that river, and the ancient port of Syria. Here the river turns
quite sharply eastward. A day’s journey beyond Meskene are
the remains of Siffin (Roman Sephe), where Moawiya defeated
the caliph Ali in 657 (see Caliphate), and opposite this, on the
west bank, a picturesque ruin called Kalʽat Jaʽber (Dausara).
A day’s journey beyond this, on the Syrian side, stand the
remains of ancient Sura, a frontier fortress of the Romans against
the Parthians; 20 m. S. of which, inland, lie the well-preserved
ruins of Reseph (Assyrian, Resafa or Rosafa). Half a day’s
journey beyond Sura, on the Mesopotamian side of the river,
are the extensive ruins of Haragla (Heraclea) and Rakka, once
the capital of Harun al-Rashid (Nicephorium of Alexander;
Callinicus of the Seleucids and Romans). Here the Belikh
(Bilechas) joins the Euphrates, flowing southward through the
biblical Aram Naharaim from Urfa (Edessa) and Harran
(Carrhae); and from this point to el-Ḳaim four days’ below
Deir, the course of the river is south-easterly. Two days’ journey
beyond Rakka, where the Euphrates breaks through the basalt
dike of el-Ḥamme, are two admirably preserved ruins, built
of gypsum and basalt, that on the Mesopotamian side called
Zelebiya (Chanuga), and that on the Syrian, much the finer of
the two, Halebiya or Zenobiya, the ancient Zenobia. Twenty-six
miles farther down lies the town of Deir (q.v.), where the river
divides into two channels and the river valley opens out into
quite extensive plains. Here the roads from Damascus, by
way of Palmyra, and from Mosul, by way of the Khabur, reach
the Euphrates, and here there must always have been a town of
considerable commercial and strategic importance. The region
is to-day covered with ruins and ruin mounds. A little below
Deir the river is joined by the Khabur (Khaboras, Biblical
Khabor), the frontier of the Roman empire from Diocletian’s
time, which rises in the Karaja Dagh, and, with its tributary,
the Jaghijagh (Mygdonius; Arab. Hirmas) flows south through
the land of Gozan in which Sargon settled the deported Israelites
in 721 B.C. At the mouth of the Khabur stood the Roman
frontier fortress of Circesium (Assyrian, Sirki; Arab. Kirkessie)
now el-Buseira. The corresponding border town on the Syrian
side is represented by the picturesque and finely preserved ruins
called Salahiya, the Ad-dalie or Dalie (Adalia) of Arabic times,
two days below Deir, whose more ancient name is as yet unknown.
Between Salahiya and Deir, on an old canal, known in
Arabic times as Said, leaving the Euphrates a little below Deir
and rejoining it above Salahiya, stand the almost more picturesque
ruins of the once important Arabic fortress of Raḥba.
As far as the Khabur Mesopotamia seems to have been a well-inhabited country from at least the 15th century B.C., when it constituted the Hittite kingdom of Mitanni, down to about the 12th century A.D., and the same is true of the country on the Syrian side of the Euphrates as far as the eastern limit of the Palmyrene. Below this point the back country on the Syrian side has always been a complete desert. On the Mesopotamian side there would seem, from the accounts of Xenophon and Ptolemy, to have been an affluent which joined the Euphrates between Deir and ʽAna, called Araxes by the former, Saocoras by the latter; but no trace of such a stream has been found by modern explorers and the country in general has always been uninhabited. Below Salahiya the river-bed narrows and becomes more rocky. A day’s journey beyond Salahiya, on a bluff on the Mesopotamian side of the river, are the conspicuous ruins Of el-ʽIrsi (Corsote?). Half a day’s journey beyond, at a point where two great wadis enter the Euphrates, on the Syrian side, stands Jabriya, an unidentified ruined town of Babylonian type, with walls of unbaked brick, instead of the stone heretofore encountered. At this point the river turns sharply a little north of east, continuing on that course somewhat over 40 m. to ʽAna, where it bends again to the south-east. Just above ʽAna are rapids, and from this point to Hit the river is full of islands, while the bed is for the most part narrow, leaving little cultivable land between it and the bluffs. ʽAna itself, a very ancient town, of Babylonian origin, once sacred probably to the goddess of the same name, lay originally on several islands in the stream, where ruins, principally of the Arabic and late Persian period, are visible. Here palm trees, which had begun to appear singly at Deir, grow in large groves, the olive disappears entirely, and we have definitely passed over from the Syrian to the Babylonian flora and climate. Between ʽAna and Hit there were anciently at least four island cities or fortresses, and at the present time three such towns, insignificant relics of former greatness, Haditha, Alus or el-ʽUzz and Jibba still occupy the old sites. Of these Alus is evidently the ancient Auzara or Uzzanesopolis, the city of the old Arabic goddess ʽUzza; Haditha, an important town under the Abbasids, was earlier known as Baia Malcha; while Jibba has not been identified. The fourth city, Thilutha or Olabus, once occupied the present deserted island of Telbeis, half a day’s journey below ʽAna. About half-way between ʽAna and Hit, in the neighbourhood of Haditha, the river has a breadth of 300 yds., with a depth of 18 ft., and a flood speed of 4 knots. At this point we begin to encounter sulphur springs and bitter streams redolent with bitumen, a formation which reaches its climax at Hit (q.v.), where a small stream (the “river of Ahava” of Ezra viii. 21) enters the Euphrates from the Syrian side, on which, about 8 m. from its mouth, stands the small town of Kubeitha.
The middle Euphrates, from Samsāt to Hit, is to-day an avenue of ruins, of which only the more conspicuous or important have been indicated here. It was from a remote period, antedating certainly 3000 B.C., the highway of empire and of commerce between east and west, more specifically between Babylonia or Irak and Syria, and numerous empires, peoples and civilizations have left their records on its shores. Its time of greatest prosperity and importance was the period of the Abbasid caliphate, and Arabic geographers as late as A.D. 1200 mention an astonishingly large number of important cities situated on its shores or islands. The Mongol invasion, in the latter part of that century, wrought their ruin, however, and from that time to the present there has been a steady decline in the commercial importance of the Euphrates route, and consequently also of the towns along its course, until at the present time it is only an avenue of ruins.
Lower Division.—Hit stands almost at the head of the alluvial deposit, about 550 m. from the Persian Gulf, separated from it by a couple of small spurs of the Syrian plateau, and may be said to mark the beginning of the lower Euphrates. Thence the river flows S.E. and S.S.E. to its junction with the Tigris below Korna, through an unbroken plain, with no natural hills, except a few sand (or sandstone?) hills in the neighbourhood of Warka, and no trace of rock, except at el-Haswa, above Hillah. At Hit the river is from 30 to 35 ft. in depth, with a breadth of 250 yds., and a current of 4 m. an hour, but from this point it diminishes in volume, receiving no new affluents but dissipating itself in canals and lagoons. At Feluja, in the latitude of Bagdad, the Euphrates and Tigris closely approach each other, and then, widening out, enclose the plain of Babylonia (Arab. Sawād). Through this part of its course the current of the river, except where restricted by floating bridges—at Feluja, Mussaib, Hillah, Diwanieh and Samawa—does not normally exceed a mile an hour, and both on the main stream and on its canals the jerd or ox-bucket takes the place of the naoura or water-wheel for purposes of irrigation.
In early times irrigating canals distributed the waters over the plain, and made it one of the richest countries of the East, so that historians report three crops of wheat to have been raised in Babylonia annually. As main arteries for this circulation of water through its system great canals, constituting in reality so many branches of the river, connected all parts of Babylonia, and formed a natural means both of defence and also of transportation from one part of the country to another. The first of these canals, taken off on the right bank of the river a little below Hit, followed the extreme skirt of the alluvium the whole way to the Persian Gulf near Basra, and thus formed an outer barrier, strengthened at intervals with watch-towers and fortified posts, to protect the cultivated land of the Sawād against the incursions of the desert Arabs. This gigantic work, the line of which may still be traced throughout its course, was formerly
