BAGHDAD — Taq Kasra, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, is different from many other sites and monuments that date to the pre-Islamic era in Iraq. Unlike them, Taq Kasra has a place in Islam’s culture and heritage because of events there during the advent of the religion in the early seventh century.

This great palace of Taq Kasra was built in the ancient city of Ctesiphon (al-Madaein) during the Persian Sasanian Empire (A.D. 224-651). According to religious tradition, on the night of the Prophet Muhammad's birth, the Taq Kasra shook and its walls cracked, leading Muslims to consider the event a divine prophecy of the emergence of Islam and therefore a sacred place.

The site became even more sacred for Muslims in 656, when Salman the Persian, one of Muhammad's companions and the first Persian to rule al-Madaein, was buried a kilometer (0.6 miles) from the site. Today, his final resting place is a large mosque topped by a dome and two minarets. If properly exploited, Taq Kasra could become a popular religious tourist destination.

“I come to this place to see the great crack caused by the birth of the Prophet Muhammad and to admire this divine miracle,” Umm Zahra, an Iraqi woman, told Al-Monitor. “Then I visit the tomb of Salman the Persian.”