Baqubah

Baqubah lies northeast of Baghdad in the fertile Diyala country. In Abbasid times it stood on the Nahrawan canal, part of a great irrigation network that watered the eastern Iraqi plain. Its position also placed it on the road from Baghdad toward Khurasan, linking the capital to towns farther east.

As the Nahrawan system fell into disrepair, the Khurasan road shifted north toward the Diyala and Baqubah became the first stage from Baghdad. Medieval geographers recorded the town and its surroundings, while scholars associated with Baqubah travelled and contributed to the intellectual life of the wider Islamic world. Orchards and fields around the watercourses gave the settlement a productive setting on the route between the Tigris basin and the mountains of Iran.