Samarra

Samarra lies on the Tigris in Iraq’s Saladin Governorate and preserves the remains of one of the most important planned capitals of the Abbasid era. The caliphal court moved there from Baghdad in 836 and remained until 892. UNESCO’s Samarra Archaeological City records the vast urban plan, palaces, the Great Mosque with its spiral Malwiya minaret and other monuments that influenced Islamic architecture and decoration. Samarra also became a major shrine city in Twelver Shi‘a religious geography, associated with the tombs of the tenth and eleventh Imams, Ali al-Hadi and Hasan al-Askari. These archaeological and pilgrimage histories belong to different periods and should not be collapsed into a single narrative.

This IslamicPedia city page brings together documented monuments, shrine records, historical figures and map locations connected with Samarra. The map helps distinguish the modern city from the much larger Abbasid archaeological zone, while individual records preserve the difference between excavated or architecturally documented remains and later devotional attributions. Where a burial, sacred association or exact location rests mainly on a particular religious tradition, the page should state that scope rather than presenting it as universally established historical fact.