Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi

Two large rectangular enclosures stand in the middle of the Syrian steppe, tens of kilometres from the nearest town. Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi was built for the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in 728, and is counted the twin of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, which he had built a year earlier. The hayr in the name means a walled hunting and grazing ground: this is not a fortress but an estate and hunting compound set down in the desert.

Getting there

115 km north-east of Palmyra and 28 km from the town of al-Sukhnah. The road crosses open steppe with no fuel or water along the way, so travel with a driver who knows the route and a full tank. The site is entirely exposed, with no shade.

What to see

The complex has three parts: a small enclosure, a large enclosure, and an outer wall around both. The walls are built of fine-grained limestone with an amber tint, banded near the top with brick and stucco decoration. Inside the large enclosure, ranges of rooms, arches and column drums are still standing, and a mosque, a wide bathhouse and a reception hall can be made out. Traces of the old olive groves remain around it.

What not to miss

Look closely at the towers: round, ornamental and without a single arrow slit. They were never built for defence but stand as an architectural gesture, and that one detail explains why this is not a castle. The second detail is water: the compound was fed through a canal about 5700 metres long from a Byzantine building further out.

History and the present

The site was abandoned outright at the start of the 14th century and never built over again, which is why it preserves an early Islamic settlement plan intact. Oleg Grabar excavated here across six seasons between 1964 and 1971. Some of the decorated fragments are in the National Museum of Damascus, and the gate has been reconstructed in the Deir ez-Zor Museum. The site was added to the UNESCO tentative list in 1999. Armed groups took it in 2013 and it was looted and vandalised, the visitors’ house broken into; it was retaken in August 2017. The walls stand, but maintenance lapsed and the edges of the excavation trenches are loose.