List of Umayyad Governors of Iraq

This is a list of governors of the Umayyad province of Iraq.

In medieval history, Iraq (Arabic: العراق‎‎ al-‘Irāq) was the area comprising the lower parts of Mesopotamia, being roughly equivalent in size and shape to the ancient region of Babylonia. It was bounded to the northwest by al-Jazira, to the north by Adharbayjan (the Sassanid Aturpatakan), to the northeast by al-Jibal, to the east by al-Ahwaz, to the southeast by the Sea of Fars (the Persian Gulf), and to the southwest by the desert of Arabia.

In the administrative structure of the Umayyad Caliphate, Iraq was at first not a unified province; rather, it was divided between the governors of the important garrison towns of al-Basrah and al-Kufah. The two towns were united for the first time in 670 AD, when the caliph Mu'awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan gave control of both to Ziyad ibn Abihi. After Ziyad's death the two towns were again separately administered, but subsequent caliphs were to repeat the combination and from the reign of 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan on, Iraq was usually in the hands of a single governor.

The governor of Iraq was an extremely powerful individual within the administrative hierarchy of the Umayyad government. In addition to Iraq itself, he was frequently granted the responsibility for the provinces of the empire that had originally been conquered with Basran or Kufan troops, including al-Ahwaz, al-Jibal, Fars, Kerman, Khurasan, Sijistan, Makran, al-Sind, and Jurjan. He was furthermore given authority over the provinces of eastern Arabia, namely al-Bahrayn, al-Yamamah and Oman. In total, these provinces constituted almost half of the entire empire and produced a substantial amount of the revenues collected by the central government in Damascus. The governor had the power to appoint and dismiss sub-governors to each of these provinces, and each of his sub-governors reported directly to him, rather than to the caliph.

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