ar-Raqqa

Raqqa is a redirect to this article. For the US-Canadian science fiction short film by Neill Blomkamp from 2017, see Rakka (film) .

الرقة ar-Raqqa
ar-Raqqa
Coordinates	35 ° 57 '  N , 39 ° 1'  E Coordinates: 35 ° 57 '  N , 39 ° 1'  E
Basic data
Country	Syria
Governorate	ar-Raqqa
height	245 m
Residents	200,268 (2010)
Business center north of the clock tower

Ar-Raqqa ( Arabic الرقة, also ar-Raqqah , Kurdish Reqa , Turkish Raqqa ) is the capital of the governorate of the same name on the central Euphrates in northern Syria . The present city is a re-establishment from the beginning of the 20th century on the place of an Abbasid city laid out at the beginning of the 8th century . For 2010, 200,268 inhabitants were calculated.

Before the outbreak of the Syrian civil war , the population was estimated at 277,300, since then it has grown rapidly due to the influx of refugees. In mid-2013, the city was captured by the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) organizations by expelling the Free Syrian Army . It was considered the largest city under the control of the Islamic State and was designated as its unofficial capital. This was true until the IS militia conquered the city of Mosul, Iraq, in 2014, which was recaptured by the Iraqi army in spring 2017. Raqqa was the command center and most important military base of the IS until it was retaken on October 17, 2017.

location

Ar-Raqqa is located 245 meters above sea level on the left (northern) bank of the Euphrates, about four kilometers from the Belich , which flows into the Euphrates southeast of ar-Raqqa. On the expressway that runs along the right bank of the Euphrates, it is about 130 kilometers to the southeast to Deir ez-Zor . The river water level is at a height of about 235 meters; the fertile and irrigated Euphrataue is five to six kilometers wide in the area of ​​the city and is surmounted at its steeply rising edges by about 90 meters higher gypsum rocks, which lead over to the central Syrian desert steppe . The Euphrates forms the southern border of the historical cultural region Diyar Mudar, which corresponds to the western, Syrian part of the Jazīra region.

climate

The climate around ar-Raqqa is much more continental than in the more Mediterranean west of Syria. In ar-Raqqa there is a hot, dry, continental steppe and desert climate in summer . The low rainfall in the year is mainly limited to the winter months. Temperatures can drop below freezing in winter. The summer, on the other hand, is very hot and dry. Temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius are possible here.

ar-Raqqa
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.     39   12 2     23   14th 3     33   19th 6th     23   25th 10     8th   31 15th     1   36 19th     0   39 21st     0   39 21st     0   34 17th     5   29 12     20th   21st 6th     27   14th 3 Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm Source: de.climate-data.org

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for ar-Raqqa Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 11.8 14.4 19.0 24.8 30.9 36.3 38.8 38.5 34.4 28.5 20.5 13.7 O 26th Min. Temperature (° C) 2.1 3.1 6.0 10.2 14.8 19.1 21.4 20.9 16.9 11.7 6.2 3.4 O 11.4 Precipitation ( mm ) 39 23 33 23 8th 1 0 0 0 5 20th 27 Σ 179 Source: de.climate-data.org

history

Early history and antiquity

Because of the convenient location at all times, the triangle where the rivers Euphrates and Belich meet in the area of ​​a few kilometers since about 6000 BC. A succession of settlements. The earliest city foundation was Tuttul , whose heyday began after the middle of the 3rd millennium and continued until the Old Babylonian Empire in the 17th century BC. Lasted. Its remains were excavated in the settlement mound Tall Bi'a two kilometers east of today's city center.

In early Hellenistic times, the Seleucid Nikephorion around 300 BC The next city was founded two kilometers south of the then Euphrates bank. Since then, the Euphrates river bed has shifted further south. The place belonged to the Parthian Empire for a long time and then from 198 AD to the Roman Empire . During the Roman period the important trading center was called Callinicum (Kallinikos) and in late antiquity it was a border town to the Persian Sassanid Empire with a strong fortress.

In 388 an angry crowd of Christians stormed the local synagogue and set it on fire, leading to a confrontation between Emperor Theodosius I , who wanted to take action against the arsonists, and Ambrose of Milan . A cruel persecution of Christians by the Sassanid king Shapur II , in which Jews allegedly had also participated a few years earlier, could possibly have served as a pretext . Ambrosius was particularly indignant about the imperial order to rebuild the destroyed synagogue. Theodosius could not assert himself against the bishop; the pogrom went unpunished.

In 531 the Eastern Roman general Belisarius suffered a defeat against the Persians at the Battle of Callinicum . Belisarius had been able to force a Persian invading army with superior forces to withdraw; at Kallinikos the Roman troops reached the enemy and forced them - perhaps against Belisarius's will - to battle, which the eyewitness Prokopios of Caesarea later described in his histories . Both sides suffered heavy losses, but in the end the Persians were able to hold their own and withdraw into their empire unmolested across the Euphrates. The magister officiorum Hermogenes, who was with the Roman army , accused Belisarius of failure with Emperor Justinian I ; the subsequent investigation led to the temporary recall of the general from the post of magister militum per Orientem . It was only through his loyalty during the Nika uprising that Belisarius was able to win back the imperial favor.

From Tell Bi'a south towards the Euphrates. Behind the cotton fields lay Kallinikos, today built over by the Mišlab district

Under Emperor Justinian, the city was re-fortified in the 6th century AD. Its location corresponds to today's village or district of Mišlab, about two kilometers southeast of the modern city. On the south and east sides of Callinicum the course of a surrounding wall has been identified. Little is known about the Roman and Byzantine cities themselves. There must have been at least two monasteries, one of which was on the settlement hill called Tell Bi'a in Arabic , which translates as "church hill". A larger Jewish community gathered in the synagogue, whose existence Benjamin of Tudela reported in the mid-12th century.

Arab time

In 639 Muslim Arabs conquered the city and renamed it ar-Raqqa ("river lowland"). Little more is known of the Umayyad city ​​than a Friday Mosque, built in 641 and expanded in the 10th century. The modern expansion of the city has left no traces of this mosque, but descriptions exist until the beginning of the 20th century and a photo that Gertrude Bell took on a trip in 1909. It shows a badly damaged square brick minaret in an open field.

The caliph Hisham (ruled 724–743), who was born in Damascus , had two palaces built between irrigation canals south of the Euphrates, the remains of which have only been partially excavated. During the summer mosquito plague, he fled to his palace residence in Resafa .

With the subsequent Abbasid Caliphate , the capital moved from Damascus to Baghdad , ar-Raqqa was preferred because of its location far to the east of the Syrian cities and closer to the heartland of the Abbasids and experienced a heyday as a trading center. Still under the rule of al-Mansur , his son and heir to the throne al-Mahdi (r. 775-785) began building a new town one kilometer west of the previous place in 772 , which he had fortified as a military base against Byzantium and which was named ar -Rāfiqa ("the companion", related to ar-Raqqa) received. By the 10th century, life had completely shifted to the re-establishment and the ancient city had fallen into disrepair. Stefan Heidemann (2003), after evaluating medieval sources, found that in the area between these two places in the 8th and 9th centuries there was a craftsman's area, especially for glass production, called al-Raqqa al-Muḥtariqa, "the burning Raqqa". It was on the arterial road starting at the east gate (Bāb al-Sibāl). From 1992 to 1996, a glass factory from this period was uncovered in a tell (Tell Zujaj) outside the now built-up district .

Ar-Rāfiqa was modeled on Baghdad, founded by al-Mansur a few years earlier (762 to 766) as the ideal circular city . The "round city" ar-Rāfiqa was surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped city wall, the straight side of which lay parallel to the Euphrates bank in the south and which enclosed an area of ​​1302 × 1400 meters. The most important entrances were the north gate, excavated in the 1980s, and the Baghdad gate located on the south-east corner in the direction of the old ar-Raqqa. There are no more remains of the Abbasid city complex in Baghdad, so the preserved city wall of ar-Raqqa is the only comparable object of illustration of the capital planned as a cosmogonic model in the center of the Abbasid Empire. The second new foundation based on the model of the Round City was the city complex from Qādisīya south of Samarra on the Tigris in the shape of a regular octagon, which was given up in 796 by Hārūn ar-Raschīd .

From 796 to 808, ar-Rafiqa was the capital of the Abbasid Empire instead of Baghdad. Harun ar-Raschid made it his residence during those twelve years. He had an extensive palace area built northeast outside the city wall, which was expanded at the beginning of the 9th century. The dating of the palace complex, which is now largely built over, to the time of the caliph is based on reports by the historian At-Tabarī (839–923) and is confirmed by coin finds. Erected as a victory monument after a successful battle (806) against the Byzantine emperor Nikephorus I , the ruins of Heraqla remained from the buildings of Harun eight kilometers west of the city . The Arab mathematician Al-Battani made astronomical observations in ar-Raqqa in the early 9th century. Bedouins from the Banu Numair tribe who immigrated from the Arabian Peninsula to the Jazira region ruled the Belich Valley in the 10th and 11th centuries, made the trade routes unsafe and often undertook raids against the urban, agricultural populations. The Banu Numair usually lived in their tent camps outside of the cities they controlled. A fire that destroyed parts of the city in 944 has been linked to the unrest. This period of no apparent construction activity is known as the “archaeological gap in the settlement”.

Seljuk time

Around 1087 Malik Shah I , Sultan of the Turkish Seljuks , conquered the northern part of Syria. He succeeded in pushing back the Bedouins and restoring order in the cities. During the rule of the Zengids and Ayyubids , the city, renamed in ar-Raqqa , experienced another economic and cultural heyday from the middle of the 12th to the middle of the 13th century, during which the Qasr al-Banat ("Girls' Castle") was built. The Zengide Nur ad-Din (r. 1146–1174) had the Great Mosque built in Ayyubid times, which had been in ruins for over 100 years, rebuilt. The renovation, for which Nur ad-Din, as well as for his other building projects carried out throughout the country, set up his own charitable foundation ( Waqf ) , is inscribed in 1165/66. In 1182/83 ar-Raqqa came under the control of the Ayyubid Saladin and was expanded. According to contemporary sources a palace, baths and gardens were laid out under the Ayyubid prince al-Malik al-Adil Abu Bakr, who lived in the city from 1201 to 1228; ar-Raqqa was one of the most prosperous cities in Diyar Mudar. One of the first highlights of Islamic cabaret was enamelled and gold-decorated glass vessels from the 12th and 13th centuries from Aleppo , Damascus and ar-Raqqa. The Mongols destroyed ar-Raqqa after conquering Mesopotamia in 1258. After that the city was deserted. Abu'l-Fida described an abandoned city in 1321.

Ottoman time

In 1516 Syria became Ottoman . Ar-Raqqa was the main town of an Eyâlet in the 16th and 17th centuries , but in practice it was neglected as the most backward province of the empire. An Ottoman cavalry troop was stationed in the citadel of ar-Raqqa. In the 16th century, its commanding officer only managed to collect taxes from impoverished farmers with great difficulty. The farmers of the irrigation oases on the Euphrates could not defend themselves against the raids by nomads until the beginning of the 20th century, which is why the course of the river remained deserted except for a few mud huts.

In 1865, some accommodations for government employees, a mosque and soon a few houses were grouped around the military post. In 1883 Eduard Sachau found around 100 residents in tents and simple dwellings between the brick ruins in ar-Raqqa during his journey through Syria and Mesopotamia. The place was a new establishment at that time; most of the immigrants came from Aleppo or were settled Bedouins. In 1865 there were about 50 houses, in 1898 100 to 200 houses were estimated. Around 1905 Circassians founded a settlement that initially consisted of around 50 houses, so that in 1912 a total of around 300 families lived in the city.

20th century

After the Turkish defeat in the First World War , French troops moved into Damascus and Aleppo in July 1920. In ar-Raqqa a month later, the leader of the Arab Muhayd family clan, Sheikh Hajim ibn Muhayd, declared ar-Raqqa the capital of an independent state. He and his followers received military support from the Turks and thus controlled the Euphrates Valley. In the peace treaty between France and Turkey of October 20, 1921, the common border line was established and the region became part of the French mandate . The surrender of ar-Raqqa was set for December 12, 1921. On that day, French troops entered the city. Hajim was allowed to retreat to his tent camp 50 kilometers northeast.

Raqqa became the capital of an administrative district (Muḥāfaẓat). More nomads slowly settled down. The growth into a town only began after World War II , when cotton cultivation began in the 1950s through irrigation with diesel pumps. In 1945 ar-Raqqa had 4,500 inhabitants, in 1968 there were around 20,000.

Syrian civil war

Uwais-al-Qaranī Mosque , 2009 ( destroyed by Daesh in the civil war )

During the Syrian Civil War , ar-Raqqa was occupied by rebels in March 2013. The attack was led by a group known as Ahrar al-Sham . It is estimated that around 800,000 displaced people had fled to the city by March 2013. The Shiite Ammar ibn Yasir mosque in the north of the city was desecrated by Sunni rebels after the fighting and some shrines there were destroyed. Ar-Raqqa has been controlled by fighters belonging to al-Qaeda from both the Nusra Front and IS since it was conquered by opposition forces. In mid-August 2013, IS drove the Ahfad-ar-Rasul Brigade belonging to the Free Syrian Army out of the city.

Most of the wheat that the city's bakeries need was obtained by IS from the northern border area with Turkey. IS also ran its own court in the city, tried to do Daʿwa (proselytizing to Islam) and reopened a school for children. IS was also responsible for the kidnapping of Paolo Dall'Oglio in the city in July 2013. From mid-June there were regular protests by residents against IS.

On September 26, 2013, Islamist terrorists set fire to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church of the Annunciation (Sayyida al-Bishara) after tearing crosses and pictures from the walls and setting them on fire. Three days later, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights , the Syrian Air Force killed 16 people, including 10 underage students, in an attack on a school. The Armenian Catholic Martyrs Church became the seat of a Sharia court and the Hisbah moral police. It was only blown up shortly before the loss of the IS stronghold of Raqqa. Christians in ar-Raqqa were forced to pay a poll tax and were not allowed to pray in public. Smoking, alcohol consumption and listening to secular music have been banned by IS. The Shiite mosque of Uwais al-Qaranī was destroyed.

Ar-Raqqa in August 2017

→ Main article : Battle for ar-Raqqa

In the first half of 2016, the city of ar-Raqqa was considered a stronghold of the IS terrorist militia, and at the end of May a major offensive against the terrorist organization began by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is supported by the United States . At the beginning of November 2016, 30,000 fighters from the Kurdish-Arab SDF began direct attacks against Ar-Raqqa. The supreme command was held by four Kurdish commanders, among them Commander Rojda Felat . In April 2017, it is estimated that around 100,000 civilians and 5,000 IS fighters were still in Raqqa, including 1,500 foreign volunteers. In June 2017, SDF troops began to storm the city with air support from coalition troops, and the conquest was announced on October 17th. After several months of fighting and more than 4,500 air strikes on the urban area, around 1,000 civilians were killed and a significant part of the infrastructure was destroyed. Since the capture, the reconstruction of the city and infrastructure has started. In December 2017, school lessons could be resumed. In July 2018, the mobile operator MTN returned to Raqqa after a five-year absence. An institute for adult education was also opened in July 2018. The focus of the institute was on women who hardly played a role in public life under the Islamic State. In August 2019, the Rojava administration in Raqqa announced through its news agency Ajansa Nûçeyan a Firatê (ANF) its intention to rebuild all mosques and churches in ar-Raqqa, with special attention being paid to the Armenian Catholic Martyrs Church, the largest church in Raqqa. In August 2019, the remains of the destroyed church were removed and the administration announced that a new church would be built on the foundations.

Cityscape

Historical buildings

The city ​​wall , which was once 4.5 kilometers long and was built by al-Mahdi from 771 to 775, has been restored to a height of at least 5 meters over a length of around three kilometers in its eastern and northern parts. The original height should have been around 18 meters with a thickness of 6.2 meters. There were entrances on the west and east sides and in the north in the middle. The wall covered an urban area of ​​1.5 square kilometers. The mud brick core is protected from the weather by a cladding made of fired bricks. At regular intervals between 25 and 28 meters, 132 roundels with a circumference of 15 meters protrude about five meters from the wall. 74 of these defenses are still preserved. Al-Mahdi's son, Harun ar-Raschid, had an outer wall added between 796 and 806. Of the four-meter-wide iron north gate, which is honored in several Arabic chronicles, only fastening parts are left. The metal was sold to the Qaramites in the 10th century by the continually suffering from financial worries, the Hamdanid dynasty , a partially independent regional power during the Abbasid period, to pay off debts.

Free-standing Baghdad Gate from the inner west side. To the left outside the picture is the restored round bastion of the Abbasid city wall.

The Baghdadtor is not connected to the city wall outside the southeastern bastion . It was not built by al-Mansur in 772, as was the popular belief according to British art historian KAC Creswell in the first half of the 20th century. John Warren refuted this for the first time in 1978 by studying the style of the decoration and the design. He pleaded for an emergence in 10/11. Century. Due to the layout as a central room with flat keel arches on four sides, the Baghdadtor corresponds to the Iranian architecture of the 12th century. A high water mark made of small-format brick ornament from the 11th to the beginning of the 13th century is also assigned to the Iranian architectural style. Since Nur ad-Din generously sponsored construction work during his reign, a dating according to Robert Hillenbrand (1985) to the second half of the 12th century is possible or probable. The basic dimensions of the building, of which the south and east sides have been partially preserved, were 12 × 8 meters. At the top there is an ornamental band consisting of pointed arch-shaped niches alternating with half-columns , with a further row of niches made of four-pass shapes above.

While the western Syrian cities were under the influence of Egyptian architecture from the Mamluk period , architectural forms of the distant Raqqas can be seen from the 11th century with the expression of the Seljuk architectural style as - apart from individual borrowings - the most extended to the southwest in the Arab region Iranian architecture can be viewed.

The partially restored Qasr al-Banat , a residence from the 12th century near the eastern city wall, is one of the rare examples of central four- iwan rooms in Syria. The design also goes back to Iranian mosque and palace models, the thick stucco decor refers to models from Iraq.

In the northern part of the old city district, on the street axis leading through the north gate, the former Great Mosque is located within a 95 × 110 meter walled courtyard . The well-fortified wall, like the city wall, consisted of an adobe core faced with bricks. The originally Ayyubid building was built under al-Mansur in 772, the remains visible today show the renovation by Nur ad-Din. The nearly square courtyard mosque had before the prayer wall with mihrab three, brick masonry piers lined ( Qibla - Riwaq ) and circumferential double arcade on the other sides. Half-columns at the wall connections carried stucco capitals . This earliest pillar mosque probably served as a model for the Friday mosque in Baghdad (extended in 808/809). The 15 pointed arch arcades, preserved up to a height of 11 meters, formed the courtyard side of the prayer hall. The large mosque emphasized a central axis with the stepped, enlarged central arches on one side of the wall. Because of its clear arcades, which are designed without any attached ornaments, it is considered to be the most beautiful of the buildings renewed through Nur ad-Din's funding. The lower part of the circular brick minaret on a square stone base was also preserved. It was rebuilt at the same time as the restorations (1146 to 1165). Medieval minarets in Syria were generally square stone towers; only around ar-Raqqa was there the Iraqi design of the round, smooth brick minarets. The only decorations on this and the minaret of Qalʿat Jaʿbar (on the Assad reservoir ) built at the same time were a frieze band at the top and small window slits at regular intervals.

1.5 to 3 kilometers northeast of the walled city, the palace area of ​​Harun ar-Raschid was excavated between 1944 and 1970 and 1982 to 1992 on an area of ​​around 4 × 5 kilometers . He had seven palaces and two residential buildings built, which in the plans of the 1950s are called Palaces A, B, C, D, West and East Palaces. The mud brick walls of Palace A, measuring 120 × 150 meters, were in a very poor state of preservation when they were uncovered (from 1944 and from 1966 to 1970). The largest complex, the Qasr as-Salam, measured 300 × 350 meters and served the caliph as a residence. Palace B (excavated 1950–52) was 115 meters long in north-south direction, with a south wall of 75 meters and a north wall of 70 meters. A central courtyard and several gardens lay between the various rooms. Inside and outside walls were covered with white stucco, which were decorated with elaborately designed floral ornamental ribbons. The palace D , examined in 1970, was comparable monumental with 100 × 100 meters. All the buildings examined consisted of adobe or rammed earth and were only reinforced in a few places by fired bricks. The 70 × 40 meter east palace consisted of a central three-part hall with a forecourt on the south side and an inner courtyard with side rooms in the north. The walls of this palace were preserved at a height of 1.5 meters. They were extended to 2 meters and protected against the weather with lime plaster. The East Palace was the only one of these structures to be preserved; the others have since disappeared due to overbuilding and agricultural use.

At the central square ( clock tower ) of today's Neustadt was the southwest corner of the city wall that no longer existed at this point. After comparing historical travelogues and photographs, there was a citadel from the 13th century to the south . The fired bricks of four, once massive corner towers were probably already largely removed in the second half of the 19th century and used for secondary purposes, the remaining elevation had to give way to road construction in the 1950s. On the basis of aerial photographs from the French mandate, Heidemann (2003) reconstructed a square system with sides 200 meters long and towers 15 meters in diameter. A photo from 1939 shows one of the round towers standing upright.

Modern city

Residential area in the east within the city wall

Housing estate developed after 2000 four kilometers west of the center

The city was rebuilt in the 20th century with a chessboard-like street pattern within the Abbasid city walls. An administrative building built during the French mandate, in which the city museum has been housed since 1981, marks the center of the city complex planned at the time in the south of the walled area. To the north and east, simpler residential areas with two-storey buildings connect. The Qasr al-Banat within the east wall is surrounded by streets with small car repair shops.

The city museum is located on Sharia al-Quwatli, today's main shopping street, running in an east-west direction. The museum houses a collection of archaeological finds from the Neolithic to the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Period from some of the provincial sites, including Tell Sabi Abyad , Tell Bi'a , Tell Chuera and Tall Munbāqa . During the civil war and the rule of the IS, the building was damaged and many objects were stolen and destroyed.

The city center, which was redesigned after the middle of the 20th century, is formed by the large square at the western end of the Sharia al-Quwatli and, as in every Syrian city, is indicated by a clock tower. Representative administration buildings are located here. One kilometer to the south, the main access road reaches the Euphrates Bridge, two kilometers to the north, just outside the city wall, is the run-down station on the Deir ez-Zor - Aleppo railway line . There and to the east, residential quarters of the lower class stretch several kilometers beyond the old town ring and to the edge of Tell Bi'a. Unplanned island-like suburbs are emerging on the cotton and grain fields surrounding the city.

To the west of the old town is a new business district with wide streets, multi-storey apartment blocks and a few green spaces in between. A planned area of ​​several square kilometers with condominiums in uniform four- to five-storey residential units has been expanding at great speed to the west since the turn of the millennium. It ends (2009) about four kilometers outside the center, where temporary buildings with simple craft workshops form the urban fringe.

politics

In July 2018 the two chairmen of the city's civil council were Leyla Mustafa and Abid al-Mihbash.

The town hall was destroyed during the conquest by the SDF. The town hall is housed in a former post office.

sons and daughters of the town

• Mohed Altrad (* 1948 or 1951), French businessman of Syrian origin
• Yassin al-Haj Saleh (* 1961), writer and dissident

literature

• Clifford Edmund Bosworth: Historic Cities of the Islamic World. Brill, Leiden 2008, pp. 440-446.
• Verena Daiber, Andrea Becker (Ed.): Raqqa III - Architectural Monuments and Palaces. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2004.
• Stefan Heidemann : The renaissance of the cities in northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia. Urban development and economic conditions in ar-Raqqa and Ḥarrān from the period of Bedouin domination to the Seljuks. Brill, Leiden 2002.
• Stefan Heidemann, Andrea Becker (Ed.): Raqqa II - The Islamic City. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2003.
• Robert Hillenbrand: Eastern islamic influences in Syria: Raqqa and Qal'at Ja'bar in the later 12th century. In: Julian Raby (Ed.): The Art of Syria and the Jazīra. 1100-1250. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985, pp. 21-48; Reprinted in: Robert Hillenbrand: Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture. Vol I. The Pindar Press, London 2001, pp. 190-224.
• Michael Meinecke : al-Raḳḳa. In: CE Bosworth et al. a. (Ed.): The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. 8. EJ Brill, Leiden 1995, pp. 410-415.
• Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7701-3978-1 , pp. 332–337.
• Ulrike Siegel: Raqqa 4 - The residence of the caliph Hārūn ar-Rašīd in ar-Raqqa / ar-Rāfiqa (Syria). de Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-054975-1 .
• Stefan Winter: The Province of Raqqa under Ottoman Rule, 1535-1800: A Preliminary Study. Journal of Near Eastern Studies , 68, No. 4, 2009, pp. 253-268.

Web links

Commons : ar-Raqqa  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Stefan Heidemann: On the hidden traces of the descendants of Harun ar Raschid. The rise and fall of an ancient metropolis in the Orient. University of Jena
• Stefan Heidemann: The Citadel of al-Raqqa and Fortifications in the Middle Euphrates Area. In: Hugh Kennedy (Ed.): Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria. From the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period. (History of Warfare 35), Brill, Leiden 2006, pp. 122-150; P. 126: Plan of the historic city
• City walls of Rafiqa (Raqqa) and the Baghdad Gate. Museum with no frontiers
• Dieter Sturm: On the importance of the Syrian city ar-Raqqa from the Arab conquest to the present. In: Hallesche's contributions to oriental studies . Volume 1, University of Halle-Wittenberg, 1979, pp. 35-72

Individual evidence

1. ^ Barak Barfi, Aaron Y. Zelin: Al Qaeda's Syrian Strategy. The Washington Institute, October 10, 2013
2. ↑ Wolfgang Schirmer: Landscape history around Tall Bi'a on the Syrian Euphrates. In: Peter Miglus, Eva Strommenger : Tall Bi'a / Tuttul – VIII. City fortifications, houses and temples. Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken 2002, p. 4 f
3. ↑ See Clifford Edmund Bosworth, p. 441
4. ^ Gertrude Bell Archive, Album J (1909) Photo J 181
5. ^ Raqqa Palaces. ArchNet ( Memento from November 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
6. ^ Julian Henderson: The Raqqa Ancient Industry project. bnet (University of Nottingham) From the University of Nottingham , further tells with artisanal production facilities were excavated on the outskirts of the city in the 1990s
7. ↑ Ulrike Siegel: The residence of the caliph Harun ar-Raschīd in Ar-Raqqa / ar-Rāfīqa, Syria. Processing of the by Prof. Dr. Michael Meinecke (†) carried out the excavation between 1982 and 1993. In: baugeschichte.a.tu-berlin.de. Technische Universität Berlin , 2003, archived from the original on March 2, 2012 ; accessed on June 16, 2016 . 
8. ↑ Alastair North Edge: Umayyad and Abbasid Urban Fortifications in the Near East. In: Lorenz Korn, Eva Orthmann, Florian Schwarz (eds.): The boundaries of the world. Arabica et Iranica ad honorem Heinz Gaube. Reichert, Wiesbaden 2008, p. 47
9. ↑ Stefan Heidemann: Numayrid ar-Raqqa. Archaeological and Historical Evidence for a 'Dimorphic State' in the Bedouin Dominated Fringes of the Fatimid Empire. In: Urbain Vermeulen, Jan Van Steenbergen (eds.): Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras IV (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 140), Leuven 2005, pp. 85–110; here pp. 90–94
10. ^ Clifford Edmund Bosworth, p. 444
11. ↑ Stefan Heidemann: A treasure find from the Raqqa of the Numairid period, the “settlement gap” in northern Mesopotamia and a workshop in the Great Mosque. ( Memento from May 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 9.0 MB) Reprint from Damaszener Mitteilungen, Volume 11, 1999, Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2000, pp. 227–242
12. ^ Stefan Heidemann: The Transformation of Middle Eastern Cities in the 12th Century: Financing Urban Renewal. (PDF; 930 kB) University of Jena, p. 10
13. ^ Peter Wald: Syria, Palestine, Levant. In: Hans-Thomas Gosciniak (Hrsg.): Brief history of Islamic art. DuMont, Cologne 1991, p. 189 f
14. ^ Stefan Winter: The Province of Raqqa under Ottoman Rule, 1535-1800. In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies . Vol. 68, No. 4, October 2009, pp. 253–268 ( at JSTOR )
15. ↑ Scheck / Odenthal, p. 332
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20. ↑ Ruth Sherlock: Syrian rebels capture governor of Raqqa . In: The Telegraph , March 5, 2013; Retrieved June 17, 2013
21. ↑ Alexander Dziadosz, Oliver Holmes: Special Report: Deepening ethnic rifts reshape Syria's towns. Reuters, June 21, 2013; Retrieved June 21, 2013
22. ↑ Khaled Yacoub Oweis: Al Qaeda group kidnaps Italian priest in Syria: activists . Reuters, July 29, 2013; Retrieved July 29, 2013
23. ^ Richard Spencer, David Rose: Under the black flag of al-Qaeda, the Syrian city ruled by gangs of extremists. In: The Telegraph , May 12, 2013.
24. ^ Richard Spencer: Al-Qaeda sets up complaints department. In: The Telegraph , June 2, 2013.
25. ↑ Nour Malas: Rebel-on-Rebel Violence Seizes Syria. Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2013, accessed October 12, 2013 . 
26. ↑ Basma Atassi: The end of the rebel alliance? In: Al Jazeera English . September 14, 2013, accessed October 12, 2013 . 
27. ↑ Flight of Christians from Al-Qaeda in Syria. nachricht.at, September 27, 2013
28. ↑ Syria: Attack with vacuum bombs against school. In: Human Rights Watch , October 1, 2015.
29. ^ Samuel Sweeney: Life under ISIS: Raqqa's Christians tell their story. Catholic Herald, May 2, 2019.
30. ↑ Jürg Bischoff: Poll tax for Christians in Raqqa. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 28, 2014.
31. ↑ Rebels step up offensive on IS stronghold Rakka , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , May 30, 2016
32. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Offensive to recapture the IS stronghold of Raqqa , November 9, 2016 , accessed on November 10, 2016.
33. ↑ Moritz tree Stieger: Rojsa Felat. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 8, 2016.
34. ↑ Luke Mogelson: Dark Victory in Raqqa . In: The New Yorker . October 30, 2017 ( newyorker.com [accessed January 22, 2018]).
35. ↑ Mark Townsend: 'Hundreds of us will die in Raqqa': the women fighting Isis. In: The Guardian , April 30, 2017 (English).
36. ↑ Last bastions fallen . ORF online, October 17, 2017
37. ^ The price of victory in Raqqa: More than a thousand dead and a city in ruins . Washington Post, October 17, 2017
38. ^ Syria, new axis for the SDF against Isis in the Middle Euphrates Valley. Retrieved August 8, 2018 (American English). 
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40. ^ Churches in Raqqa being restored. Ajansa Nûçeyan a Firatê (ANF) English, August 20, 2019.
41. ^ Rehabilitation Of The First Church In Al-Raqqa. Syrian Democratic Forces Press, August 17, 2019.
42. ↑ City walls of Rafiqa (Raqqa) and the Baghdad Gate. Museum with no frontiers
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44. ↑ Robert Hillenbrand, pp. 27-29
45. ^ Robert Hillenbrand, p. 21
46. ↑ Image for: In the footsteps of the descendants of Harun ar Raschid. In: idw .
47. ^ Clifford Edmund Bosworth, p. 442
48. ^ Robert Hillenbrand, p. 36
49. ↑ Robert Hillenbrand, pp. 39–41
50. ^ Palace B. Museum with no Frontiers
51. ^ Stefan Heidemann: Medieval citadel rediscovered in Syria. ( Memento from May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Archeology online
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53. ↑ Ammar Hamou, Barrett Limoges: “A treasure house of Syria's past”: Archaeologists, NGOs reckon with scale of cultural looting in post-IS Raqqa. Syria Direct, August 16, 2018
54. ↑ Syria: Mayor of Ar-Raqqa. In: ARTE . April 27, 2018. Retrieved August 17, 2018 .