The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq

A system of abandoned ridge/earthwork features covers a large swathe of the Shaṭṭ al-ᶜArab floodplain in southern Iraq, standing as testament to a period of agricultural expansion in the past. Until now, the chronology of these features has been surmised from limited textual evidence that relates their construction to slave labour during the early Islamic period associated with the ‘Zanj rebellion’. This article presents the first absolute dates from this ridge system, demonstrating that these features were in use for a substantially longer period than previously assumed and, as such, they represent an important piece of Iraqi landscape heritage.