Syria
Who ruled Palmyra?
Palmyra dates from about 2000 BCE. On our historical maps, the ground it stands on has been drawn inside 18 different states, empires and peoples. It has also been known as Tadmur. Read the history of Syria.
The history of Palmyra
Palmyra, called Tadmor in its own Aramaic and in Arabic, is an oasis city in the desert of central Syria. A minor watering stop for most of its early history, it grew rich in the first three centuries AD on the caravan trade between the Roman world and the lands beyond the Euphrates, and for a few years in the 270s it was the capital of an empire that challenged Rome. Several of its famous temples and tombs were deliberately destroyed in 2015.
Oasis and caravan city
People lived around the Efqa spring as early as the Neolithic, and a mud-brick building of about 2500 BC lies beneath the later Temple of Bel. The town enters written history around 2000 BC, when a merchant called Puzur-Ishtar the Tadmorean appears in a contract at the Assyrian trading post of Kültepe. Biblical and later Arabic traditions credit its founding to King Solomon, but scholars regard this as a confusion with another place, and archaeology shows Palmyra was only a small settlement in the tenth century BC.
Under the Seleucid Empire the town prospered and its first great temples and tombs were begun. When Rome annexed the Seleucid lands in 64 BC Palmyra stayed independent, trading with both Rome and Parthia, and in 41 BC its people fled across the Euphrates from troops sent by Mark Antony. Around 14 AD, early in the reign of Tiberius, it was brought into the province of Syria within the Roman Empire, though it kept wide self-government. The Temple of Bel was dedicated in 32 AD, and in the second century, after Rome absorbed the Nabataean kingdom of Petra, Palmyrene merchants came to dominate the desert routes. Hadrian visited in 129 and made it a free city.
Odaenathus, Zenobia and Aurelian
The rise of the Sasanian Persian empire hurt Palmyra's trade and drew the city into war. After the Persians captured the emperor Valerian in 260, the Palmyrene lord Odaenathus defeated Shapur I's army, crushed rival claimants in Syria and was made governor of the whole East by Gallienus, later styling himself King of Kings. When he was assassinated in 267, his young son Vaballathus succeeded him, with real power held by his mother Zenobia. In 270 and 271 she took Roman Arabia, Egypt and much of Anatolia, and in late 271 mother and son took the imperial titles Augusta and Augustus.
The emperor Aurelian defeated Zenobia near Antioch and at Emesa in 272 and besieged Palmyra; she was captured while seeking Persian help, and the city surrendered. When it rebelled again in 273, Aurelian razed it and massacred its people. Diocletian later built a legionary camp in its western part, and the reduced town survived as a Christian frontier fortress.
Caliphs, sultans and Ottomans
Khalid ibn al-Walid took Palmyra for the Rashidun Caliphate in 634, and it did well under the Umayyads, who turned part of the Temple of Bel into a mosque. It supported failed revolts against Marwan II and the early Abbasids, and from the ninth century its population shrank until the inhabitants lived only inside the walls of the Bel sanctuary. Over the following centuries it passed between Hamdanid, Fatimid, Seljuk, Burid, Zengid and Ayyubid rulers; the castle on the hill above was built around 1230. Under the Mamluks it was held by the Bedouin Al Fadl clan until attacked by Tamerlane in 1400, after which it dwindled to a village. The Ottomans made it the centre of a district by around 1560, chiefly for its salt.
Excavation, war and damage
English scholars described the ruins in the 1690s. Under the French Mandate, the archaeologist Henri Seyrig began large-scale digs in 1929, and the villagers living in the Temple of Bel were moved to a new village, Tadmur, by 1932. UNESCO listed the site as World Heritage in 1980.
During the Syrian civil war the site was used by the Syrian army, and the Islamic State group occupied it between May 2015 and March 2016, and again between December 2016 and March 2017. Its fighters killed the retired antiquities chief Khaled al-Asaad and blew up the Temple of Baalshamin, the inner sanctuary of the Temple of Bel, several tower tombs and much of the Tetrapylon, and damaged the Monumental Arch and theatre. The Syrian Free Army took the town in December 2024, the day before the fall of the Assad government; since then, restoration work has been limited mainly to surveys.
Sources
Timeline
23 periods- 123,000 BCE – 10,000 BCENeanderthalMap of 123,000 BCE →
- 10,000 BCE – 5000 BCESteppe Mesolithic Hunter-ForagersMap of 10,000 BCE →
- 5000 BCE – 4000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 5000 BCE →
- 4000 BCE – 1500 BCEcity-statesMap of 4000 BCE →
- 1500 BCE – 1000 BCEKingdom of David and SolomonMap of 1500 BCE →
- 1000 BCE – 700 BCEKingdom of David and SolomonMap of 1000 BCE →
- 700 BCE – 500 BCEKingdom of David and SolomonMap of 700 BCE →
- 500 BCE – 323 BCEAchaemenid EmpireMap of 500 BCE →
- 323 BCE – 300 BCEEmpire of AlexanderMap of 323 BCE →
- 300 BCE – 200 BCEKingdom of AntigonusMap of 300 BCE →
- 200 BCE – 1 BCESeleucid KingdomMap of 200 BCE →
- 1 BCE – 300 CERoman EmpireMap of 1 BCE →
- 300 CE – 400 CERome (Diocletianus)Map of 300 CE →
- 400 CE – 700 CEEastern Roman EmpireMap of 400 CE →
- 700 CE – 800 CEUmayyad CaliphateMap of 700 CE →
- 800 CE – 1000 CEAbbasid CaliphateMap of 800 CE →
- 1000 CE – 1492 CENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 1000 CE →
- 1492 CE – 1530 CEArabsMap of 1492 CE →
- 1530 CE – 1878 CENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 1530 CE →
- 1878 CE – 1914 CEArabiaMap of 1878 CE →
- 1914 CE – 1920 CEArabia (Nejd)Map of 1914 CE →
- 1920 CE – 1945 CESyria (France)under FranceMap of 1920 CE →
- 1945 CE – todaySyriaMap of 1945 CE →
Quick answers
- Who rules Palmyra today?
- On the latest map, Palmyra is in Syria.
- Who ruled Palmyra the longest?
- On our maps, the Roman Empire, for about 301 years (1 BCE to 300 CE).
- How many times has Palmyra changed hands?
- Our maps show it passing to a new ruler 8 times since 1 CE.
- Who ruled Palmyra in 1 CE, 1000, 1500 and 1900?
- In 1 CE: Roman Empire. In 1000: no state on the map. In 1500: Arabs. In 1900: Arabia.
Dates are the years of our map snapshots, which are decades or centuries apart, so a change shown between two years happened at some point in that gap. The borders come from the historical-basemaps project and are approximate, especially for the ancient world and for peoples without fixed frontiers.
Palmyra on this site
- Born in Palmyra
- Zenobia (240–274 CE)
- Palmyra in the guided tours
- Europe on the Move: From the Ice Age to Today