Uskaf Bani Junayd Mosque

Mosque_Name: Uskāf Banī al-Junayd Mosque

Classification: Between Year CE: 642-710

Year AH: 20-90

age_group: Early Umayyad

City: Uskāf Banī Junayd

Country: Iraq

Rebuilt: No

GPS: 33.0956 45.0460 (approx (within a km)

Gibson Classification:: Between 229.9

Mihrab: No

Details:

The town of Uskāf Banī Junayd, (also Iskāf) was an ancient and medieval city of Iraq, located on the Nahrawan Canal at the present site of Sumāka. During the Sasanian period and early Islamic caliphates, Uskaf was the largest city in the Diyala basin; however, it declined sharply after the Samarran period and was abandoned by the early 1100s. Uskāf Banī al-Junayd is located about 60 km south-east of Baghdad. The excavation sites are spread on both side of the Canal, interspersed over an approximate one km square area.

Excavations were carried out on the behalf of Department of Antiquities of the Iraqi Government and as part of the Diyala Basin Archaeological Project—a survey campaign promoted by the Oriental Institute of Chicago, from the late 1950’s.2 During these campaigns a mosque and a palace, located on the opposite banks of the Nahrawān channel were noted.

Dating the mosque is based on the dimensions of the various kind of bricks used. Accordingly, the history of the mosque was divided into three stages, corresponding each to a single cluster of bricks, distinguished by their dimension: The earliest period features 0.29 × 0.29 m bricks, used for the main walls. The first stage was dated to a period before the foundation of Samarra. The second stage was identified by arcades surrounding the saḥn, with 0.27 × 0.27 m bricks. The dimension of the bricks used for the second stage were related to those used in the Abū Dulaf mosque and hence this stage was attributed to a period close to the 838, Samarra’s founding year. This dating was also confirmed, according to Thorkild Jacobsen, by the shape of the arches whose closer comparison is with Ukhaiḍir.

Archaeologists have been puzzled with the direction of the mihrab, and that it was off-centered. The original smaller mosque did not have a mihrab, which seems to have been added to the later larger mosque.

The town of Uskāf Banī Junayd, (also Iskāf) was an ancient and medieval city of Iraq, located on the Nahrawan Canal at the present site of Sumāka. During the Sasanian period and early Islamic caliphates, Uskaf was the largest city in the Diyala basin; however, it declined sharply after the Samarran period and was abandoned by the early 1100s.

Information taken from: (Anticoli, F. (2021). Some Considerations on the Mosque in Uskāf Banī al-Junayd. Academia Letters, Article 2582. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2582)

References:

Safar, Fuʾād, 1960. “Archaeological Investigations in the Areas of the Main Irrigation Project in Iraq”, Sumer 16: 3-12 (in Arabic).

Creswell, K.A.C., and Allan, James W., 1989. A Short Account of Early Islamic Architecture: Revised and Supplemented by James W. Allan, Aldershot: The American University in Cairo Press, 268.

Adams, Robert McC, 1965. Land Behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 95-96.

Jacobsen, Thorkild, 1958. “Summary of Report by the Diyala Basin Archaeological Project June 1, 1957 to June 1, 1958”, Sumer 14: 79-89, p. 89.

Antun, Thallein, 2016. The Architectural Form of the Mosque in the Central Arab Lands, from the Hijra to the End of the Umayyad Period, ¹⁄₆₂₂-¹³³⁄₇₅₀, BAR International Series 2790, Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 14-15.

Thesaurus d’Epigraphie Islamique, inscription n° 26278, accessed May 20th, 2021, http://www.epigraphie-islamique.uliege.be.