Raqqa

Overview

Raqqa is a city near the north bank of the Euphrates River in Syria. Its location tied it to trade, agriculture and movement across the river. Raqqa was an important commercial center by the late tenth century, and its Jewish community maintained connections with communities elsewhere in the Middle East for centuries. In modern times, state development projects and migration helped turn it into a major Syrian urban center. Its population grew from about 37,000 in 1970 to about 260,000 by 2011.

Raqqa became a central battlefield of the Syrian civil war. The Islamic State seized the city in 2013, consolidated its rule in 2014 and made Raqqa its capital in Syria. Its rule brought executions, persecution of religious minorities, displacement and the captivity and sexual abuse of Yazidi women and children. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured the city in October 2017 after a four-month battle. Islamic State cells continued attacks in the surrounding region after losing Raqqa.

Control of the city carried political significance beyond the defeat of the Islamic State. During the campaign, Bashar al-Assad’s coalition sought to extend its control eastward, while Turkey opposed a leading role for Kurdish forces. An Assad regime capture would have reinforced his claim to rule Syria; an SDF victory, backed by the United States, offered a different outcome. Later disputes over Raqqa again reflected the city’s importance within Syria’s changing political order.

Geography

Raqqa stands on the Euphrates, the river that connects settlements across eastern Syria and Iraq. The river was central to both its agricultural economy and the military campaigns fought around it. Bridges determined where forces could move vehicles and supplies across the water. Thawra Dam, west of the city, supplied irrigation and electricity and provided the only intact crossing on the stretch of the Euphrates then held by the Islamic State. Control of the dam therefore mattered to any effort to approach or isolate Raqqa.

The city’s surrounding province includes agricultural settlements and routes toward Aleppo, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor. Raqqa province’s economy remained closely tied to farming even as the city expanded: Syria’s 2004 agricultural census recorded 46 percent of the province’s population working in agriculture. Across Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor provinces, combined population growth from about 400,000 in 1960 to two million in 2010 reduced average farm size. Urban growth and pressure on agricultural livelihoods formed part of the setting in which Raqqa entered the civil war.

The Euphrates also shaped the 2017 campaign. Coalition airstrikes had destroyed other bridges on the Islamic State-held river corridor, and further strikes destroyed Raqqa’s two bridges on February 3, 2017. As the SDF advanced from the north and west, the river became a barrier to the movement of Islamic State fighters and heavy equipment. The geography made the effort to cut Raqqa’s links with Deir ez-Zor as consequential as the advance into the city itself.

Ancient and biblical history

Raqqa’s name has been associated in Jewish tradition with Calneh, the place named in Genesis 10:10. That identification belongs to the history of how Jewish communities understood the city; it does not make the modern city’s Abbasid buildings biblical structures. Raqqa’s later development took place on a river site with a history extending beyond the Abbasid period.

An encyclopedia account gives 722 as the date of Raqqa’s foundation by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. The date requires distinction from the construction of al-Rafiqa, the fortified Abbasid companion settlement beside older Raqqa, which historical chronologies place in 772. Al-Mansur’s building program established a major Abbasid center on the Euphrates. Over time, the neighboring settlements became part of the urban history described under the name Raqqa. By the late tenth century, the geographer al-Muqaddasi described the city as an important commercial center.

Raqqa’s position between river routes and inland settlements helped sustain contacts across the region. Its history under caliphal rule was also a history of religious communities living within a changing imperial setting. The Jewish identification with Calneh remained part of the city’s recorded heritage long after the Abbasid foundation.

Jewish history

Raqqa and its environs supported a substantial Jewish community throughout the period of caliphal rule. The Jewish philosopher David al-Mukammis came from the city. Its scholars and residents corresponded with Jewish authorities in other centers, leaving evidence of religious administration, travel and intellectual exchange. Those records place Raqqa within a network reaching from Jerusalem and Baghdad to Cairo and Aleppo.

An eleventh-century letter records a rabbi’s planned journey from Jerusalem to Raqqa, called Calneh in the letter, to settle a dispute over the appointment of a Jewish judge. The episode shows a functioning community concerned with its own institutions and connected to authorities outside the city. Raqqa’s Jewish community continued to prosper during the Crusades. Benjamin of Tudela, traveling in the latter half of the twelfth century, found about 700 Jews there.

In 1191, Samuel ben Ali, head of the Baghdad academy, addressed a letter to Raqqa and other important Jewish communities in the region. Another letter, written by a Raqqa Jewish scholar to Cairo in the last decade of the twelfth century, sent greetings to Maimonides and described contacts with Jews in Aleppo. The writer Judah al-Harizi visited at the beginning of the thirteenth century and criticized the community in his account. Taken together, these records document sustained Jewish life in Raqqa over several centuries, as well as the community’s participation in wider debates and relationships.

Modern history

Raqqa expanded rapidly during the twentieth century. Ba’athist agrarian reform and development projects changed the province’s agricultural and urban life, while the city grew from 37,000 inhabitants in 1970 to about 260,000 by 2011. Raqqa’s region remained loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime until 2013. The city’s growth made it a major Syrian urban center before civil war overturned its political and social order.

Arabs and Kurds lived in Raqqa, alongside smaller Christian and other communities. Before the Islamic State’s takeover, Kurds and Christians made up approximately 20 percent and 1 percent of the city’s population, respectively. Thousands of people displaced from Aleppo province later arrived, while foreign Islamic State fighters and their families also moved into the city. Wartime movement changed Raqqa’s population at the same time that coercion drove many established residents away.

Islamic State forces took Raqqa in 2013 and made it their principal Syrian stronghold. The group consolidated its position amid fighting with other armed factions and retained the city even where it lost territory elsewhere in northern Syria. In July 2013, Islamic State members kidnapped Jesuit priest Father Paolo Dall’Oglio in Raqqa. By 2014, the group exercised extensive control over public life and treated the city as the seat of its Syrian rule.

Religious persecution was central to that rule. In February 2014, the Islamic State ordered Christians in Raqqa to convert, pay jizya—a tax imposed on Christians under its rule—or face execution. Christians fled, and the group seized homes they had abandoned. It converted churches into mosques and forbade public worship by other faiths. These measures drove most of Raqqa’s Christians from the city. The Islamic State also attacked Shia residents and religious sites. In 2014 it destroyed sites including the Mosque of Ammar bin Yassir and Oweis al-Qarni; attacks on Shia shrines and mosques prompted a mass flight of Shia residents.

Raqqa was also a place of captivity for hundreds of Yazidi women and children abducted by the Islamic State. The group held them in the city and sexually assaulted many of them. Their captivity formed part of the wider Yazidi genocide, during which Islamic State forces separated families and subjected women and girls to sexual violence. The presence of captives in Raqqa made the city a site of crimes against people brought there from beyond Syria.

The Islamic State used public killings to enforce its authority and spread terror. In August 2014, after capturing Syrian soldiers near Tabqa, its fighters marched the men toward Raqqa, beheaded them and displayed their heads in the city’s main square. Raqqa also served as a base for personnel and operations elsewhere. During the March 2016 fighting for Palmyra, the group sent dozens of reinforcements from Raqqa. A U.S. airstrike killed the Islamic State executioner Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, in the city on November 12, 2015.

Security

By 2016, taking Raqqa had become a strategic race. The United States supported the SDF’s offensive toward the city. Assad’s coalition, including Hezbollah and forces of the Iranian regime, sought gains that could open an approach from the west and south. Turkey signaled interest in taking Raqqa with allied Arab factions but opposed a leading role for Kurdish forces, whose victory could strengthen their standing in northern Syria. The question of who would capture and govern Raqqa therefore affected the balance of power after an Islamic State defeat.

The SDF’s progress built on earlier campaigns. After defeating the Islamic State at Kobani and taking Tal Abyad district in spring 2015, Kurdish-led forces reached a frontline roughly 30 kilometers north of Raqqa. The capture of Sinjar in Iraq cut the Islamic State’s main supply route between Mosul and Raqqa. The Democratic Union Party’s capture of al-Shadadi in southern Hasakah province gave it control of nearby oil wells and disrupted another route between the two cities. Even so, an advance into Raqqa required support from local Arab tribes, some of whose members had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

On November 6, 2016, the SDF launched Operation Euphrates Wrath to take Raqqa. Its opening clashes took place south of Ain Issa, north of the city. In February 2017, the force began a new phase designed to sever Raqqa’s connections with Deir ez-Zor while continuing its advance from the north and west. The United States pushed the SDF to advance in both areas. On March 8, the U.S. 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit reached Raqqa’s outskirts to support the campaign. Coalition air power remained part of the operation; on July 27, coalition forces carried out 17 airstrikes in eastern Syria, including around Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor.

Assad’s forces and their allies were advancing in other parts of Syria at the same time. Retaking Palmyra gave the Syrian Army control of a crossroads linking Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa with Homs and Damascus. A regime victory in Raqqa would have strengthened Assad’s portrayal of his coalition as the force that defeated the Islamic State in Syria. The SDF campaign, supported by U.S. forces and coalition airstrikes, denied him that prize.

The final battle began in June 2017 and lasted about four months. Urban fighting demanded sustained support: the United States backed roughly 90 days of fighting within Raqqa. By late September, SDF fighters controlled about 80 percent of the city, while Islamic State fighters held positions in the center. U.S.-backed forces defeated the group in Raqqa in October. The SDF then held the city and other areas east of the Euphrates previously controlled by the Islamic State.

Raqqa’s battle later served as a comparison for urban warfare in Gaza City. Both were dense urban battlefields, but Gaza City presented different conditions: taller buildings, greater population density and Hamas’s extensive tunnel network. The comparison illustrates the scale of the Raqqa campaign while leaving room for the distinct geography and forces involved in each battle.

The Islamic State’s loss of its capital did not end its activity around Raqqa. Cells attacked SDF vehicles and positions with roadside explosives and shootings in the surrounding Euphrates Valley. Some attacks targeted roadblocks and fighters east and north of the city. Continued violence showed that territorial defeat and the removal of an urban headquarters did not by themselves eliminate the group’s capacity for attacks.

Present day

After 2017, Raqqa remained important to the SDF as both a population center and a symbol of its victory over the Islamic State. Its place within Syria’s political order stayed unsettled. In August 2025, members of the Al Naim, Al Bushaaban, Qais Aylan and Al Baqara tribes called for general mobilization against the SDF across Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Hasakah. Those calls reflected continued contest over authority in the northeast.

In January 2026, Syrian government forces took Tabqa in Raqqa province during a campaign against SDF-held territory, gaining a position from which to advance toward Raqqa. The campaign brought Raqqa and other formerly SDF-held areas under expanded Damascus control. An integration framework addressed administration of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor and the absorption of SDF fighters into Syria’s official military as individuals. These changes followed the fall of Assad’s regime and marked another shift in control of the city and its surrounding province.

Raqqa’s recent history joins several longer histories in one place: a Euphrates trading center, an Abbasid city with a documented Jewish community, a rapidly growing provincial capital, the Islamic State’s Syrian capital and a city fought over by rival forces. Its bridges, agricultural hinterland and position on routes across eastern Syria continue to make control of Raqqa consequential beyond the city itself.