Tall Mahra

Tall Maḥrā was a small city of the central Balikh River valley, in what is now northern Syria, inhabited from the Hellenistic period until about the 13th century.[1][2] It is identified with the 21-hectare tell now called Tall Shaykh Hasan, also romanized as Tell Sheikh Hasan.[3][1] Karin Bartl did a survey of the site's ceramics in the 1990s, and the Syrian Antiquities Service also conducted excavations here by digging a few test trenches.[1] Tall Mahra peaked under the Abbasid Caliphate, when it was the main town between Raqqa and Hisn Maslama on the way to Harran.[1][2][3] It is best known as the birthplace of Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, the 9th-century Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.[2]

The oldest pottery fragments found at Tall Mahra date from the Hellenistic period.[1] Later, it formed a Christian settlement under the Byzantine Empire.[2] The Late Roman/Byzantine settlement (from the 3rd/4th until 7th centuries) covered perhaps 7 ha.[1] The only remains found from this period were two mud-brick walls, covered in lime plaster, under a street on the eastern side of the tell.[1] These walls were probably also used during the Umayyad period.[1] A few 7th-century Byzantine coins were also found at the site.[2]

Like other sites in the region, Tall Mahra underwent significant expansion during the Abbasid period.[2][1] This was likely prompted by Harun al-Rashid moving his court to Raqqa in 796, which created a new demand for agricultural produce and stimulated the region's economy in general.[2][3] Under the Abbasids, Tall Mahra expanded to a size of 21 hectares.[1] This was its greatest extent, and Abbasid potsherds cover the entire tell.[1]

Fragments of the city's stone walls are visible from the surface; they presumably date from the Abbasid period.[1] They enclose an almost perfectly square area of 450x450m.[2] The walls contain projecting half-towers, similar in design to the ones at al-Rafiqah in Raqqah, except these ones serve virtually zero defensive purpose.[3] They instead seem to have been "symbols of urban pride and wealth in [a] small rural town".[3] In addition to the monumental walls, Tall Mahra had a church, a small mosque, and a quadriburgium of unknown function.[2][3] Also, above the Byzantine mud-brick walls on the east side, a series of stone buildings was built during the Abbasid period.[1] These were perhaps used as shops.[1]

The latest dated items found at Tall Mahra are from the 11th-13th centuries.[1] The 13th-century geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Tall Mahra as a fortified town with a market lying between Raqqa and Hisn Maslama.[1]

Near the site of Tall Mahra is Tell Shahin, a tell covering 13.6 hectares that was inhabited at a roughly similar time: from early Abbasid times until the Ayyubid era.[1]