City
Singara
Shingal, شنكال
Listen to the story
Singara, today Shingal in Iraq, was a strongly fortified Roman colony on a wide, dry plain, and the map marks it with a pair of towers. The Roman historian Ammianus tells how defenders on its towers saw the Persians approaching across the plain from far away. Nearby the emperor Constantius was beaten by the Persian king Shapur in a night battle, and afterwards the city was lost to Rome for good. The mapmaker seems to have struggled here: the town probably appears a second time further down the map, and whole routes are drawn twice.