Ziyad's inaugural speech, in which he announced his carrot-and-stick approach to governing the city's turbulent population, is celebrated in Arab history for its eloquence.

Though Ziyad alludes to his Persian origin in a poem, his family claimed that Sumayya was not a slave, but the daughter of a certain al-A'war from the Zayd Manat clan of the Arab tribe of Banu Tamim.

[4][8] Before the city's founding in 638, the Muslim troops fighting on the Iraqi front used as their military camp the ruined Persian village on the site.

[7] Abu Bakra's brother-in-law Utba ibn Ghazwan al-Mazini had established the initial camp at Basra in 635 and was the founder and first governor of the city.

[4][9] The administrative skills of Ziyad became apparent from the time of his adolescence and Utba charged him with minor tasks in the Basran dīwān (bureaucracy) during the reign of Caliph Umar (r. 634–644).

[4] In 635, Utba tasked him with distributing to the Arab troops the war spoils from the capture of al-Ubulla (Apologos), a town immediately east of Basra.

[4][10] According to the modern historian Isaac Hasson, Ziyad "distinguished himself as an intelligent and open-minded secretary, who was devoted to his master and to public service ... he showed an unusual aptitude for accounting and had an excellent command of epistolary art".

[4] Uthman's successor Ali (r. 656–661) appointed Abd Allah ibn Abbas governor of Basra and entrusted Ziyad with collection of the province's kharāj (land tax) and supervision of the treasury.

[14] After Ali returned from Siffin, his appointee to the district of Fars, Sahl ibn Hunayf, was ousted by its inhabitants, after which he dispatched Ziyad.

[11] Yazid's relations with Ziyad remained strained and satirical poetic verses about the event were spread by Marwan's brother Abd al-Rahman.

Realizing that Ziyad "had both the abilities and the all-important local connections to be his right-hand man in Basra", Mu'awiya appointed him governor of the province, according to the historian Hugh N.

[11] Wellhausen describes it as "celebrated" and the one which was called a "[speech] without a preface"[18] because it skipped the traditional introductions praising God and blessing the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

[21]A number of punitive measures along the lines of those cited in his speech were taken by Ziyad at the start of his term and largely gained for him the Basrans' respect.

[22] He established unprecedented levels of security in the city, its Iranian dependencies to the east, i.e. Fars and Kerman, and the Arabian Desert to the south.

[24] After the death of al-Mughira in 670, Kufa and its dependencies were attached to Ziyad's governorship, making him the practical viceroy over Iraq and the eastern half of the Caliphate.

[27] One of the men, Abd al-Rahman ibn Hassan al-Anazi, who was spared by Mu'awiya later insulted the caliph after refusing his invocation to condemn Ali and was sent back to Ziyad, who had him buried alive as punishment.

[32] Ziyad thus resolved to form larger divisions by unifying related clans and personally appointing their leader, which resulted in Kufa's reorganization into quarters and Basra into fifths.

[29] Ziyad's authority extended to Khurasan and Sijistan, the far eastern regions of the Caliphate which were considered dependencies of the Basra garrison.

[33] Moreover, the political instability of the final years of Uthman's caliphate and the First Muslim Civil War saw local revolts which further weakened Arab authority.

[36] Fearing a Persian resurgence, which a fragmentary division of Khurasan could afford, Ziyad centralized the administration of the province in the small Arab garrison at Merv.

[35][36] The latter conquered lower Tukharistan and Gharchistan and temporarily crossed the Oxus river into Transoxiana, forcing Peroz to withdraw into Tang China.

[38] The resettlement of these troops may have been a means "to defuse possibly dangerous developments" relating to the Arab tribal influx in the two garrison towns, according to the historian Gerald Hawting.

[38][35] Rabi proceeded to secure the capitulation of Balkh, whose inhabitants had revolted against Arab rule, in a treaty and then destroyed the army of the Hepthalite princes in Quhistan.

[38] In 673, Rabi's son Abd Allah extended Arab rule to the western banks of the Oxus and established tributary agreements with the fortress towns of Amul and Zamm.

[38] To solidify the territorial gains and supply the manpower for further conquests Ziyad intended for the Arab troops, initially concentrated in the Merv oasis, to colonize other parts of Khurasan.

[48][49] The Thaqif, which had maintained close ties with the Umayyads since the pre-Islamic era and played an integral role in the Muslim conquest of Iraq, provided the Umayyad dynasty with a series of viceroys in Iraq, including al-Mughira, Ziyad, Ubayd Allah and al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (r. 694–714), and the Muslim traditional sources devote more attention to them than the caliphs on whose behalf they ruled.

[11] According to Kennedy, Ziyad's settlement of Iraqi Arab troops in Khurasan had "extremely important consequences for Islamic history" as the descendants of those settlers,[36] who were known as ahl Khurāsān,[29] ultimately destroyed the Umayyad Caliphate as part of the Abbasid army in 750.

[29] He is counted alongside Mu'awiya, al-Mughira and Amr ibn al-As, the conqueror and governor of Egypt, as one of the four duhāt (i.e. "shrewds") among the Arab statesmen of his era.

[29] A medieval Basran historian, Muhammad ibn Imran al-Abdi, related that Ziyad respected and enjoyed listening to the hadiths about Umar and proclaimed about them: "This is the truth we hear!

[53] From his first wife, Mu'adha bint Sakhr of the Banu Uqayl tribe, Ziyad had four sons, including Muhammad and Abd al-Rahman, who respectively married daughters of Caliph Mu'awiya I and the latter's brother Utba.