Samarra Minaret

 

Samarra Minaret 

I might have missed taking photos of Hillah, better known as Babylon, and of Baghdad, but I have found a camera...it is only a cheap and not an up to date version but it takea photos, so I am back on line and can post some photos. 

                                                  

I haven't managed to translate all the settings from Arabic but it is forcing an improvement in my Arabic trying to reset the functions, so ignore the date stamp as it is six months ahead of itself. Above is the famous Samarra Minaret, iconic and instantly recognisable. It was built in 851AD by Al Matawakkil along with the mosque adjacent to it. Bith ar UNESCO sites but only accessible by muslims so this is the nearest that non-muslims can get and there is no picture of the mosque as it is hidden behind a wall.

It is 52 metres high so it can be seen from a long way away across the flat and featureless desert. The mosque when it was built was the largest in the world. The minaret is 33 metres wide at the base and its spiral ramp up the outside makes it instantly recognisable.

                                                 

We couldn't get near to the Samarra Minaret but just 22 kilometres to the north is the Abu Dulaf Mosque and Minaret, built to the same design just eight years later...a nd it is free to enter. And as an added bonus, visitors with a head for heights can walk up the spiral ramp to reach the top. 

Some brave members of the group standing at the top

And the ruins of the adjacent runied mosqur provide opportunities for some photos...

...views along the arches...

...and of the outside, with the mud brick surrounding wall to the left...plus tons of rubbish wherever the wind blows it into hollows. It was a Friday when I visited and it is a popular picnic spot with families and cars scattered around and inside the ruins.


                                       

And a picture of Marianna (the name of the truck, as by tradition, all overlanding trucks have a name) with the minaret in the back ground. She is an old girl and needs a lot of maintenance...this time she was leaking coolant, so another job to be done to replace the part when a spare can be found.

But it didn't hinder our continued journey north via Tikrit, birth place of Saddam Hussein and known by historians as also the birth place of Saladin (1137 - 1193), the first sultan of both egypt and Syria and leader of the muslim military effort to dislodge the Christians from the Holy Land during the Third Crusade (1189 - 1192) in which Richard the Lionheart was involved.

Our next stop was Mosul in the heart of Kurdistan.