volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

ii6 Kddisiyah on the Tigris.
the important Arab town of " Kddisiyah of the Tigris,"^
so called to distinguish it from the town of the same name
on the edge of the desert, about five miles to the west
of Kufah on the Euphrates. Rich and some other
travellers have confused the two towns, and stated that
the great battle of a.h. I4 = a.d. 635 between the Arabs,
under Sa'ad, and the Persians, under Rustum, was
fought at Kidisiyah of the Tigris instead of at Kadisiyah
near the Euphrates. There is no doubt that
Rich was misled on this point, for the Arabic accounts^
of the great three days' battle are quite definite about
the matter. A modem German traveller' calls the
reader's attention to this mistake of Rich and his
copyists, and says that they followed Gibbon blindly in
their error. But in his account of the " Battle of
Cadesia" (chap. 11, ed. Smith, vol. vi, p. 292) Gibbon
makes no attempt to identify the geographical position
of the " Plains of Cadesia." Moreover, he quotes the
" Nubian geographer " who says that K§,disiyah is " in
margine solitudinis," sixty-one leagues from Bagdad and
two stations from Cufa, and the French traveller Otter,
who says it is fifteen leagues from Bagdad. Gibbon
evidently thought the " plains of Cadesia " were on the
edge of the desert, and not on any river. It was not
Gibbon who confused the two towns of Kadisiyah, but
William Smith, his editor, who in his note says : " The
ruins of Cadesia may be seen on both sides of the Tigris,"
and then quotes Layard's " Nineveh and Babylon,"
p. 471, in support of his statement.*
* See Yakut, iv, pp. 7-9, and the Index in vol. vi, p. 168. Both
Yakut and Abu '1-Fida (p. 299) say that the town was famous for its
coloured and decorated glass work.
' See Ibn al-Athir, vol. ii, pp. 346-351, 375-377, 391-394 S-
Biladhuri, ed. de Goeje, p. 225 ; and Mas'udi, vol. iv, p. 207 ff., and
p. 224.
' Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golfes, Berlin, 1900,
vol. ii, p. 229 (note).
* If Gibbon had had access to the Syriac and Arabic histories and
ecclesiastical works which are now available in the original texts and
translations, there is no doubt that he would have modified some of
his statements and supplemented others. Considering the limited