If the province of al-Jazīra was invented by the Marwānids, the city of Mosul emerged during the second half of the seventh century, its shallow roots lying in the late Sasanian period. And if the story of al-Jazīra is one of local autonomy within a Sufyānid sphere of influence, that of Mosul is the Marwānid appropriation of a Kufan preserve, the transformation of garrison to city, and the emergence of a city élite. Building, investment, patronage and politics became intertwined in the first decades of the eighth century, as the Marwānid family – outsiders here as much as the Turks were in Ayyubid and Mamluk Cairo – imposed a new social order on the city, building it, quite literally, from the ground up. Unlike the contested Jaziran steppe, early Marwānid Mosul seems to illustrate the maxim that ‘over the long run and at a distance, cities and states have proved indispensable to each other’; but later Marwānid Mosul suggests that already in the eighth century rulers needed the city more than the city needed rulers. Politics and building being so intimately linked, we can begin by describing the birth of the city.

The origins of Mosul were initially described in Syriac for hagiographic purposes.