21 April 2019 (15th, the half-moon of Shaban ul-Muazzam 1440)
Today, I went to visit the Resting Holy Samarra, the ‘Askariyya Shrine/Mosque of The 10th Imam: Ali al-Hadi an-Nagi the Calming and 11th Imam: Ḥassan al-Askari the Camp-Dweller (PBUT). Housed in the mosque are also the tombs of Hakimah Khatoon, sister of Imam Hadi, and Lady Narjis Banoo, the mother of long expected Jesus Imam Muhammad al-Mahdj al-Messiah (AAFS).
It is one of the most important Shia mausoleums in the world, but unfortunately the dome was destroyed in a horrendous terror campaign by Salafis in February 2006. Its two remaining minarets and clock tower were destroyed too in another bombing in June and July 2007, causing widespread anger among us. The dome and minarets were repaired and the mosque reopened in April 2009. However, violence has continued, with bombings taking place in 2011 and 2013. In June 2014, the city was attacked by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as part of the Northern Iraq offensive. ISIL forces captured the municipality building and university, but thanks to God, were later repulsed successfully.
Adjacent to the shrine is another domed commemorative building, the Holy Serdab, built over the cistern where the Twelfth Imam, Mahdi, first entered the Minor Occultation or hidden from the view.
The Imams lived under house arrest in the part of Samarra that had been Caliph al-Mutasims' (God's Curse Be Down Upon Him) military camp and as a result, they are known as the ‘Askariyyain. The Holy Shrine is on Abi Ahmad Street near the mosque built by Mutasim, a later tradition attributes their deaths to poison.
Naser ad-Din Shah Qajar undertook the latest re-modeling of the shrine in 1868, with the golden dome added in 1905, covered in 72,000 gold pieces and surrounded by walls of light blue tiles, as the dome had to be a dominant feature of the holy city’s skyline. It was approximately 66 ft in diameter by 223 ft high.
City’s official name is Samarra Archaeological City. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris, 78 mi north of Baghdad.
In the medieval times, Samarra was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and the only remaining Islamic capital that retains its original plan, architecture and artistic relics. In 2007, UNESCO named Samarra one of its World Heritage Sites.
The remains of prehistoric Samarra were first excavated between 1911 and 1914 by the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. Samarra became the type site for the Samarra culture. Since 1946, the notebooks, letters, unpublished excavation reports and photographs have been in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
The civilization flourished alongside the Ubaid period, as one of the first town states in the Near East. It lasted from 5,500 BCE and eventually collapsed in 3,900 BCE.
A city of Sur-marrati (refounded by Sennacherib in 690 BC according to a stele in the Walters Art Museum) is insecurely identified with a fortified Assyrian site of Assyrian at al-Huwaish on the Tigris opposite modern Samarra. The State Archives of Assyria Online identifies Surimarrat as the modern site of Samarra.
In 836 CE, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mu'tasim founded a new capital at the banks of the Tigris. Here he built extensive palace complexes surrounded by garrison settlements for his guards, mostly drawn from Central Asia and Iran (most famously the Turks, as well as the Khurasani Ishtakhaniyya, Faraghina and Ushrusaniyya regiments) or North Africa (like the Maghariba). Although quite often called Mamluk slave soldiers, their status was quite elevated; some of their commanders bore Sogdian titles of nobility.
The city was further developed under Caliph al-Mutawakkil, who sponsored the construction of lavish palace complexes, such as al-Mutawakkiliyya, and the Great Mosque of Samarra with its famous spiral minaret or Malwiya, built in 847. For his son al-Mu'tazz he built the large palace Bulkuwara.
Samarra remained the residence of the caliph until 892, when al-Mu'tazid eventually returned to Baghdad. The city declined but maintained a mint until the early 10th century.
The Nestorian patriarch Sargis (860–72) moved the patriarchal seat of the Church of the East from Baghdad to Samarra, and one or two of his immediate successors may also have sat in Samarra so as to be close to the seat of power.
During the long decline of the Abbasid empire, 940 Samarra was largely abandoned starting in AD 940. Its population returned to Baghdad and the city rapidly declined. Its field of ruins is the only world metropolis of late antiquity which is available for serious archaeology.
In the eighteenth century, one of the most violent battles of the 1730–1735 Ottoman–Persian War, the Battle of Samarra, took place, where over 50,000 Turks and Persians became casualties. The engagement decided the fate of Ottoman Iraq and kept it under Istanbul's suzerainty until the First World War.
During the 20th century, Samarra gained new importance and today it is an important pilgrimage centre for the world Shias. The town was traditionally and until very recently, dominated by Sunnis and was once in the "Sunni Triangle" of ultimate hostility during the sectarian violence in Iraq , arousing during the Iran-Iraq War, but after the end of civil war, the Shia population has increased exponentially.
Samarra has a hot desert climate and most rain falls in the winter. The average annual temperature is 72.9 F. About 6.73 in of precipitation falls annually.
The metaphor of "Having an appointment in Samarra", signifying death, is a literary reference to an ancient Babylonian myth recorded in the Babylonian Talmud and transcribed by W. Somerset Maugham, in which Death narrates a man's futile attempt to escape him by fleeing from Baghdad to Samarra. The story "The Appointment in Samarra" subsequently formed the germ of many novels and other form literary writing.
Wassalamu Alaikum va Rahmatullah-i va Barakatuh
Huge thank to Almighty God for all the blessings He has bestowed upon us and this great city.
I ask God to continue to heal our land and meet our Imam’s needs - and we do so through the power of prayer.
May God have mercy upon my followers.
Sayyed Saeed-ul-Mulk JALILI
سید سعیدالملک حسینی صفوی جلیلی
The Office of His Holiness the Most Highly Qualified Marja Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Saeed-ul-Mulk JALILI
the Gt x44-Grandson of the Holy Prophet Mohammad – Peace Be Upon Him and His Purified and Clean of Sins Offspring
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