Archaeologists Use Spy Satellite Images to Spot Location of Famous Ancient Battle 

Imagine finding the location of a historic battle hiding in plain sight. Sounds like a movie, right? Well, in this case, it would be a spy movie—because an international team of archaeologists claims to have done exactly that by studying declassified spy satellite images.

Archaeologists from Durham University and the University of Al-Qadisiyah in Iraq claim to have discovered the site of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, a hugely important early Islamic conflict that changed the course of Persian history. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the team identified the location in Iraq by cross-referencing historical texts, modern aerial photos, on-the-ground evidence, and declassified 1970s American spy satellite imagery. Their findings were published in a study on November 12 in the journal Antiquity.

“This discovery provides a geographical location and context for a battle that is one of the founding stories of the expansion of Islam into modern day Iraq, Iran and beyond,” Durham University’s William Deadman said in the university’s statement.

The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah took place between Arab Muslims and the Iranian Sasanian Empire in the 630s CE. The Arab Muslims were victorious, and their success would pave the way for the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia, Persia, and beyond, according to the study. Until recently, however, the exact location of this crucial battle was a mystery.

The archaeologists discovered the battle’s presumed location while conducting a remote survey of the Darb Zubaydah, a historical pilgrimage road between Kufa in Iraq and Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Aerial imagery from Google Earth and Bing Maps revealed a 6.2-mile (10-kilometer) double wall feature between a square fortress on the desert fringe and a large settlement on the border of the southern Mesopotamian floodplain. The team, led by Deadman, then got ahold of U.S. declassified spy satellite images of the same area, confirming the features.

“Captured in 1973, these images show the area prior to much modern agricultural and urban development,” the researchers wrote in the study. In other words, the sites were even clearer in the old satellite images. The archaeologists from the University of Al-Qadisiyah in Iraq also carried out an on-the-ground survey to document the findings directly.

Equipped with this data, the researchers then compared the archaeological observations to descriptions in 9th, 10th and 14th-century CE sources about the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah. They concluded that the fortress and settlement may be two previously unidentified waystations along the Darb Zubaydah, called al-’Udhayb and al-Qadisiyyah, respectively.

“The agreement between textual references to the locations of al-Qadisiyyah and [al-’Udhayb] and the archaeological evidence [from the] aerial images is remarkable,” the researchers noted in the study.

In fact, one of the aforementioned 10th-century texts also provides a seemingly reliable description of the location of the famous battle itself, allowing the archaeologists to tentatively place its location between a trench and an ancient now-dry river in the vicinity of the settlement of the same name—18.6 miles (30 kilometers) south of Kufa.

The study goes to show that sometimes the best way to reveal what hides beneath our very feet is by getting a bird’s eye view—or, in this case, a spy satellite’s view.