Photo Essay: The Village of Dabiq
Documenting my visit there
The name of Dabiq has become popularly associated with the Islamic State thanks to its propaganda that has repeatedly invoked the village’s name in the context of a supposed end-times battle between the Muslims and the ‘Romans.’ In the original hadith literature that mentions this battle, the ‘Romans’ are clearly the Byzantines in historical context, but ‘Romans’ also became a generalised term to refer to Christians in medieval Arabic literature, and for Islamic State, Dabiq will indeed be the site of a future battle with the Christians/‘Crusaders.’
To be sure, references to Dabiq in the group’s propaganda have significantly declined since 2016 when the group’s English-language magazine of the same name ceased publication in July of that year. Despite the fact the magazine long ceased publication, the magazine is unfortunately the focus of far too much secondary literature on Islamic State propaganda. Even so, the end of the Dabiq magazine does not mean that the group’s members and leaders have ceased to believe there will eventually be an end-times battle in Dabiq. For example, in his March 2024 speech “By God this matter will be fulfilled,,” Islamic State spokesman Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari affirmed that “we still await Dabiq day by day.” Moreover, when Dabiq itself fell in late 2016 to an offensive by Syrian insurgent groups backed by Turkey, the group’s weekly Arabic language al-Naba’ newsletter was keen to emphasise that there will still eventually be a great battle at Dabiq, but that this particular battle with the ‘apostates’ was not it.
Prior to the fall of the Assad regime, the nearest I got to Dabiq was a frontline located just beyond the village of Sawran (located slightly northwest of Dabiq), which was being manned by the Northern Storm Brigade that was fighting against the Islamic State at the time. Even with the capture of Dabiq from Islamic State in 2016, visiting the area was extremely difficult because of the need for authorisation from Turkey to visit the ‘Euphrates Shield’ zone it had carved out in north Aleppo countryside. In post-Assad Syria, it is now of course possible to visit without trouble, and I took the opportunity to visit Dabiq earlier this spring, accompanied by an old friend from Azaz.