There is no archeological information on the city before the Parthian period but settlement in the area likely dates back to at least the Seleucid period. Hatra flourished under the Parthians, during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, as a religious and trading center. Later on, the city became the capital of possibly the first Arab Kingdom in the chain of Arab cities running from Hatra, in the northeast, via Palmyra, Baalbek and Petra, in the southwest. The region controlled from Hatra was the Kingdom of Hatra, a semi-autonomous buffer kingdom on the western limits of the Parthian Empire, governed by Arabian princes.
Hatra became an important fortified frontier city and played an important role in the Second Parthian War, withstanding repeated attacks by the Roman Empire. During the 2nd century CE the city repulsed sieges by both Trajan (116/117) and Septimius Severus (198/199). Hatra's forces defeated the ascendant Sassanid Persians in 238 at the battle of Shahrazoor, but fell shortly after in 241 to the army of Sassanid king Shapur I and was destroyed. The traditional stories of the fall of Hatra tell of al-Nadirah, daughter of the King of Araba, who betrayed the city into the hands of Shapur as she fell in love with him. The story tells of how Shapur killed the king and married al-Nadirah, but later had her killed also after realizing her ingratitude towards her father.

Hatra was the best preserved and most informative example of a Parthian city. Its plan was circular, and was encircled by inner and outer walls nearly 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) in diameter and supported by more than 160 towers. A temenos (τέμενος) surrounded the principal sacred buildings in the city's centre. The temples covered some 1.2 hectares and were dominated by the Great Temple, an enormous structure with vaults and columns that once rose to 30 metres. The city was famed for its fusion of Greek, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Aramean and Arabian pantheons, known in Aramaic as Beiṯ Ĕlāhā ("House of God"). The city had temples to Nergal (Assyrian-Babylonian and Akkadian), Hermes (Greek), Atargatis (Syro-Aramaean), Allat, Shamiyyah (Arabian), and Shamash (the Mesopotamian sun god). Other deities mentioned in the Hatran Aramaic inscriptions were the Aramaean Ba'al Shamayn, and the female deity known as Ashurbel, which was perhaps the assimilation of the two deities the Assyrian god Ashur and the Babylonian Bel—despite their being individually masculine.


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