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Note 6: Location of Khanafis etc.
There is no certainty about the location of Khanafis, Huseid, Muzayyah, Saniyy and
Zhumail, and I accept the possibility of error in my geographical reconstruction of this
operation. Historical indications about these locations are given below.
Khanafis
: According to Yaqut (Vol. 2, p. 473), the place was near Anbar and in the
vicinity of Baradan. Musil, in one part of his book (p. 309), suggests that it was west of
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the Euphrates, but elsewhere places it at the present Kazimein, 5 miles above Baghdad,
stating that Baradan was a district 4 leagues from Baghdad.
I place it definitely west of the Euphrates (though its exact location is a guess) on the
basis of Tabari and geographical indications:
a.
Tabari states (Vol. 2, p. 580) that Khalid left Hira on the route to Khanafis and caught
up with Qaqa and Abu Laila at Ain-ut-Tamr. If Khanafis were east of the Euphrates,
there could be no question of Ain-ut-Tamr being on the way to it.
b.
In 13 Hijri, Muthanna wanted to raid Baghdad and Khanafis from Ulleis (Tabari: Vol.
2, pp. 655-6), and was told by guides that the two were some days journey apart and that
Khanafis was quicker to get to. Muthanna went to Khanafis by "the land route" and then
continued to Anbar. Thus if Khanafis were at or near Kazimein, it would not be some
days away from Baghdad and could not be reached by reached by "the land route".
I place Bardan as the Wadi-ul-Ghadaf, which was also known as Wadi-ul-Burdan, and
runs 25 miles north of Ain-ut-Tamr. If there was a place named Bardan or Burdan, it no
longer exists, but the
Wadi
suggests its general geographical location. This is supported
by Tabari's statement (Vol. 2, p. 581) that on his march from Ain-ut-Tamr to Muzayyah,
Khalid went past Bardan. I have placed Khanafis a little north of the
Wadi
.
Huseid
:Yaqut (Vol. 2, p. 281) mentions this as a small valley between Kufa and Syria.
Hence this was definitely west of the Euphrates, but must have been east of Khanafis
because of the direction of Mahbuzan's withdrawal. Had Khanafis been to the east,
Mahbuzan would have withdrawn towards Ctesiphon and not to Muzayyah. Musil also
(p. 309) places Huseid west of the Euphrates, but its exact location is uncertain.
Muzayyah
: Yaqut (Vol. 4, p. 560) calls this place a hill in Najd, on the bank of the Wadi-
ul-Jareeb, in the area of the Rabee'a, which was one of the tribes of the Taghlib group in
Iraq. (
Najd
means a high tableland, and this was not the Najd in Arabia.) Tabari (Vol. 2,
p. 580) places it between Hauran and Qalt. Musil (p. 303) locates it at Ain-ul-Arnab, 270
kilometres from Hira, 115 kilometres north-west of Anbar and 75 kilometres south-south-
east of Aqlat Hauran. Ain-ul-Arnab is correctly located now 25 miles west of the present
Heet. In the absence of any other indications, I accept this as Muzayyah.
Saniyy
and
Zhumail
: Both Yaqut and Tabari (and Musil, who follows Yaqut in this) are
well off the mark in their location of these places. Yaqut (Vol. 1, p. 937) places Saniyy
east of Risafa and Zhumail near Bashar, east of Risafa and east of the Euphrates. Tabari
(Vol. 2, p. 582) also locates them east of Risafa. Risafa is in Syria, north-north-east of
Palmyra and 15 miles south of the Euphrates. Musil (p. 312) places the two battlefields in
the foothills of the Bisri Range, which runs north-east of Palmyra, and regards Bashar as
another name for Bisri.
I reject these locations emphatically. It is unthinkable that Khalid should take his army
250 miles from Muzayyah (about 400 miles from his base at Hira-almost a six weeks
turn-round-merely to tackle two Arab concentrations which in no way concerned him.
Moreover, the Bisri Range and Risafa were deep in Syria, and there could be just no
question of Khalid taking such liberties with the Caliph's instructions, which confined his
area of operations to Iraq.
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I have found Zhumail. It is marked on certain maps as a ruined town 35 miles north-west
of Ain-ut-Tamr, on the bank of the
Wadi Zhumail
. The one-million scale map (Dept. of
Survey, War Office and Air Ministry, London, 1962) spells it as
Thumail
, and this is a
much more sensible location for the place. Saniyy must have been between this place and
Muzayyah, and I have shown it on Map 14 as 25 miles north-west of Zhumail. (This
could be wrong by a few miles; but not much more.)
It is possible of course, that there was another Risafa somewhere in Western Iraq, in
which case the reference to it by Yaqut and Tabari would be correct.
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