Samarra was, for about half a century in the ninth century, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, the greatest empire of its age. When the caliph al-Mutawakkil came to power in the 840s, he ordered a new palace city to be built to the north of the old one, and called it al-Mutawakkiliyya, though he did not live long enough to enjoy it, since he was murdered in 861. The caliphs then left Samarra, and the city was abandoned to the desert, which is why so much survives.
What stays is the shape of a vanished metropolis: long straight avenues, ruined palaces, walls and canals, scattered across the plain on the east bank of the Tigris. Two monuments stand out. The Great Mosque of Samarra, with its spiral minaret, the Malwiya, rises about fifty-two metres and was for centuries the largest mosque in the world. The mosque of Abu Dulaf, in the northern zone, is a smaller version, with its own ramped minaret of brick, strikingly simple against the empty sky. The whole of Samarra is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it has been on the danger list since 2007.
I should be honest about the riding: this is not a casual stop. The area lies in a part of Iraq where security has been uncertain, and access depends on current conditions and local arrangements. Samarra, about seventeen kilometres away, is a city of around 158,000 people, and it has fuel and basic services, but the site itself is open ground with no facilities. Check travel advice carefully before planning any visit.
The land around is flat, dry and brown, with heat that reaches the high forties in summer and sharp winters. The light at dawn on the brick is a pale gold, and the silence is deep. It is a place where history is thick on the ground.