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Founding
Founding of Raqqa
city in Syria
- 244 CE
- Middle East
Founding
city in Syria
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Raqqa (Arabic: ٱلرَّقَّة, romanized: ar-Raqqah, also al-Raḳḳa) is a city in Syria on the north bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 kilometres (99 miles) east of Aleppo. It is located 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of the Euphrates Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and bishopric Callinicum (formerly a Latin and now a Maronite Catholic titular see) was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate between 796 and 809, under the reign of Harun al-Rashid. It was also the capital of the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017. With a population of 531,952 based on the 2021 official census, Raqqa is the sixth largest city in Syria.
During the Syrian civil war, the city was captured in 2013 by the Syrian opposition and then by the Islamic State. The Islamic State made the city its capital in early 2014. As a result, the city was hit by airstrikes from the Syrian government, Russia, the United States, and several other countries. Most non-Sunni religious structures in the city were destroyed by the Islamic State, most notably the Shia Uwais al-Qarni Mosque, while others were converted into Sunni mosques. On 17 October 2017, following a lengthy battle that saw massive destruction to the city, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared the liberation of Raqqa from the Islamic State to be complete. As of 2019, the Islamic State reportedly had no significant presence in the city or its surrounding areas. In January 2026, the city was recaptured by the Syrian armed forces from the SDF during the 2026 northeastern Syria offensive.
The area of Raqqa has been inhabited since remote antiquity, as attested by the mounds (tells) of Tall Zaydan and Tall al-Bi'a, the latter being identified with the Babylonian city Tuttul.
The modern city traces its history to the Hellenistic period, with the foundation of the city of Nikephorion (Ancient Greek: Νικηφόριον, Latinized as Nicephorium). There are two versions regarding the establishment of the city. Pliny, in his Natural History, attributes its founding to Alexander the Great, citing the advantageous location as the rationale behind its establishment. Similarly, Isidore of Charax, in the Parthian Stations, also credits its foundation to Alexander. Conversely, Appian includes Nikephorion in a list of settlements he attributes to Seleucid King Seleucus I Nicator (reigned 301–281 BC). According to Tacitus, Nikephorion, alongside other cities like Anthemousias, was established by Macedonians and bore a Greek name.
The successor of Seleucus I, Seleucus II Callinicus (r. 246–225 BC), enlarged the city and renamed it after himself as Kallinikos (Καλλίνικος, Latinized as Callinicum).
According to Cassius Dio, during Crassus's preparations for his campaign against the Parthians in the mid-first century BCE, Nikephorion was among the Greek poleis that backed him.
In Roman times, it was part of the Roman province of Osrhoene but had declined by the fourth century. Rebuilt by Byzantine Emperor Leo I (r. 457–474 AD) in 466, it was named Leontopolis (in Greek Λεοντόπολις or "city of Leo") after him, but the name Kallinikos prevailed. The city played an important role in the Byzantine Empire's relations with the Sasanian Empire, and the wars fought between them. By treaty, the city was recognized as one of the few official cross-border trading posts between the two empires, along with Nisibis and Artaxata.
The town was near the site of a Battle of Callinicum in 531 when the Sasanians tried to invade Roman territories, surprisingly via arid regions in Syria, to turn the tide of the Iberian War. The Persians won the battle, but the casualties on both sides were high. In 542, the city was destroyed by Emperor Khosrow I (r. 531–579), who razed its fortifications and deported its population to Persia, but it was subsequently rebuilt by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565). In 580, during another war with Persia, the future Emperor Maurice scored a victory over the Persians near the city during his retreat from an abortive expedition to capture Ctesiphon.
In the last years before it came under Muslim rule, Kallinikos was as important as any other urban center in the region, and based on the physical area that it covered it was only slightly smaller than Damascus.
In the year 639 or 640, the city fell to the Muslim conqueror Iyad ibn Ghanm. Since then, it has been known by the Arabic name al-Raqqah, or "the morass", after its marshy surroundings at the time. At the surrender of the city, the Christian inhabitants concluded a treaty with Ibn Ghanm that is quoted by al-Baladhuri. The treaty allowed them freedom of worship in their existing churches but forbade the construction of new ones. The city retained an active Christian community well into the Middle Ages (Michael the Syrian records 20 Syriac Orthodox (Jacobite) bishops from the 8th to the 12th centuries), and it had at least four monasteries, of which the Saint Zaccheus Monastery remained the most prominent one. The city's Jewish community also survived until at least the 12th century, when the traveller Benjamin of Tudela visited it and attended its synagogue. At least during the Umayyad period, the city was also home to a small Sabian community.
Ibn Ghanm's successor as governor of Raqqa and the Jazira, Sa'id ibn Amir ibn Hidhyam, built the city's first mosque. The building was later enlarged to monumental proportions, measuring some 73 by 108 metres (240 by 354 feet), with a square brick minaret added later, possibly in the mid-10th century. The mosque survived until the early 20th century, being described by the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld in 1907, but has since vanished. Many companions of Muhammad lived in Raqqa.
In 656, during the First Fitna, the Battle of Siffin, the decisive clash between Ali and the Umayyad Mu'awiya took place about 45 kilometres (28 mi) west of Raqqa. The tombs of several of Ali's followers (such as Ammar ibn Yasir and Uwais al-Qarani) are in Raqqa and have become sites of pilgrimage. The city also contained a column with Ali's autograph, but it was removed in the 12th century and taken to Aleppo's Ghawth Mosque.
The Islamic conquest of the region did not disrupt the existing trade routes too much, and new Byzantine coins continued to make their way into Raqqa until about 655–8. The Byzantine government may have seen the area as just temporarily in rebellion. Byzantine coinage probably continued to circulate until at least the 690s, if not even longer.
Raqqa appears to have remained an important regional center under Umayyad rule. The Umayyads invested in agriculture in the region, expanding the amount of irrigated farmland and setting the stage for an "economic blossoming" during and after their rule.
The strategic importance of Raqqa grew during the wars at the end of the Umayyad Caliphate and the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate. Raqqa lay on the crossroads between Syria and Iraq and the road between Damascus, Palmyra and the temporary seat of the caliphate Resafa, al-Ruha'.
In 770-1 (155 AH), the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur made the decision to build a new garrison city, called al-Rāfiqah ("the companion"), about 200 metres (660 feet) west of Raqqa as part of a general investment in strengthening the empire's fortifications. The most critical part of this project was to secure the northwestern frontier with the Byzantine Empire, and al-Rafiqah was its largest and most important construction. It also happens to be the only one that survives to the present day. Although most of the interior layout of al-Rafiqah has since been built over, and much of its fortifications have also been demolished, about 2,660 metres (8,730 feet) of its massive city walls are still standing, as well as its congregational mosque – the first in the world to be built from scratch on "a coherent, integrated plan" and a major influence on later mosque architecture.
Although al-Mansur had conceived the vision for al-Rafiqah in 770–1, it wasn't until the next year that construction actually started. The caliph sent his son and eventual successor al-Mahdi to personally supervise the construction of the new city that year. The chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius indicates that workmen were brought from all over Mesopotamia to work on the construction, hinting at the monumental scale of this project. According to al-Tabari, the plan of al-Rafiqah was basically the same as that of Baghdad: it was built with "the same gates, intervallum (fuṣūl), squares, and streets" as the recently built Abbasid capital. In practice, there were some significant differences between the two: al-Rafiqah was somewhat smaller but more heavily fortified than Baghdad, and its shape was more elongated along a north–south axis instead of the famously round city of Baghdad. Construction continued at al-Rafiqah at least until 774–5, when al-Mahdi was again sent to check on its progress.
At least at the beginning of the construction work on al-Rafiqah, the indigenous residents of Raqqa were hostile to the military settlement – they expected a rise in their own cost of living. The newcomers were soldiers from Khorasan, in contrast to the Christians and Arabs who lived in the old city.
By 785, the old market of Raqqa had probably become physically too small to serve the needs of both it and al-Rafiqah. That year, Ali ibn Sulayman, the city's governor, moved the market from the old city of Raqqa to the agricultural land between the two cities. This probably marks the start of al-Muhtariqa, the industrial and commercial suburb located between the two (see below). (The old market, associated with the Umayyad caliph Hisham, had been just north of the old city, outside the Bāb al-Ruhā' – near the later industrial site of Tall Aswad.)
Raqqa and al-Rāfiqah merged into one urban complex, together larger than the former Umayyad capital, Damascus. In 796, the caliph Harun al-Rashid chose Raqqa/al-Rafiqah as his imperial residence. For about 13 years, Raqqa was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, which stretched from Northern Africa to Central Asia, but the main administrative body remained in Baghdad. The palace area of Raqqa covered an area of about 10 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi) north of the twin cities. One of the founding fathers of the Hanafi school of law, Muḥammad ash-Shaibānī, was chief qadi (judge) in Raqqa. The splendour of the court in Raqqa is documented in several poems, collected by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahāni in his "Book of Songs" (Kitāb al-Aghāni). Only the small, restored so-called Eastern Palace at the fringes of the palace district gives an impression of Abbasid architecture. Some of the palace complexes dating to the period have been excavated by a German team on behalf of the director general of antiquities. There was also a thriving industrial complex located between the twin cities. Both German and English teams have excavated parts of the industrial complex, revealing comprehensive evidence for pottery and glass production. Apart from large dumps of debris, the evidence consisted of pottery and glass workshops, containing the remains of pottery kilns and glass furnaces.
Approximately 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) west of Raqqa lay the unfinished victory monument Heraqla from the time of Harun al-Rashid. It is said to commemorate the conquest of the Byzantine city of Herakleia in Asia Minor in 806. Other theories connect it with cosmological events. The monument is preserved in a substructure of a square building in the centre of a circular walled enclosure, 500 metres (1,600 ft) in diameter. However, the upper part was never finished because of the sudden death of Harun al-Rashid in Greater Khorasan.
Harun al-Rashid also invested in the water supply in Raqqa. Under his rule, canals were dug along the Euphrates and Balikh rivers; they brought water from the area around Saruj to be used for domestic and agricultural purposes, as well as to supply the palace gardens with water. Meanwhile, the influx of residents generated plenty of demand for food, goods, and services, stimulating the economy and resulting in intensified activity in Raqqa's rural hinterland. Rural towns such as Hisn Maslama, Tall Mahra, and al-Jarud flourished and reached their peak size. The surrounding countryside at this time was "one of the richest agricultural areas of the empire, with an extensive system of irrigation canals".
After the return of the court to Baghdad in 809, Raqqa remained the capital of the western part of the Abbasid Caliphate.
The name "Raqqa" was used both for the entire urban sprawl, or more specifically for the old city of Raqqa aka Kallinikos. The old city was also known by the name al-Raqqah al-Bayḍā'. It had "almost rectangular" walls, although their entire extent is not known. Where the gates were located is also unknown. This area had a predominantly indigenous population.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Raqqa”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.