Ancient city of Palmyra

Palmyra, the name given by the Geeks to a great and splendid city of Upper Syria. Its original Hebrew name was Tadmor, which, like the Greek word means ‘city of palms’.

According to the writers of Book of Palmyra Kings and Chronicles, the city was built by Solomon in the 10th century BC.

The city had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian Desert and was known as the ‘Bride of the Desert’.

It soon became an important emporium of commerce and must have been a splendid place when it was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar 600 BC, together with Jerusalem and Tyre.

The first author of antiquity who mentions Palmyra is Piny the Elder. Afterwards it was mentioned by Appian, in connection oath a design of Mark Anthony to let his cavalry plunder it.

The Seleucids took control of Syria in BC, and Palmyra was left to itself and became an independent state. In the first century AD, Palmyra was already an important trade centre. There is early testimony of trade with Seleucia on the Tigris from 19 AD.

After the end of the Nabataean kingdom in 106 AD, Palmyra became Rome’s most important resupply base for the Eastern trade with Parthia and India.

In the second century AD, it seems to have been beautified by the emperor Hadrian. In the beginning of the third century AD, it became a Roman colony under Caracalla (211 - 217 AD) and received the jus Italicum.
Ancient city of Palmyra

Al-Mada'in city

Al-Mada'in, ‘the cities’ the Arabic translation of the Aramaic Mahoze or Madinatha referring to the Sasanid metropolis on the Tigris about 20 miles southeast of Baghdad where several adjacent cities connected by a floating bridge stretched along both banks of the river.

It had once been the capital of the Persian Empire. It was five settlements that in the tenth century existed amid the ruins of the former town capitals of Persia, Ctesiphon and Seleucia. Actually, the city was a complex of seven cities.

Seleucia was probably an ancient site modernized by Seleucus, Alexander’s general, is situated on the western side of the river Tigris.

Ctesiphon was most probably a Parthian foundation, becoming their capital when the conquered the Seleucids in 129 BC.

On the west bank stood the round, walled city of Veh-Ardashir founded by Ardashir I in 230 AD and called Behrasir by the Arabs Mahoza by Jews and Kokhe buy Christians.

Mahoza, as is well known, was an important center of Babylonian Jews in the Persian period, as shown by many Talmudic sources.
Al-Mada'in city

Seleucia on the Tigris

In 312 BC Syrian King Seleucus I Nicator founded this city on the right bank of the Tigris, about 32 km southeast of Baghdad at the mouth of the Royal Canal that connected the Tigris with the Euphrates, to be his eastern capital.

King Seleucus I Nicator had been one of Alexander the Great’s generals.

Seleucia on the Tigris was built largely with materials brought from Babylon, and its founding marks the end of Babylon’s political significance.

Seleucia was populated with Macedonian and Greeks and also included many Jews and Syrians. The Tigris and Euphrates flowed near its walls and rendered it one of the richest commercial cities of ancient times.

Seleucia retained its independence during the Parthian Empire and was probably at the heart of numerous internal conspiracies and power struggles for the throne in the first century BC and AD.

Because of it location on the Tigris Seleucia was one of the targets of Roman attack in any campaign against Parthia and later Persia.

Avidius Cassius burned the city in AD 164, and when Septimius Severus passed through the region on his Parthian campaign of 198 the site was completely abandoned.

The name Seleucia was used for other cities in the East, founded in the Greek style.
Seleucia on the Tigris