Ctesiphon

Mesopotamia (Sasanian Persia)

Ctesiphon, on the east bank of the Tigris about 35 km southeast of modern Baghdad in Iraq, became the capital of the Parthian kings and then of the Sasanian Persian Empire. With its neighbouring cities it formed the metropolis that Arabic sources call al-Mada'in, home to Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians; the patriarch of the Church of the East had his seat there. The prophet Mani, founder of Manichaeism, was born in or near the city around 216. Muslim forces took it in 637, and it declined after the founding of Baghdad. Its great arch, the Taq Kasra, still stands, and the companion of the Prophet Muhammad Salman al-Farisi is traditionally buried at al-Mada'in, where a shrine marks his tomb.