Wasit

Wasit, in central Iraq between Kufa and Basra, was a garrison-city founded around 702 by the Umayyad governor al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf; its name ('the middle one') reflects its position midway between the two older cities. It became a centre of hadith and law; the mystic al-Hallaj (executed 922) and the Sufi Ahmad al-Rifa'i (d. 1182), eponym of the Rifa'iyya order, are connected to its district.