Hatra

Hatra is the ruin of a great walled city in the Jazira steppe of northern Iraq, about 110 kilometres south-west of Mosul. It flourished in the first and second centuries CE, when it was a caravan city and a centre of pilgrimage, ruled by its own kings, who in later inscriptions styled themselves “king of the Arabs”, within the sphere of the Parthian empire of Iran. Its people wrote in Aramaic and worshipped a family of gods, chief among them the sun god Shamash. UNESCO inscribed the site in 1985.

The city was almost circular, enclosed by a double wall about two kilometres across. At its centre lay a vast sacred precinct, with temples whose great vaulted iwans, halls open on one side to a courtyard, are among the earliest of their kind; the form became one of the defining features of Iranian architecture. Faces and figures are carved on the arches, and many statues of kings, nobles and gods were found in the temples.

Hatra's walls withstood two Roman emperors: Trajan in 117 and Septimius Severus at the end of the second century both besieged it and failed. It fell around 240 to the Sasanian king Shapur I, and was then abandoned. Later Persian and Arabic tradition, retold by al-Tabari and Ferdowsi, told of a princess of Hatra who betrayed the city to the Persian king for love. In 2015 fighters of the so-called Islamic State damaged statues and buildings at the site, and UNESCO placed it on its list of World Heritage in danger; restoration work has since begun on the ruins.