Hatra

Hatra rose in the Jazira desert as a caravan capital that answered to no empire fully: its Parthian-era rulers built a walled round city whose central temple precinct fused the ancient world's vocabularies - Roman columns, Persian iwans, Arabian deities - into limestone facades of singular grandeur, dedicated above all to Shamash, the sun. UNESCO inscribed it early among Iraq's treasures, in 1985; in 2015 ISIL militants damaged its sculptures and carved images, though its walls and towers stayed standing, and Iraqi forces retook the site in 2017. Visits run as arranged expeditions with local operators; the reward is walking a city the classical historians called unconquerable, in a silence the desert keeps.

History

There is no archaeological evidence of the city before the Parthian period, though settlement probably goes back at least to the Seleucids; Hatra flourished in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD as a religious and trading centre and became the capital of a semi-autonomous kingdom, governed by Arab princes, on the western edge of the Parthian Empire. Its round walls, nearly 2 kilometres across with more than 160 towers, withstood Roman sieges under Trajan in 116-117 and Septimius Severus in 198-199, and in 238 its forces defeated the Sasanians at Shahrazoor, but in 241 the city fell to Shapur I and was left deserted; legend says the princess al-Nadirah betrayed it to him. Its temples honoured Greek, Mesopotamian, Aramaean and Arabian gods together, and the first Hatran inscription was found in 1937. In 1985 Hatra became a World Heritage Site; ISIL, which occupied the area in mid-2014, damaged its sculptures and carved images in 2015, and pro-government forces retook it on 26 April 2017 (Wikipedia, Hatra).

What to look for

• The great iwans - the vaulted temple facades of the precinct.
• The fusion sculpture - Rome, Persia and Arabia in one stone language.
• The round city walls - the caravan capital's circuit.
• The desert setting - the Jazira's horizons around the stones.

When to go

October to April, when the desert is bearable. Access is arranged through local operators.

Good to know

On the ground there is no shade and almost no facilities; the archaeology is what carries the visit.

Nearby

The Jazira plain and the Tigris cities eastward.

Key facts