Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:28:41.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remarks on Samarra and the archaeology of large cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2015

Alastair Northedge
Alastair Northedge*
Affiliation:
Professeur d’Art et Archéologie islamiques, Université de Paris I, France (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Samarra, built and abandoned during the ninth century, can claim to be the largest archaeological site in the world. Here, Alastair Northedge offers a brief account of what is known about it, and begins by placing it in the context of the world’s most famous historic cities.

Keywords

ninth–eleventh centuries ADIraqAbbasidcitiesurbanism
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 79 , Issue 303 , March 2005 , pp. 119 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, R.M. 1965. Land behind Baghdad. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Creswell, K.A.C. 1940. Early Muslim architecture, 1st. edn., vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Directorate General of Antiquities. 1940. Hafriyyat Samarra’ 1936–1939, 2 vols. Baghdad.Google Scholar
Fletcher, R. 1995. The limits of settlement growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, E. 1948. Ausgrabungen von Samarra VI, Geschichte der Stadt Samarra. Hamburg: Eckardt und Messtorff.Google Scholar
Kennedy, H. 2001. The armies of the Caliphs. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kennet, D. 2001. The form of the military cantonments at Samarra and the organisation and size of the ‘Abbasid army’, in Robinson, C. (ed.). A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lassner, J. 1970. The topography of Baghdad in the early Middle Ages. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 1990. The racecourses at Samarra, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53: 31–56.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 1993. An interpretation of the palace of the Caliph at Samarra (Dar al-Khilafa or Jawsaq al-Khaqani). Ars Orientalis 23: 143–171.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 1994. Archaeology and new urban settlement in early Islamic Syria and Iraq, in King, G.R.D. & Cameron, A. (ed.). Studies in Late Antiquity and early Islam II, settlement patterns in the Byzantine and early Islamic Near East: 231–265. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 1995. ‘Samarra’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn. Leiden: Brill 1954–2003.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 1996. Friedrich Sarre’s ‘Die Keramik von Samarra’ in perspective, in Bartl, K. & Hauser, S. (ed.). Continuity and change in northern Mesopotamia from the Hellenistic to the early Islamic period, BBVO 17: 229–258. Berlin.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 2000. Entre Amman et Samarra: l’archéologie et les élites au début de l’Islam (VIIé-IXé siécles). Mémoire d’habilitation á diriger les recherches, Université de Paris I. Available in PDF format from the author.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. 2001. The palaces of the ‘Abbasids at Samarra’, in Robinson, C. (ed.). A medieval Islamic City reconsidered (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. in pressa. The Historical Topography of Samarra. Samarra Studies Vol. 1. British Academy Monographs in Archaeology/British School of Archaeology in Iraq.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. in pressb. Al-Hayr’ and hunting in Abbasid Iraq, Proceedings of the second international congress on the archaeology of the ancient Near East, Copenhagen, May 2000.Google Scholar
Northedge, A. & Kennet, D. forthcoming. Archaeological Atlas of Samarra. Samarra Studies vol. 2. British Academy Monographs in Archaeology/British School of Archaeology in Iraq.Google Scholar
Robinson, C. (ed.). 2001. A Medieval Islamic city reconsidered, an interdisciplinary approach to Samarra (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Al-Tabari, Muhammad, B. JARIR. Ta’rikh al-Rusul wal-Muluk, in De Goeje, et al. (ed.). Leiden 1879–1901. Translated into English as The History of al-Tabarà in 38 volumes. Albany.Google Scholar
Al-Ya‘qubi, AHMAD B. Abi Yáqub Wadih, B. Kitab al-Buldan, in De Goeje, (ed.). BGA 7, Leiden 1892. French translation by Wiet, G., Les Pays. English translation of the sections relevant to Samarra in Creswell 1940: 228–231, 254, 277, 363–4.Google Scholar