A Demography of the Villages Around the River Euphrates and their Significance in the Time of the Event of Ashura

A tremendously great event took place around the river Euphrates in 61 AH/ 680. It is important to gain knowledge about the peoples who were residing in that area. This is because the inhabitants of the Iraqi regions were tribally not unanimous, hence this demographic feature played a role in the occurrence of the catastrophic event of Ashura. The present paper deals with a study of the typology of the peoples of the region of the Euphrates and their geographical distribution, and whether their demographical differences made a contributory effect in favor of the Umayyad hegemony and army troops in that region. Since the inhabitants of the regions on both sides of the river Euphrates were composed on immigrant Arab tribes, Persians, mawalis, Kurds, Aramaic nomads, Nestorians, and followers of other offshoots of Christianity, they were not united with one another, a characteristic that has since lasted for several centuries, hence the enemies of Imam al-Husayn made the most of absence of sucha demographic homogeneity.