Battle of al-Qadisiyyah

Two armies on the desert edge

At al-Qadisiyya, a frontier settlement southwest of al-Hira, an Arab Muslim army commanded by Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas faced a larger Sasanian army under Rostam Farrokhzad. The two forces stood opposite one another for months before the fighting began. The battle is conventionally dated to 636, but proposed dates range from 634/635 to 637.

Sa‘d’s coalition combined a Medina core force of about 4,000 with Arabian tribal levies and reinforcements from Iraq and Syria. Encyclopaedia Iranica assesses plausible upper bounds of no more than about 12,000 Arab Muslims and 30,000 Iranians.

Elephants, dust, and a severed head

The traditions describe several days of combat and the disruptive use of Sasanian war elephants, which initially frightened the Muslim cavalry and dominate the surviving battle stories.

In the Islamic narrative a dust storm rose during the final fighting, Rostam was killed and beheaded, and the announcement of his death precipitated the collapse of the Sasanian army. The details around that death differ among accounts.

The date is not settled

The victors pursued survivors toward al-Mada’in, opening the central Iraqi alluvium to Muslim occupation — though not, by itself, ending Sasanian resistance.

Islamic chroniclers variously place the battle in AH 14, 15 or 16, and modern proposals include 634/635, 636 and 637. The familiar 16–19 November 636 is a conventional reconstruction, not an attested day-by-day chronology.

Even the duration is unclear: three days in the traditional account, with fighting continuing into the night after the third — while some sources give no duration at all.