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Sāmarrā' سامَراء Samarra
—  City  —
Minaret at the Great Mosque of Samarra
Sāmarrā'
Coordinates: 34°11′54″N 43°52′27″E / 34.19833°N 43.87417°E / 34.19833; 43.87417
Country	Iraq
Governorate	Salah ad Din Governorate
Population (2003 est[1])
• Total	348,700
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name: Samarra Archaeological City
Type:	Cultural
Criteria:	ii, iii, iv
Designated:	2007 (33rd session)
Reference #:	276
State Party:	Iraq
Region:	Arab States
Endangered:	2007–present

Sāmarrā (Arabic: سامَرّاء‎) is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, 125 kilometers (78 mi) north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700.^[1]

Medieval Islamic writers believed that the name “Samarra” is derived from the Arabic phrase “Sarra man ra’a” (Arabic: سر من رأى‎), which translates to “A joy for all who see”. Later when the city declined the name changed to “Sa'a man ra’a” (Arabic: ساء من رأى‎), which translates to “A sadness for all who see”. Eventually the two names merged to its current form Samarra' (Arabic: سامَرّاء‎).

In 2007, UNESCO named Samarra one of its World Heritage Sites.^[2]

History[link]

Ancient Samarra[link]

The Samarra bowl, at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. The swastika in the center of the design is a reconstruction.^{[3][disputed – discuss]}

Female statuette, Samarra, 6000 BC

The remains of ancient Samarra were first excavated between 1911 and 1914 by the German Archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. Since 1946, the notebooks, letters, unpublished excavation reports and photographs have been in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Though the present archaeological site covered by mudbrick ruins is vast, the site of Samarra was only lightly occupied in ancient times, apart from the Chalcolithic Samarran Culture (ca 5500–4800 BC) identified at the rich site of Tell Sawwan, where evidence of irrigation—including flax— establishes the presence of a prosperous settled culture with a highly organized social structure. The culture is primarily known by its finely-made pottery decorated against dark-fired backgrounds with stylized figures of animals and birds and geometric designs. This widely-exported type of pottery, one of the first widespread, relatively uniform pottery styles in the Ancient Near East, was first recognized at Samarra. The Samarran Culture was the precursor to the Mesopotamian culture of the Ubaid period.

A city of Sur-marrati, refounded by Sennacherib in 690 BC according to a stele in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, is insecurely identified with a fortified Assyrian site of Assyrian at al-Huwaysh, on the Tigris opposite to modern Samarra.

Ancient toponyms for Samarra noted by the Samarra Archaeological Survey are Greek Souma (Ptolemy V.19, Zosimus III, 30), Latin Sumere, a fort mentioned during the retreat of the army of Julian the Apostate in 364 AD (Ammianus Marcellinus XXV, 6, 4), and Syriac Sumra (Hoffmann, Auszüge, 188; Michael the Syrian, III, 88), described as a village.

The possibility of a larger population was offered by the opening of the Qatul al-Kisrawi, the northern extension of the Nahrawan canal which drew water from the Tigris in the region of Samarra, attributed by Yaqut (Mu`jam see under "Qatul") to the Sassanid king Khosrau I Anushirvan (531–578). To celebrate the completion of this project, a commemorative tower (modern Burj al-Qa'im) was built at the southern inlet south of Samarra, and a palace with a "paradise" or walled hunting park was constructed at the northern inlet (modern Nahr al-Rasasi) near to al-Daur. A supplementary canal, the Qatul Abi al-Jund, excavated by the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, was commemorated by a planned city laid out in the form of a regular octagon (modern Husn al-Qadisiyya), called al-Mubarak and abandoned unfinished in 796.

Abbasid capital[link]

Chinese-made sancai pottery sherd, 9-10th century, found in Samarra, an example of Chinese influences on Islamic pottery. British Museum.