Sawad
Historical region in Southern Iraq / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Sawad?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
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.
As a generic term in Arabic, 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.
The term sawad eventually came to refer to the rural district around a particular city; thus, contemporary geographers made references to the Sawad of Baghdad, of Basra, of Kufa, of Wasit, of Samarra, or of Anbar. This usage was exclusive to Iraq.[2]: 16