Approximately  west of Raqqa lay the unfinished victory monument Heraqla from the time of Harun al-Rashid. It is said to commemorate the conquest of the Byzantine city of Herakleia in Asia Minor in 806. Other theories connect it with cosmological events. The monument is preserved in a substructure of a square building in the centre of a circular walled enclosure,  in diameter. However, the upper part was never finished because of the sudden death of Harun al-Rashid in Greater Khorasan.