Sawad

Sawad was the name used in early Islamic times (7th–12th centuries) for southern Iraq. It means "black land" or "arable land"[1] and refers to the stark contrast between the alluvial plain of Mesopotamia and the Arabian Desert. Under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, it was an official political term for a province encompassing most of modern Iraq except for the Syrian Desert and Upper Mesopotamia in the north.

For other uses, see Sawad (disambiguation).
Map of the Sawad ("Iraq") under the Abbasid Caliphate

As a generic term in Arabic and Persian, sawād (سواد) was used to denote the irrigated and cultivated areas in any district. Unmodified, it always referred to southern Iraq, the sawād of Baghdad. It replaced the earlier and more narrow term Rādhān.

Sources
  • Schaeder, H.H. (1997). "Sawād". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume IX: San–Sze. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 87. ISBN 978-90-04-10422-8.
  • Michele Campopiano, “Land Tax Alā l-misāḥa and muqāsama: Legal Theory and Balance of Social Forces in Early Medieval Iraq (Sixth to Eighth Centuries)”, in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 54/2, 2011, 239-269

References
  1. Wehr, Hans (1979). A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 513. ISBN 978-3-447-02002-2.
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