Medieval city of Wasit

 ruins, place with historical importance, Medieval / Middle Ages

 Upload a photo

The archaeological site of the Medieval city of Wasit (more properly Wāsiṭ), founded west of the older town of Kashkar by the first Umayyad governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj in the 690s or early 700s AD. At this point, and for a short while again in the 8th century, the city served as the capital of the caliphate's province of Iraq. The city incorporated the older Kashkar across the medieval course of the Tigris which ran between them, and the two sections of the city were connected by a pontoon bridge. The city began to decline in the High and Late Middle Ages, with the civil wars between the Saljuq sultans, the Ilkhanid conquest, and the subsequent anarchy in southern Iraq. The Tigris shifted its course to its current, more easterly position, during the 15th and early 16th century, which led to the abandonment of Wasit. Its position has been determined only with some difficulty following archaeological excavations in the 1930s and 1940s.