ʿirāq

One only has to study the ancient historians: all their anecdotes come from ʿIrāq, which also became the decisive area for the state finances.

And Bakr—all ʿIrāq’s broad plain is theirs: but if so they will, a shield comes to guard their homes from lofty Yamāmah’s dales.

In order to keep the support of their new and powerful Persian constituency—on whose backs the Abbasids had come to power—the caliph Manṣūr (considered the founder of the Abbasid state and builder of Baghdad) promoted the thinking that “the ʿAbbāsid dynasty, in addition to being the descendants of the Prophet and hence satisfying the demands of both Sunnī and Shīʿī Muslims, was at the same time the successor of the ancient imperial dynasties in ʿIrāq and Iran, from the Babylonians through the Sasanians, their immediate predecessors.[…]”