Dayr al-'Āqūl

Dayr al-Aqul, the "monastery at the river bend", was a town on the Tigris southeast of Baghdad. Medieval geographers described its busy markets, palm groves and Friday mosque, calling it the chief settlement of a fertile district. Officials collected customs here, using barriers across the river to stop passing boats.

The river later changed course, leaving the town some distance from its bank. By the thirteenth century Yaqut found it diminished and surrounded by desert, and a century later Hamd Allah Mustawfi described only a small town. The decline of Dayr al-Aqul shows how changes in the Tigris could alter the fortunes of a place that had once prospered on river traffic and the cultivated lands of the Nahrawan district.