of the four-day battle of Qadisiya was the capture of the great panther-skin banner of Persia, overwhelming defeat for the Persians, and the death of the Great King's hero, Rustem. Soon Saad's forces, almost delirious with glee, had sacked Seleucia on the west bank of the Tigris and were contemplating in awe the Shah's luxurious capital of Ctesiphon on the east bank. The first celebration of the Muslims' Friday prayers in Iraq took place in the great arched hall there.
The Arabs' crossing of the Tigris was strongly opposed. But a Persian convert, Salman Pak, led the cavalry across by a little-known ford. By this time the Shah himself, King Yezdegird, had taken to the hills. But the Arabs, too, withdrew. The Caliph Omar in Medina sent orders for Saad ibn abi Waqqas to leave the fleshpot city of Ctesiphon and establish a military base at Basra and another at Kufa. So at this point Kufa enters history- and remains there.
You can see the ruins of a great palace in Kufa today, just alongside the mosque. This is not, needless to say, Saad's original construction. And the mosque, regrettably, is not the first mosque which would have been made of mud-brick and reeds; it is perhaps early eighteenth-century. It is dedicated to not one but two revered figures - Muslim bin Agil, a grandson of Hussein the Martyr, and his friend Hani ibn Arwa. When my Iraqi friends ventured to lead me into the courtyard, a couple of religious attendants (killidars) in their red tarboushes with green cloth wrapping urgently barred the way. 'But why?' my friends demanded of them, when I had declined to make a false statement that I was Muslim (out of sheer funk as much as principle, I admit). 'This gentleman was allowed to enter the courtyards of Hussein and Abbas in Karbala, than which surely nothing around here can be more sacred.' The religious experts put us in our place. 'Quite wrong,' they said. 'Those places in Karbala are only shrines. This is the House of God. Here then is the greater sanctity.' So I peeped from the street at the roofless enclosure and at the golden dome and minaret. (New tiling is going on here, too.) And deprecated the hideous off-white modern wall outside with its criss-crossed black lines identical with those around the wall of Kadhimain where I was almost tempted to start a game of noughts-and-crosses. At Hani's gate an old woman squatted, selling duck eggs for 50 fils and hen eggs for 20 fils.
Saad ibn abi Waqqas was put in his place in no mean fashion shortly after setting up his military base in Kufa as the Caliph Omar had instructed him. Victorious general though he was- conqueror of the great Sassanian King of Kings, extender of Islam to the civilized lands of Iran- soon a messenger arrived: 'I hear you have built yourself a mansion,' the Caliph Omar's letter said, 'and have erected a door between you and your people . . . Come out of it and do not erect a door . . . so that people have to wai; until you receive them.' At this point, Saad was dismissed from his post as commander-in-chief in Iraq, although he was still to be a respected figure at Medina. (Incidentally, anyone who has spent any time with tribal Arabs will know that the sheikh- no matter how august he be and no matter how busily involved with the affairs of a large tribe- 'sits' in his tent daily, open to all-comers high or low, however important or trivial their business, and no tent-flap shuts the ruler off from this total exposure to his or any other people. This is the admirable Arab tradition.)
Kufa became prominent again after the murder not only of the Caliph Omar but also that of his successor, Othman. At that point, Ali, the Prophet's cousin, was at last proclaimed Caliph. However, as I mentioned in the story of Hussein, the powerful governor of Muslim Syria, Muawiya, refused to accept Ali, and Zubeir ibn al Awwam and Talha ibn Ubaidullah, two important dissidents in Medina, hurried off to Basra to raise the tribes there against the new Caliph, whom they accused of complicity in Othman's assassination. Thus an army suddenly appeared outside Basra to confront Ali, who had in his turn hastened east to face up in person to this physical threat to his sacred authority. Ali, a gentle man, first of all tried to negotiate a peaceful solution. But tempers were high and a battle could not be avoided. In this first conflict between Muslims, Ali was victorious and Zubeir ibn al Awwam and Talha ibn Ubaidullah were slain. Aisha, the Prophet's favorite wife, was also in the forefront of the fighting, and this lady saw- or so it is said- seventy men who held the bridle of her camel killed before her eyes. When Ali courteously helped the lady down from her litter it was as full of enemy spears as a porcupine's back is full of quills. So the battle was named the Battle of the Camel (December AD 656).
Presently, another battle between Ali and Muawiya's troops ended in stalemate. Ali retired to Kufa and there he was murdered at the door of the little mosque. That was the first time Kufa became the seat of a Caliph. The power then-passed to Muawiya, the first of the Omayyad Caliphs who ruled powerfully in Damascus for one hundred years. Kufa bubbled along in semi-revolt for some time, and one Omayyad viceroy, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, left Kufa to make Wasit, near modern Kut al Amara, his capital. But at last the Omayyads' power began to crumble into corruption. Then Abdullah, nick-named Saffah or Blood-Shedder, a great-great-grandson of the Prophet's uncle, Abbas, raised open revolt, seizing Kufa and proclaiming himself Caliph. So Kufa became the first Abbasid capital. Not for long, though; the tricky nature of the people of Kufa at that time determined Abdullah's successor to move the capital of Islam. That successor was Mansur, the founder of Baghdad, the city that would very shortly become a glory of the world. After long consultations, Mansur began sketching out his Round City on the site of a former Sassanian village on the west bank of the Tigris, where the Euphrates was joined to its river-twin by a navigable canal. Soon Kufa's greatest days were over. For Kufa today is a modest, restful place.
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