- Arabic:
- (تدمر) Tadmur
- Aramaic:
- תדמור (Tadmor)
Palmyra
Where is Palmyra located?
What significance did Palmyra have in ancient trade?
Who was Queen Zenobia and what did she achieve?
What damage did ISIS cause to Palmyra during the Syrian Civil War?
What efforts were made to rehabilitate Palmyra after the fall of Bashar al-Assad?
Palmyra, ancient city in south-central Syria, 130 miles (210 km) northeast of Damascus. The site was continuously inhabited from the Neolithic Period until the 1930s, when a modern city by the same name was built less than a half-mile (and less than a kilometer) east of the ancient city. Its well-preserved ruins then became a cornerstone of Syrian cultural heritage and tourism until the Syrian Civil War (2011– ), when the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) destroyed some of its most iconic monuments.
The name Palmyra, meaning “city of palm trees,” was conferred upon the city by its Roman rulers in the 1st century ce. In Arabic, the city’s ancient name Tadmur or Tadmor continues to be used. The city is mentioned in tablets dating from as early as the 19th century bce. It attained prominence in the 3rd century bce, when a road through it became one of the main routes of east-west trade. Palmyra was built on an oasis lying approximately halfway between the Mediterranean Sea (west) and the Euphrates River (east), and it helped connect the Roman world with Mesopotamia and East Asia.
History and ruins
Although autonomous for much of its history, Palmyra came under Roman control by the time of the emperor Tiberius (reigned 14–37 ce). After visiting the city (c. 129), the emperor Hadrian declared it a civitas libera (“free city”), and it was later granted by the emperor Caracalla the title of colonia, with exemption from taxes.
The city thus prospered, and the 2nd and 3rd centuries ce were the great age of Palmyra and its extensive trading activities, despite obstacles that interrupted caravan trade with East Asia, and also in the face of instability around the Roman-controlled Mediterranean. When the Sasanians supplanted the Parthians in Persia and southern Mesopotamia (227), the road to the Persian Gulf was soon closed to Palmyrene trade. These difficulties led the Romans to set up the personal rule of the family of Septimius Odaenathus at Palmyra. He was appointed governor of Syria Phoenice by the emperor Valerian (reigned 253–260), but it was apparently his son, the emperor Gallienus, who conferred on Odaenathus the title of corrector totius Orientis (“governor of all the East”). Both Odaenathus and his eldest son, the heir apparent, were assassinated, however, reputedly at the command of Odaenathus’ second wife, Zenobia, who took control of the city and became an effective leader. Under her rule, the armies of Palmyra conquered most of Anatolia (Asia Minor) in 270, and the city declared its independence from Rome. The Roman emperor Aurelian, however, regained Anatolia in 272 and razed Palmyra the following year.
The city remained the chief station on the strata Diocletiana, a paved road that linked Damascus to the Euphrates, but in 634 it was taken by Khālid ibn al-Walīd in the name of the first Muslim caliph, Abū Bakr. As Islamic empire united the eastern and western regions of the Middle East, the importance of Palmyra—as a secure trading center in the borderland between two empires—gradually declined.
The language of Palmyra was Aramaic; its two systems of writing—a monumental script and a Mesopotamian cursive—reflect the city’s position between East and West. The great bilingual inscription known as the Tariff of Palmyra and the inscriptions carved below the statues of the great caravan leaders reveal information on the organization and nature of Palmyra’s trade. The Palmyrenes exchanged goods with India via the Persian Gulf route and also with such cities as Coptos on the Nile River, Rome, and Doura-Europus in Syria.
The principal deity of the Aramaeans of Palmyra was Bol (probably an equivalent to Baal). Bol soon became known as Bel by assimilation to the Babylonian god Bel-Marduk. Both gods presided over the movements of the stars. The Palmyrenes associated Bel with the sun and moon gods, Yarhibol and Aglibol, respectively. Another heavenly triad formed around the Phoenician god Baal Shamen, the “lord of heaven,” more or less identical with Hadad. A monotheistic tendency emerged in the 2nd century ce with the cult of an unnamed god, “he whose name is blessed forever, the merciful and good.”
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The ruins at Palmyra clearly reveal the network plan of the ancient city. Along the principal east-west street, named the Grand Colonnade by archaeologists, a double portico is ornamented with three nymphaea. At the opposite end is the Tetrapylon, a square monument consisting of four groupings of four columns each. To the south are the agora, the Senate House, and the theater. Other ruins include a vast complex called Diocletian’s Camp and the chief Palmyrene sanctuary, dedicated to Bel, Yarhibol, and Aglibol; a number of significant ancient Christian churches have also been uncovered. In architecture the Corinthian order marks almost all the monuments, but the influence of Mesopotamia and Iran is also clearly evident. In addition, art found on monuments and tombs reflects the influences of the surrounding Roman and Persian empires.
The ancient city of Palmyra continued to be inhabited until the 1930s, when French authorities in the mandate period moved its remaining residents to a new town of the same name, Palmyra (Tadmur), just east of the ruins. The ruins were then systematically excavated and in 1980 they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The population of the modern town was last counted at 51,323 in the 2004 census, the last population count before the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011.
Damage in the Syrian Civil War
In May 2015, during the Syrian Civil War, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took advantage of a security vacuum in the region and gained control of Palmyra. The movement, known for its brutality and terrorism as well as its puritanical take on Islam, asserted a broad iconoclastic stance against ancient monuments and undertook campaigns to cleanse areas of cultural artifacts it deemed non-Islamic. In Palmyra its fighters used explosives to demolish many of the most iconic ruins, including the Temple of Baal Shamen and the Temple of Bel. In March 2016 the Syrian army retook Palmyra from ISIS, with support from Russian and Iranian forces. But with the Syrian army distracted later that year by fighting in Aleppo, ISIS again controlled Palmyra from December 2016 until March 2017 and destroyed more of the ruins, including the theater and the Tetrapylon. An assessment conducted by the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) later in 2017 showed additional damage to the site caused unintentionally by the fighting between ISIS and other belligerents as well as the construction of a Russian military base. The fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 led experts to push for the rehabilitation of the site, but the region remained unstable as the new regime struggled to assert its command over the country. An attack on U.S. and Syrian troops in the modern city in December 2025 emphasized the concerns over the ongoing civil war.