Samarra

Samarra is in Iraq, a country in Asia.

It sits beside a long river called the Tigris. Long ago, rulers built a huge city here. Today you can still see a giant mosque wall and a tall spiral tower. A modern town stands right next to the old ruins.

Samarra lies on the east bank of the Tigris River in central Iraq, about 125 kilometers upstream from Baghdad. For 56 years, from 836 to 892, it was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. A caliphate is a state ruled by a caliph, a Muslim ruler, and the Abbasid one stretched from Tunisia to Central Asia.

The old city covers a huge area along the river. UNESCO says Samarra is the only Islamic capital from that time that still has its original street plan, buildings and art. Today a modern town stands beside the ruins, and it is also a place of pilgrimage for many Shia Muslims.

Samarra stands on the left (east) bank of the Tigris, about 125 km upstream from Baghdad, in Salah al-Din governorate. Britannica notes a prehistoric settlement of the 5th millennium BCE and a town founded between the 3rd and 7th centuries CE; the caliph al-Mu'tasim made it the Abbasid capital in 836, and it served until 892.

UNESCO calls it the only surviving Islamic capital that retains its original plan, architecture and arts, and, since the monuments of Abbasid Baghdad are lost, the only physical trace of the caliphate at its height. The protected property covers 15,058 hectares, with a buffer zone of 31,414 hectares; the V&A describes the 57 km² site as the largest Islamic archaeological site in the world. The modern town is a Shia pilgrimage center around the shrine of the imams Ali al-Hadi and Hasan al-Askari.

The rulers lived in huge palaces.

The walls were covered with patterns carved in plaster. There were wall paintings of music, dancing, camels and birds. Potters made shiny dishes that sparkled like gold.

Samarra had some of the largest palaces in the Islamic world. The main palace of the caliph covered about 125 hectares, more than 150 soccer fields.

Inside, walls were covered with carved plaster called stucco. At first the carvings showed leaves and vines, but later they became repeating patterns. This 'Samarra style' spread to other parts of the Islamic world. Wall paintings showed music, feasts, dancing, camels and birds. Potters in Samarra also invented lustreware, pottery with a shiny metallic glaze that made it look like gold or silver.

UNESCO lists the Caliphal Palace (Qasr al-Khalifa), al-Ja'fari and al-Ma'shuq among the largest palaces in the Islamic world; Qantara puts the caliph's seat at 125 hectares. Decoration survives mainly as carved plaster revetments and paintings on fine gypsum. The V&A traces the stucco from vegetal forms, influenced by Sasanian Iran, toward abstract motifs; UNESCO notes that this Samarra style spread across the Islamic world, as did lustreware, a ceramic developed here to imitate vessels of gold and silver.

Ernst Herzfeld's excavations of 1911 and 1912 to 1913, the first large-scale archaeological investigation of Islamic antiquities, listed more than 1,161 finds. About 100 stucco panels went to Berlin; after World War I the rest went to London in 1921 and were divided among more than twenty museums, including the V&A in 1922.