After the Arabian hegemony and the fall of Persian Empire, and its geographic proximity to the imperial capital, Ctesiphon) at Battle of Al-Qadisiyyah in 636, Kufa was founded and given its name in 637–638 CE, about the same time as Basra.

At first, Umar appointed Ammar ibn Yasir and secondly Basra's first Governor Abū Mūsā al-Ashʻarī; but the Kufan instigators accepted neither.

This happened while the Arabs were continuing their conquest of western Persia under Uthman ibn Abi al-As from Tawwaj, but late in the 640s, these forces suffered setbacks.

The few but noticeable trouble makers in Kufa sought in 654 and had Sa'id deposed and instead showed satisfaction with the return of Abu Musa, which Uthman approved seeking to please all.

Muawiyah I appointed Ziyad ibn Abihi Al the Governor of Kufa, after Hasan's A.S migration to Medina, which was a peace treaty which dictated he abdicate his right to caliphate to avoid an open war among Muslims.

[citation needed] Throughout the Umayyad era, as was the case since the inception of the city by Umar ibn Khattab, there were those among Kufa's inhabitants who were rebellious to their rulers.

Yazid appointed Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad as the new Governor to put down the rebellion, and kill Husayn if he did not acknowledge his Caliphate, culminating in the Battle of Karbala.

Under the Umayyad and early Abbasid decades, Kufa's importance gradually shifted from caliphal politics to Islamic theory and practice.

[1] Wael Hallaq notes that by contrast with Medina and to a lesser extent Syria, in Iraq there was no unbroken Muslim or Ishmaelite population dating back to the prophet Muhammad's time.

Shirazi's "Tabaqat", which Hallaq labels "an important early biographical work dedicated to jurists", covered 84 "towering figures" of Islamic jurisprudence; to which Kufa provided 20.

It further recorded general traditions as Hadith; in the 9th century, Yahya ibn ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Himmani compiled many of these into a Musnad.

The Shia historian Abu Mikhnaf al-Azdi (d. 774) compiled their accounts into a rival history, which became popular under Abbasid rule.

The angular script which later came to be known as Kufic had its origin about a century earlier than the founding of the town of Kufa, according to Moritz in the Encyclopaedia of Islam.

Ibn al-Nadim (died c. 999) the author of the famous Kitab al-Fihrist, an index of Arabic books, dedicates the a section of the first chapter to calligraphy.

It is estimated the hoard was buried in the beginning of the 12th century, when Kufa was already long past the peak of its fortunes, but the coins might have arrived at the far north at a much earlier time.