The Iraqi-Italian Project. “A Survey of the Great Mosque and Qasr al-Imara of Kufa, Najaf ”

This paper presents the results of the research pursued during the first year of the Project “A Survey of the Great Mosque and Qasr al-Imara of Kufa, Najaf”, born under the aegis of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of the Republic of Iraq and the Department of Sciences of Antiquity of Sapienza University of Rome, and supported by the van Berchem Foundation, Geneva. This research consisted in: collecting the information regarding the Mosque-Palace Complex of Kufa as given in literary sources; gathering the archaeological data as described and interpreted in published excavation reports and scholarly essays; surveying the area of the Great Mosque and Qaṣr al-Imāra in Kufa and documenting the current state of the latter. The results, though preliminary, led to the acquisition of important information and the identification of new investigation paths concerning the history of the earliest Mosque-Palace Complex ever built in an Islamic city.