Story
The story of Dara
Just 5 km from the Persian frontier, an emperor decided to build a city almost from scratch. In 505, while the Persian king Kavad I was distracted elsewhere, Emperor Anastasius I chose the village of Dara, only 18 kilometres west of Persian-held Nisibis, as a refuge for the army and a centre for preparing weapons.
Masons and workers gathered from all over Mesopotamia and worked at great speed, raising the new city on three hills with the citadel on the highest. It received large granaries, a bath and water cisterns, and the name Anastasiopolis.
According to Procopius, the hasty walls were poor, so Justinian I repaired them, raised the inner walls to about 20 metres and renamed the city Iustiniana Nova. Dara featured in Roman-Persian clashes in 530, 540, 544, 573 and 604. Today, 30 km southeast of Mardin, wander among the structures carved into the limestone of the city once known as the Ephesus of the East.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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