Samarra (Arabic: سامراء‎) is a city in Iraq, on the east bank of the Tigris River, 125 km north of Baghdad. As of 2002, its population was 201,700 inhabitants. The city stretches for 41.5 km along the banks of the Tigris; from the north, east and south, instead of walls, it is protected by ancient irrigation canals.

History
The land of Samarra has been inhabited by people since antiquity: among the ruins are found dating back to the 5th millennium BC. e. The Samarran culture is the ancestor of the Ubaid culture. The urban settlement, however, arose here much later. Khosrov I Anushirvan was the first of the monarchs to choose this place, who built a hunting castle in the vicinity. In 833, a new city arose on the site of an ancient pre-Islamic settlement. In 836, under Caliph al-Mu’tasim ibn Harun, the Mamluks (Turkic slave soldiers of the Abbasid Caliphate) provoked an uprising in Baghdad, forcing the Caliph to move north. Later, Turkic soldiers themselves began to enthrone new caliphs, which led to “anarchy in Samarra.” Samarra remained the capital of the Islamic world until 892, when Caliph al-Mu’tamid moved the capital of the Caliphate back to Baghdad.

Samarra is considered the holy city of the Shiites due to the fact that the remains of two Askari imams are buried in the golden-domed Askaria Mosque.

monuments
The successor of al-Mu’tasim, Caliph al-Wasik, erected the Great Mosque in Samarra with its famous minaret in the form of a spiral 52 m high and 33 m wide. At that time it was the largest building in the Islamic world. From the capital of the caliphate, a considerable number of monuments have been preserved in a more or less damaged form, including two palaces, with an area of ​​​​125 and 211 hectares, the largest palace buildings in the history of Islamic architecture.
The architectural monuments of the Abbasid era (the ruins of forty-two palaces, four cathedral mosques, the mausoleum of three caliphs, the remains of an abandoned northern city in the shape of an octagon) are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Only a few of them have been excavated by German archaeologists in 1911.