Basra since the Mongol conquest - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
General Material Designation
[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
Longrigg, Steven Helmsley
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Leiden
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Brill
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
(1,184 words)
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
From the perspective of the Īlkhānids, who seized Iraq in 656/1258, Basra was peripheral. In the mid-eighth/fourteenth century, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770/1368-9 or 779/1377) found the city largely in ruins, its canals deteriorating. Basra was already moving towards its modern location at al-ʿUbulla. By the early tenth/sixteenth century, the move was complete and the city began an important period in its history. Basra was of strategic significance in the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries because of its location on the frontier