Ctesiphon
was one of the great cities of ancient
Mesopotamia and the capital of the
Parthian Empire and its successor, the
Persian Empire, for more than 600 years.
Located approximately 20 miles southeast of the modern city of
Baghdad, along the river
Tigris, it rose to prominence along with the Parthian Empire in the first century BC, and was the seat of government for most of its rulers.
Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the
Roman_Empire in its eastern wars. The city was captured by Roman or Byzantine forces five times in its history, three times in the
second_century alone. The emperor
Trajan captured Ctesiphon in
116 and actually annexed it to the Roman Empire, but his successor
Hadrian returned it in
117 as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avitus captured Ctesiphon during another Parthian war in
164, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In
197, the emperor
Septimius_Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, possibly as many as 100,000, whom he sold into slavery.
Late in the
third_century, after the Parthians had been supplanted by the
Sassanids, the city again became a souce of conflict with Rome. In
295, the
Caesar Galerius was defeated by the Persians outside the city. Humiliated, he returned a year later and won a tremendous victory which ended in the fourth and final capture of the city by a Roman army. He returned it to the Persian king
Narses in exchange for
Armenia.
Finally, in
627, the eastern Roman emperor
Heraclius took the city, then capital of the
Sassanid empire, leaving it after the Persians accepted his peace terms.
Ctesiphon fell to the
Islamic Saracens in
637 and went into a rapid decline, especially after the founding of Baghdad not long after.
The ruins of Ctesiphon were the site of a major battle of
World_War_I in November of
1915. The
Ottoman_Empire defeated troops of
Great_Britain attempting to capture Baghdad, and drove them back some 40 miles before trapping the British force and compelling it to surrender.
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