Last updated: August 2026. Re-checked against the UNESCO World Heritage listing for Samarra, FCDO and US State Department advisories current in August 2026, Shafaq News reporting on the Samarra security command through June 2026, and a first-hand February 2026 traveller account of the road from Baghdad.
Almost everything written in English about the Al-Askari Shrine was written between 2006 and 2009, and it shows. Search the name and you get the bombing, the sectarian bloodletting that followed, and a closing line about the shrine reopening in April 2009. Then nothing. The impression is of a wounded building, restored, filed away. Samarra completes the set of shrines covered in our ziyarat guide.
That is not what is standing in Samarra now. The Al-Askari Shrine is open, working and busy: the dome you see today was gilded with roughly 23,000 gold bricks by an Iranian reconstruction committee between 2010 and 2015, and the silver zarih over the graves was only unveiled on 24 April 2017. The 2009 reopening was the middle of the story, not the end of it. Visitors do get to Samarra, mostly as a long day trip from Baghdad, and in 2026 the access rules appear to be loosening.
They are also going to a city in Salah al-Din province, which the UK Foreign Office advises against all travel to and which sits inside a US Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory. Both of those things are true at once, and this guide tries to hold them together honestly rather than picking whichever one makes for a better story.
Below: who is buried here and why the shrine matters in Shia Islam, what happened in 2006 and 2007 and who was actually responsible, a reconstruction timeline that runs past 2009, the Sardab where the Twelfth Imam entered the Occultation, the two competing versions of the permission-and-escort rule, what the checkpoints mean for the people who live behind them, and a realistic day plan from Baghdad including the Malwiya and Abu Dulaf. Where we could not confirm something — and on this subject there is a lot — it says so.
The short answer
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where is it? | Samarra, Salah al-Din province, roughly 120–125 km north of Baghdad by road |
| Is it open? | Yes. Reopened April 2009 and functioning since; an active Arbaeen way-station in 2026 |
| Can you visit as a foreigner? | Yes, in practice, though Samarra sits in an FCDO “against all travel” province and arrangements at the town checkpoint vary |
| Do you need a permit? | Older guidance says permission plus a guide and military escort. A February 2026 first-hand account says that is no longer being applied. Report both, plan for the stricter one |
| How long from Baghdad? | About two hours each way with checkpoints. Budget a full day |
| Can you stay the night? | No. Foreigners cannot stay overnight in Samarra; the hotels are shut |
| Entry fee? | We could not confirm one, and we have assumed it is free, as at Iraq’s other shrines |
Where the Al-Askari Shrine is, and what you are looking at
Samarra is a city of about 203,000 people (2024 census) on the east bank of the Tigris, and for a little under sixty years in the ninth century it was the capital of the Abbasid empire. The whole archaeological city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed on 29 June 2007 and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in the same year, where it remains. The inscribed property covers 15,058 hectares with a 31,414-hectare buffer zone, stretches 41.5 km north to south, and UNESCO estimates that 80% of it is still unexcavated. Almost nobody who visits sees more than a fraction of it.
The Al-Askari Shrine sits inside the modern city rather than out on the archaeological plain. The Al-Askari Shrine is a walled compound built around a house — specifically the house Imam Ali al-Hadi bought from a man named Dalil b. Ya’qub al-Nasrani, and in which he and his son were kept under effective house arrest. Both men died there and were buried there. The main courtyard, the sahn, is roughly 78 by 77 metres. The golden dome over the graves covers about 1,200 square metres, which makes it the largest dome over any Shia Imam’s shrine anywhere.
The name is worth unpacking, because it explains the geography. Caliph al-Mu’tasim moved the seat of the caliphate to Samarra in the 830s and built a garrison city; a resident of the camp, al-askar, was an askari. The two Imams held there acquired the epithet, and the shrine took its name from them, not from any military association of its own. Understanding that also tells you something about the site: this was a place of confinement before it was a place of pilgrimage.
Who is buried in the Samarra shrine
This is the detail most short guides get wrong, and the error is always the same one. The Al-Askari Shrine is not a two-person mausoleum. Six burials of the immediate family are usually named, along with several later figures, and the relationships between them matter to pilgrims.
| Buried here | Who they are |
|---|---|
| Imam Ali al-Hadi (al-Naqi) | The tenth Imam, died 254 AH / 868 CE |
| Imam Hasan al-Askari | The eleventh Imam, son of al-Hadi, died 260 AH / 874 CE |
| Narjis Khatun | Wife of al-Askari and mother of the twelfth Imam |
| Hakima bint al-Jawad | Daughter of the ninth Imam — so sister of al-Hadi and aunt of al-Askari, not his daughter |
| Hudayth | Mother of Imam Hasan al-Askari |
| Samana al-Maghribiyya | Mother of Imam Ali al-Hadi |
Hakima Khatun is the one that trips people up. A great many pages, including material that reads as authoritative, describe her as al-Askari’s daughter or sister. She was the daughter of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, the ninth Imam, which makes her al-Hadi’s sister and al-Askari’s paternal aunt. In Twelver tradition she is the witness to the birth of the twelfth Imam, which is precisely why she is buried where she is. Getting her generation wrong collapses the whole story the shrine is telling.
Also buried in the complex are Husayn b. Ali al-Hadi, Ja’far — known to Twelvers as al-Kadhdhab, the liar, for his claim to the imamate after his brother’s death — and Abu Hashim al-Ja’fari, along with later sayyids and scholars. That four of the six principal burials are women is unusual among the Iraqi shrines and is one of the reasons Samarra draws a particular devotion among women pilgrims.
February 2006, and who was responsible
At about 06:55 on the morning of 22 February 2006, several men wearing Iraqi security force uniforms entered the shrine, tied up the guards and laid charges. The explosions brought down the golden dome. Nobody was killed in the blast itself.
What followed was worse than the attack. The bombing of the Samarra shrine is generally treated as the trigger for Iraq’s civil war — reprisal killings, mass displacement, and tens of thousands of deaths over the following two years. It is not a story to be told breezily, and it is not a reason to visit.
One factual point does need making, because it is repeated constantly and it is wrong. The 2006 bombing was carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq. It was not ISIS. The Islamic State did not exist in 2006 in any form that could have claimed the attack; its predecessor organisation under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did, and the attribution to al-Qaeda in Iraq is what contemporary reporting, Iraqi outlets such as Shafaq and later analysis in al-Monitor all carry. The ISIS version has taken hold in a lot of secondary content, in AI-generated summaries and in general memory, largely because ISIS is the name people associate with attacks on Iraqi heritage. Checking the current English Wikipedia article in August 2026, we found it attributes the bombing correctly to al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents; the misattribution is downstream of Wikipedia, not in it. If you see the ISIS claim, it is a marker that the page has not been checked.
There was a second attack. At around 08:00 on 13 June 2007, operatives destroyed the two surviving golden minarets, each 36 metres tall. Again there were no reported fatalities. The clock tower came down the following month. By mid-2007 the shrine had lost its dome, both minarets and its clock, and what was left was a compound behind blast walls.
Why the Al-Askari Shrine’s reopening was not its completion
Here is where nearly every page about the Al-Askari Shrine stops early. The Al-Askari Shrine reopened in April 2009 and the standard account treats that as the end. It was not.
The first phase of reconstruction was international. A UNESCO-led, UNDP-partnered programme under the UNDG Iraq Trust Fund — project reference C10-08 — started on 21 February 2007, almost exactly a year after the bombing. It was funded with US$8,000,000 from the multi-donor trust fund, US$3,000,000 from the Iraqi government and US$225,000 from UNDP: US$11,225,000 in total. It did not run smoothly. A Turkish contractor engaged in late 2007 was terminated for breach of contract, and the programme did not reach operational closure until October 2011 — more than two years after the shrine was already receiving pilgrims again.
The rebuild that produced the shrine you photograph today was a different project entirely. Between 2010 and 2015 the Iranian Committee for the Reconstruction of the Atabat Aliyat — the body responsible for the Iraqi shrine cities on the Iranian side — carried out the full reconstruction, gilding the dome with roughly 23,000 gold bricks. That work was completed in September 2015, six years after the reopening.
The zarih, the latticed enclosure over the graves that pilgrims touch, is more recent still. Built under the supervision of Sayyid Javad Shahrestani, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s representative in Iran, it carries about 4,500 kg of silver and 70 kg of gold. It was finished in 2014, transported to Samarra in February 2017 and unveiled on 24 April 2017.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 22 Feb 2006 | Golden dome destroyed by al-Qaeda in Iraq; no fatalities in the blast |
| 21 Feb 2007 | UNESCO/UNDP trust-fund programme starts; US$11.225m committed |
| 13 Jun 2007 | Both 36-metre golden minarets destroyed; clock tower follows in July |
| Apr 2009 | Shrine reopens with dome and minarets repaired |
| Oct 2011 | UNESCO-led programme reaches operational closure |
| 2010–Sep 2015 | Full rebuild by the Iranian Committee for the Reconstruction of the Atabat Aliyat; dome gilded with ~23,000 gold bricks |
| 24 Apr 2017 | New zarih unveiled — 4,500 kg silver, 70 kg gold |
Why does the distinction matter to a visitor? Because it changes what you are looking at. Photographs of the Al-Askari Shrine taken between 2009 and about 2019 — which is most of the freely available imagery — show scaffolding somewhere in the frame. The picture below was taken in October 2013, four years after the reopening: the dome half re-gilded and caged in steel, both minarets bare concrete, and the entrance gate lit and open with pilgrims coming through it. That was the reality for most of a decade.
The Sardab and the Occultation
Adjoining the main building of the Al-Askari Shrine is a second dome, the Maqam al-Ghayba, raised over the cellar — the sardab — where Twelver tradition holds that Muhammad al-Mahdi, the twelfth Imam, entered the Minor Occultation in 260 AH. For a great many pilgrims this, and not the graves, is the emotional centre of the visit.
Architecturally it is part of the complex rather than a separate site down the road. Shia reference sources describe a “courtyard of al-Ghayba” measuring roughly 64 by 5.61 metres that has been merged into the main sahn, and an inscription of the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir li-Din Allah survives in the sirdab itself. Operator itineraries for Samarra list the sardab as a scheduled stop.
What we could not establish is whether ordinary visitors physically descend into the cellar today, or whether non-Muslims may. Pilgrims visit the Sardab; we could not confirm current descent access. Given how much of the complex has been rebuilt since 2010 and how tightly the site is managed, treat this as something to ask about on the day rather than to plan around.
How to reach the Al-Askari Shrine from Baghdad
The Al-Askari Shrine is roughly 120–125 km north of Baghdad on the main road, which sounds like ninety minutes and is not. Allow about two hours each way. The delay is checkpoints, and there are a lot of them — this is the northern approach to Salah al-Din and every vehicle gets looked at. Our guide to Iraqi checkpoints covers what officers generally ask and what to have ready.
You go and come back the same day. This is not a preference; foreigners cannot stay overnight in Samarra and the city’s hotels are not operating for visitors. Anyone selling you an overnight in Samarra is selling something that does not exist, and the practical consequence is that your base is Baghdad and your day is long.
The workable arrangement, reported first-hand in February 2026, is a private car hired through a Baghdad hotel: around US$100 for a full eight-hour day, or US$150–160 if you want a guide with the car. Those are one traveller’s negotiated numbers rather than a published tariff, so treat them as an indication of the going rate. Iraq runs on cash; the street rate has been hovering around 1,533 dinars to the dollar, and drivers will take dollars. If you would rather not negotiate at all, several of the operators running fixed-departure trips in Iraq include Samarra as a day from Baghdad, which folds the permissions question into their problem rather than yours.
Public transport is not a realistic option here. Shared taxis run the route for Iraqis, but the checkpoint handling of a foreign passport on a shared vehicle is unpredictable and you have no control over the schedule. See how transport works in Iraq for the general picture; Samarra is the case where the private-car answer is the only sensible one.
| Hour | Realistic day plan |
|---|---|
| 07:00 | Leave Baghdad. Earlier is better in summer and clears the worst of the city traffic |
| 09:00–09:30 | Arrive Samarra outskirts. Final town-entry check; expect passports to be inspected |
| 09:30–12:00 | Al-Askari Shrine. Two hours is the minimum if you want the sahn, the haram and the Ghaybah building |
| 12:00–13:00 | Malwiya and the Great Mosque enclosure, about two kilometres away |
| 13:00–14:30 | Abu Dulaf, roughly 15 km north — a separate drive, only worth it if you have the car and the light |
| 15:00 | Leave. Aim to be back in Baghdad before dark |
The permission question, and why you will read two different answers
This is the part of any Al-Askari Shrine guide that dates fastest, and right now the honest position is that the rule is loosening rather than gone.
The version you will find in most older guidance: visiting Samarra requires special permission arranged in advance, a licensed guide, and a military or PMF escort from the checkpoint to the shrine and back. Some accounts add that passports are surrendered at the Saraya al-Salam checkpoint on the way in and exchanged for a card, to be swapped back on the way out. We recorded exactly that arrangement in earlier research, and we have no reason to think it was inaccurate when it was written.
The version reported first-hand in February 2026: the special-permission-and-guide requirement “doesn’t seem to be the case anymore”. Passports were shown at the final town-entry check but not confiscated. The main friction was that police at the entry point pushed arrivals into a local taxi rather than let them walk into town on foot — which is control of movement rather than a permit regime.
Both of these are plausible and they are not necessarily in conflict. Salah al-Din’s security is layered, run by different formations at different points, and the handling of a foreign passport can vary by checkpoint, by day and by what has happened in the province that week. Plan for the stricter version and be pleasantly surprised. That means: go with a driver who has done the run recently, have your passport and a printed copy of your Iraqi visa in hand, do not photograph checkpoints, and accept that if you are turned back you are turned back. It also means booking flexibility into your wider Iraq itinerary so that a refused Samarra day does not collapse the rest of the week.
One point of clarity: no separate permit is needed for Karbala, Najaf or Kufa. The Iraqi visa covers those. Samarra is the exception among the shrine cities, and it is the exception because of where it is, not because of what it is.
What the checkpoints are for
It would be easy to write the ring of blast walls and identity checks around the Al-Askari Shrine as atmosphere. It is not atmosphere. It is the arrangement a city was left with after 2006, and the people who live with it are mostly Sunni residents of Samarra whose city was rebuilt around a Shia shrine under the protection of a Shia armed formation.
The blast walls went up in 2007 and still cut through the city. More than two hundred shops around the shrine, most of them Sunni-owned, have remained shuttered since. Residents describe hours of questioning to get near the haram, in the city where they live. Samarra’s mayor has said flatly that “there have been no attacks since the end of 2014” — a genuine security success and, simultaneously, a decade of restrictions maintained past the threat that produced them. Both halves of that sentence are the point.
Security in the city is provided by Saraya al-Salam, the armed wing of Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement, operating as Popular Mobilisation Forces brigades 313, 314 and 315 with more than 10,000 fighters, deployed since 2014. That arrangement has been changing through 2026 and it changed noisily. In mid-June a new Samarra Operations commander seen as close to Asaib Ahl al-Haq was appointed; Saraya al-Salam rejected the appointment and deployed men across the city; al-Sadr instructed his fighters to comply; the prime minister reversed the decision; and on 18 June the PMF reinstated the previous commander, Ali Jakhifa Lafta al-Shammari, with a brief to oversee the disengagement and reorganisation of the Saraya al-Salam brigades. On 16 June Saraya al-Salam announced complete disengagement from the Sadrist movement and integration into Iraqi state institutions, while stating it would not leave Samarra until the security file was formally handed over.
None of that produced violence in the city, and it did not stop pilgrims arriving. But it does mean the people staffing the checkpoints on your visit may not be the same formation that staffed them last year, and it is one more reason the access rules are not stable. If you want the broader national picture, our page on how safe Iraq actually is for visitors sets out what the numbers say.
The Al-Askari Shrine is a working shrine, not a monument
The single most misleading thing about the frozen-in-2009 coverage is the implication that the Samarra shrine is quiet. It is not. The Al-Askari Shrine functions as a way-station on the Arbaeen walk — pilgrims stop at al-Askari before continuing south towards Karbala, and mawakib, the volunteer service tents, set up along the approach roads. That was reported again in the run-up to Arbaeen 2026, which fell on 4 August. A symbolic funeral procession for the Prophet was held at the shrine on 12 August 2026.
Practically, that means the Al-Askari Shrine has two completely different personalities depending on when you turn up. On an ordinary weekday you may share the sahn with a few dozen people. During Safar, around Arbaeen, or on the birth and martyrdom anniversaries of the two Imams, it is dense, loud and emotionally charged, roads are congested and the checkpoint queues lengthen. If you are travelling in Arbaeen season, our Arbaeen packing guide covers what actually earns its place in a bag in that heat.
Inside the haram: dress, cameras and access
Dress and behaviour at the Al-Askari Shrine follow the same conventions as Karbala and Najaf: long sleeves and long trousers for men, an abaya and headscarf for women, shoes off and stored at the gate. Abayas are usually available to borrow at the entrance to Iraqi shrines and we would expect the same here, though we could not confirm the arrangement at al-Askari specifically. Men’s and women’s entrances are separate; we could not confirm the gate names or the specific women’s-entry arrangements at this shrine, and they have changed elsewhere in recent years.
On cameras: at Karbala the reported 2026 position is that phones are allowed inside but cameras are not, with free shoe and bag storage at the gate. That comes from a single source and we are extending it to Samarra by analogy, not by confirmation. The safe approach is to carry a phone, leave the camera in the car, and ask before photographing anything inside the haram. Do not photograph checkpoints or security personnel anywhere in Salah al-Din — that is a rule with consequences, not a courtesy. Our page on the laws visitors actually run into in Iraq covers the wider version of this.
Non-Muslim access is the question we were asked most and could confirm least. Najaf and Karbala both admit respectful non-Muslim visitors in practice, with variation by gate and by staff. We found no reliable statement either way for al-Askari. If you are not Muslim, go with a guide who can ask on your behalf, and be prepared to view the complex from the sahn.
The Malwiya, Abu Dulaf and the rest of Samarra
The Malwiya is the spiral minaret of the ninth-century Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil, and it is the image most people have of Samarra even if they have never heard the name. It is inside the city, about two kilometres from the shrine, and it belongs to the same UNESCO inscription. Sources disagree about whether the external ramp can currently be climbed — some operator itineraries describe walking up, others say the ramp is closed — and we could not resolve it. Assume you may not be allowed up and treat it as a bonus if you are.
Abu Dulaf is the one people get wrong. It is a second Abbasid congregational mosque with its own smaller spiral minaret, and it is about 15 kilometres north of Samarra, not a stroll from the Malwiya. It is a separate drive on a separate road. One operator source describes its 32-metre minaret as climbable; we could not verify that independently. Combining the shrine, the Malwiya and Abu Dulaf in a single day from Baghdad is possible only with a private car, and only if you leave early.
One more thing worth knowing before you build expectations around Samarra’s older monuments: on 26 April 2026 the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage reported that parts of the Qubbat al-Sulaybiyya, one of the oldest surviving Islamic domed mausolea and thought to hold the Abbasid caliphs al-Muntasir, al-Mu’tazz and al-Muhtadi, had collapsed. The directorate attributed it to erosion, age and the absence of routine maintenance, and called for the site to be vacated so restoration could begin. It is a reminder that outside the shrine, the archaeology at Samarra is not in good condition. If Abbasid and pre-Abbasid Iraq is what draws you, our overview of ancient Mesopotamia and its sites puts Samarra in sequence with the rest.
What the advisories say, and what that costs you
Be clear-eyed about this, because it is the most consequential paragraph on the page.
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office regionalised its Iraq advice on 22 July 2026. It is no longer a blanket warning against all travel to Iraq — but Salah al-Din province, which contains Samarra, is one of the areas the FCDO advises against all travel to. Karbala and Najaf sit in the softer “all but essential travel” band. Samarra does not. The US State Department has Iraq at Level 4, Do Not Travel, reissued on 2 March 2026, with instructions that US government personnel avoid Baghdad International Airport and non-emergency staff depart the country.
The practical consequence that most pages bury: travelling against FCDO advice invalidates most UK travel insurance. Not “may complicate a claim” — invalidates. If you drive to Samarra on a standard policy and are injured in a road accident, which is statistically the likeliest thing to happen to you in Iraq, you are paying for the medical evacuation yourself. Specialist high-risk cover exists and is the only version that means anything here; we go through the mechanics in our guide to travel insurance for Iraq.
What is the advice based on? For Salah al-Din, principally the residual risk of ISIS activity in the province’s rural areas and the general risk environment north of Baghdad, plus the regional escalation since July 2026 that has involved strikes and drone activity across Iraq. Samarra city itself has not seen an attack since the end of 2014 by its mayor’s account, and an air-defence engagement over Samarra in March 2026 was part of the regional picture rather than anything local. Government advisories are written at province level; they do not distinguish between a shrine compound ringed by three PMF brigades and an unpoliced road eighty kilometres west of it.
That is the input. The decision is yours, and it should be a decision, not a default. Our breakdown of the current Iraq travel advisories sets out what each government says, area by area.
When to go
Not in high summer if you can avoid it. Baghdad’s July mean maximum is 44°C and the shrine cities to the south touched 50°C on 12 August 2026. A two-hour drive each way, plus checkpoint queues in a car, plus a stone courtyard with no shade at midday, is a genuinely punishing combination. November to March is comfortable; the rainy season runs November to April and the roads north can be poor in it. Our month-by-month guide to visiting Iraq has the full picture.
If you want the shrine at its busiest and most alive, aim at Safar and the Arbaeen period; if you want to actually see the architecture, do not. On health, Iraq’s Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever outbreak stood at 313 confirmed cases and 24 deaths for 2026 as of a health ministry statement on 6 August. It spreads by tick bite and by contact with the blood or tissue of infected livestock — a real risk for people handling animals or visiting livestock markets, and not a risk from eating cooked food in a restaurant. Do not let it change your plans; do keep away from abattoirs.
What we could not confirm
Listing this openly is more useful than guessing. As of August 2026 we were unable to verify: whether the Al-Askari Shrine charges an entry fee (we have assumed it is free, as at Iraq’s other shrines, and that is an assumption rather than a finding); published opening hours; the names of the gates; the specific women’s-entry arrangements at this shrine as opposed to at Kadhimiya or Karbala; whether non-Muslims are admitted to the haram; whether visitors descend into the Sardab today; and whether the Malwiya’s ramp is currently open to climbers. Camera and phone rules are reported for Karbala from a single 2026 source and extended here by analogy. If you go and find out, the answers change fast enough that they will be worth writing down.
Frequently asked questions
These are the questions visitors actually ask. The competing pages on this keyword are structured almost entirely around history and the bombings — the standard outline runs history, 2006 attack, 2007 attack, reopening and stops — so most of what follows had to be built from the practical gaps that outline leaves rather than lifted from anyone’s subheadings.
Is the Al-Askari Shrine open to visitors in 2026?
Yes, the Al-Askari Shrine is open. It reopened in April 2009 and has functioned continuously since, including as an Arbaeen way-station in 2026. What is uncertain is not whether the shrine is open but what happens to a foreign passport at the town checkpoint, which appears to vary.
Was the shrine destroyed by ISIS?
No. The 22 February 2006 bombing that brought down the dome of the Al-Askari Shrine was carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq. ISIS did not exist at the time. The second attack, on 13 June 2007, which destroyed the two minarets, is also attributed to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Do I need a permit or a military escort to visit Samarra?
Older guidance says yes: advance permission, a guide, and an escort from the checkpoint. A first-hand account from February 2026 says that requirement is no longer being applied, with passports shown but not held. Arrangements appear to vary by checkpoint and by period. Plan for the stricter version.
How far is Samarra from Baghdad and can it be done in a day?
About 120–125 km, roughly two hours each way with checkpoints. It is a day trip and it has to be, because foreigners cannot stay overnight in Samarra. A private car for a full eight-hour day was quoted at around US$100 in February 2026, or US$150–160 with a guide.
Who is buried in the shrine besides the two Imams?
The Al-Askari Shrine also holds Narjis Khatun, wife of Imam Hasan al-Askari and mother of the twelfth Imam; Hakima bint al-Jawad, daughter of the ninth Imam and therefore al-Askari’s aunt; Hudayth, his mother; and Samana al-Maghribiyya, mother of Imam al-Hadi. Several later figures are buried in the complex as well.
Can non-Muslims enter the Al-Askari Shrine?
We could not confirm a policy either way. Najaf and Karbala both admit respectful non-Muslim visitors in practice, with variation by gate. Go with a guide who can ask on the day and be prepared to stay in the courtyard.
Is Samarra safe?
Samarra’s mayor states there have been no attacks in the city since the end of 2014. That is not the same as it being a permissive environment: Salah al-Din is an FCDO “against all travel” province, the US advisory is Level 4, and travelling against that advice invalidates most travel insurance. The city is heavily secured; the province around it is the reason.
What else is worth seeing in Samarra?
The Malwiya spiral minaret of the Great Mosque, about two kilometres from the shrine, and Abu Dulaf mosque roughly 15 km north with its own smaller spiral minaret. Both are part of the UNESCO-inscribed Samarra Archaeological City, of which UNESCO estimates 80% is still unexcavated.
Should I combine Samarra with the southern shrine cities?
They pair naturally in a ziyarat sense but not geographically — Samarra is north of Baghdad, and Kufa and the Najaf–Karbala corridor are two to three hours south of it. Most people do Samarra as a Baghdad day and treat the south as a separate leg. If you are heading that way, Wadi al-Salam in Najaf is the other site on the ziyarat route that almost nothing accurate has been written about.
Where do I stay?
Baghdad. There is no visitor accommodation open to foreigners in Samarra, and the city’s hotels have been closed for years. Our overview of where to stay across Iraq covers the Baghdad options that will arrange the car for you.
Final thoughts
The reason to correct the record on the Al-Askari Shrine is not pedantry about dates. It is that a shrine described as “rebuilt in 2009” and a shrine described as “rebuilt by an Iranian committee between 2010 and 2015, with a new silver zarih installed in 2017” are two different places in a reader’s head. The first is a repair job. The second is a nineteen-year project that is still, in small ways, going on — and it tells you who has been paying for the shrine cities of Iraq over the last decade and what that has meant for how they look.
What has not changed is the harder part. Samarra is a Shia shrine in a Sunni city inside a province that two major governments tell their citizens not to enter. The blast walls are still up, two hundred shopfronts are still shut, and residents still queue to reach a building at the end of their own street. A visitor gets to see the Al-Askari Shrine, take the photograph and leave for Baghdad by dark. That asymmetry is worth carrying with you rather than editing out, and it is the reason this page has no verdict on whether you should go.
If you are building a ziyarat route, the pilgrimage guide to Iraq is the place to start, and the practical questions that decide whether any of it works — visas, insurance, transport — are covered in our general Iraq travel guide. If Samarra turns out to be the one stop you cannot make, the wider list of places worth the journey in Iraq is long and most of it is easier to reach.
Photo credits
Al-Askari Shrine courtyard, October 2018 and Arbaeen pilgrims, October 2019 — Hamed Abouhamzeh, CC BY 4.0. The shrine before the 2006 bombing — Toushiro, public domain. Reconstruction in October 2013 — Zygoptera, CC0. Zarih, May 2017 — Amir Hesaminejad, CC BY 4.0. Malwiya minaret — Ekhlas Sami, CC BY-SA 4.0. All images via Wikimedia Commons.
