The Abbasid Baghdad Gate at Raqqa
The Baghdad Gate at Raqqa in northern Syria, brickwork of the Abbasid period. Raqqa was Harun al-Rashid's residence for over a decade and the administrative centre of the Jazira — the province whose garrisons and revenues the caliphate lost control of in the tenth century.
The Jazira, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, was one of the richest provinces the Abbasids held and one of the first to slip. Pay for the frontier garrisons fell into arrears, tribal confederations that had been auxiliaries became principals, and by the middle of the tenth century Hamdanid emirs at Mosul and Aleppo were governing in their own name while acknowledging Baghdad in the Friday prayer. The caliphate did not lose a battle for the province so much as stop being able to pay for it. See military collapse and local revolt in the Abbasid Jazira.
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