For a few decades in the ninth century, Samarra was the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, the greatest empire in the world, and it was built in a hurry and abandoned just as fast. The caliph al-Mu'tasim moved his court here from Baghdad in 836, partly because his Turkish soldiers were quarrelling with the townspeople, and the city spread for some forty kilometres along the east bank of the Tigris. It was not until 892 that the capital moved back to Baghdad, and the abandoned palaces and mosques were left to the desert. That is why Samarra is so remarkable for archaeologists: a whole early Islamic city that was never built over.
The Centre Zone in this label covers the part of the city that is still lived in, the modern town of Samarra on the river with a population over a hundred and fifty thousand. Here the main landmark is the Al-Askari shrine, a Shia holy place with a golden dome, holding the tombs of the tenth and eleventh Imams, and it is also the place where the twelfth Imam is believed to have disappeared. The shrine was bombed in 2006, an attack that triggered a wave of violence across Iraq, and it has since been rebuilt.
The countryside is flat, dry and brown, a plain of gravel and irrigated fields along the river, with date palms near the water. Roads from Baghdad run north on the main highway, wide and fast, with checkpoints at intervals, and the surface can be broken by heavy trucks. Summer temperatures are extreme, often above forty-five degrees, and spring and autumn are the only sensible seasons. Dust storms can reduce visibility without warning. Travel here is not casual, and anyone planning a ride should seek current advice from reliable sources.
In the town itself you will find fuel, simple restaurants and tea houses, with grilled river fish on offer in the better places. The Tigris is broad and brown, and the old barrage upstream controls water for the plain. On a clear evening the sky turns orange over the dome, and the call to prayer carries across the roofs.