Hatra


Hatra

(hă`trə), Arab. Al Hadr, ancient city and fortress, in modern-day Iraq, 68 mi (110 km) SW of Mosul. It flourished from the 1st cent. B.C. to the 2nd cent. A.D. under the Parthian Empire (see ParthiaParthia
, ancient country of Asia, SE of the Caspian Sea. In its narrowest limits it consisted of a mountainous region intersected with fertile valleys, lying S of Hyrcania and corresponding roughly to the modern Iranian province of Khorasan.
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), when it was a fortified religious and trading center. The city is noted for its many temples, dedicated to dieties of several ancient religious traditions; the largest is the Great Temple. Hatra resisted several Roman attempts to conquer it, but fell in A.D. 241 to Shapur IShapur I
or Sapor I
, d.272, king of Persia (241–72), son and successor of Ardashir I, of the Sassanid, or Sassanian, dynasty. He was an able warrior king.
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, Sassanid king of Persia, and was destroyed. Excavated during the 20th cent., its ruins constituted some of the most significant stone monuments of Iraq, but in the 2015–16 the Islamist extremist group Islamic StateIslamic State
(IS), Sunni Islamic militant group committed to the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that would unite Muslims in a transnational, strict-fundamentalist Islamic state.
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 destroyed statues and looted the site.

Hatra

 

a Parthian city, presently in ruins, in northern Iraq, near the village of al-Hadr. Hatra was founded before the Common Era. It flourished in the first and second centuries A.D. and was destroyed in 257. The city was built to a nearly oval plan and covered an area of approximately 320 hectares. There are remains of triple stone and mud-brick city walls with four gates, a stone palace-temple complex, dwellings, and burial structures. Round-shaped sculptures, reliefs, and other objects have been found there.