Hope Waddell Hogg

“ Hadrian, however, abandoning Trajan’s forward policy in favour of a Euphrates boundary, restored it as a dependency of Rome. When L. Verus (163-165) recovered Mesopotamia from Parthia, it was not Edessa but Ḥarrān that was chosen as the site of a Roman colony, and made the metropolis by Marcus Aurelius (172) .
To one of the native kings doubtless is to be ascribed the Syriac inscription [15] on one of the pair of pillars, 50 ft. high, which stood, no doubt, in front of a temple connected with some local cult. Trustworthy data for determining its nature are lacking. ”

“ The mystery of the Hyksos has not yet been solved; but it is not impossible that they had relations with Mesopotamia. After they had been driven out of Egypt (q.v.) , when Aḥmōse, the officer of Tethmosis (Thutmose) I., mentions Naharin (late 16th century) , he does not say anything about the inhabitants. He seems to imply, however, that there was more than one state. The first mention of Mitanni, as we saw, is under Tethmosis III., who clearly crossed the Euphrates. It is at least possible that common enmity to Mitanni led to a treaty with Assyria (under Ashur-nadin-akhe) . ”

“ When the Bagdād caliphs lost control of their dominions, Edessa shared the fortunes of western Mesopotamia, changing with the rise and fall of Egyptian dynasties and Arab chieftains. In the 10th century al-Masʽūdī, writing in the very year in which it happened, tells how the Mahommedan ruler of Edessa, with the permission of the caliph, purchased peace of the emperor Romanus Lecapenus by surrendering to him the napkin of Jesus of Nazareth, wherewith he had dried himself after his baptism. ”

“ In spring the grass on the rolling plains is soon parched. So when the hot sandstorms blow in the lower steppe the scorching heat is carried right up to the foot of the mountains. On the other hand, since the spurs of the Taurus bring the winter cold a long way south, and the cold increases from west to east as we leave the mild coast of the Mediterranean, far down into the Mesopotamian plain the influence of the snow-covered ridges can be felt, and in the higher parts of the plain snow and ice are not infrequent ”

“ Edessa can claim no share in “the Persian Sage” Aphrahaṭ or Afrahaṭ (Aphraates) ; but Ephraem, after bewailing in Nisibis the sufferings of the great Persian war under Constantius and Julian, when Jovian in 363 ceded most of Mesopotamia to Shapur II., the persecutor of the Christians, settled in Edessa, which as the seat of his famous school (called “the Persian”) grew greatly in importance, and attracted scholars from all directions. ”

“ Hatra successfully withstood siege, however, and Hadrian abandoned Mesopotamia, setting the boundary at the Euphrates. Again for half a century there is not much to relate. Then, when Vologaeses, yielding to his growing discontent, took advantage of the death of Antoninus to invade Armenia the Romans were victorious (164) , and after the storming of places such as Nicephorium, Edessa, Niṣibīs, western Mesopotamia was once more Roman as far as the Khābūr, Carrhae becoming a free city and Osroene a dependency. ”

“ It was next besieged by al-Manṣūr’s brother; but the battle between the brothers was fought at Naṣībīn. It was decisive, but there were further risings, involving Mesopotamia. [39]
An inevitable effect of the reign of Islām had been that the kindred language of the Arabs gradually killed the vernacular Syriac of Mesopotamia (see Edessa) as the alien Greek and Persian had shown no tendency to do, and the classical period (4th to 8th centuries) of the only Mesopotamian literature we know, such as it is, useful but uninviting, came to an end (see Syriac Literature) . ”

“ By 1185–1186 Saladin had made Egypt supreme over all these principalities, thus achieving what the XVIIIth and XIXth Egyptian dynasties had attempted in vain. Mesopotamia remained in the hands of the Ayyūbite family till the appearance of the Mongols. The petty principalities were unable to unite to resist the terrible attack, and Jezīra, Edessa, Naṣībīn, Māridīn, &c., fell in 1259–60. The leading men of Ḥarrān emigrated into Syria, the rest were carried into slavery, and the ancient town was laid in ruins. It was the Mamluk rulers of Egypt that checked the death-bringing flood. ”

“ Diagonally opposite the mosque is a house with a square tower, which is locally believed to occupy the place of the famous ancient school. The waters of the two pools make their way in a single stream southwards out of the town. The once dangerous stream Daiṣān (Σκιρτός) no longer flows southwards through the town, but encircles it on the north and east in the channel of the old moat. This stream, now called Kara Kuyun, and the other are exhausted in the irrigation of the gardens lying south-east of the town, except when fuller than usual, when they reach the Balīh. ”

“ Mesopotamia would naturally share in the wide trade relations of the time, probably reaching as far as Egypt. The importance of Ḥarrān was doubtless due not only to its fame as a seat of the Moon-god Sin, honoured also west of the Euphrates, and to its political position, but also to its trade relations. ”

“ He taught and wrote vigorously against the Arians and other heretics, and although just after his death (373) the emperor Valens banished the orthodox from Edessa, they returned on the emperor’s death in 378. Under Zenobius, disciple of Ephraem, studied the voluminous writer, Isaac of Antioch (d. circ. 460) . Rabbūla perhaps owed his elevation to the see of Edessa (411–435) , in the year which produced the oldest dated Syriac MS., to his asceticism, and it was to his time that the sojourn there of the “Man of God” (Alexis) was assigned ”

“ In modern times it is often Extent. used for the whole Euphrates-Tigris country. That would provide a useful name for an important geographical unit, but is too misleading. In view of historical and geographical facts there is much to be said for applying the name Mesopotamia to the country drained by the Khābūr, the Belīkh, and the part of the Euphrates connected therewith. It would thus include the country lying between Babylonia on the south and the Armenian Taurus highlands on the north, the maritime Syrian district on the west, and Assyria proper on the east. ”

“ Whatever may have been the ethnographical type of the early inhabitants, it must by the beginning of the second last millennium B.C. have included Hittites in the large sense of the term, probably Aryans, and certainly Semites of some of the types characteristic of early Assyrian history. ”

“ The most natural explanation is that Aryans had made their way into the highlands east of Assyria, and thence bands had penetrated into Mesopotamia, peacefully or otherwise, and then, like the Turks in the days of the Caliphate, founded dynasties. The language of the Mitanni state, however, was neither Aryan nor Semitic, and may very well be that of the mysterious “Hittite” hieroglyphic inscriptions (see Hittites) . Mitanni was one of the great powers, alongside of Egypt and Babylonia, able to send to Egypt the Ninevite ’Ishtar ”

“ The empire soon recovered Edessa, but the resident made himself independent. Thoros applied for help to Baldwin, brother and successor of Godfrey of Bouillon in the First Crusade, who in 1098 took possession of the town and made it the capital of a Burgundian countship, which included Samosata and Sarūǵ, and was for half a century the eastern bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem. [22] The local Armenian historian, however, Matthew of Edessa, tells of oppression, decrease of population, ruin of churches, neglect of agriculture. ”

“ The district name Osroēnē for Ὀρροηνή, is Greek, perhaps due to analogy of Chosroes. It occurs but rarely in Syriac (Uzroina) ; e.g. Chronicle of Edessa. § 35; [10] elsewhere Bēth-Urhāyē (e.g. Cureton, Spicileg. Syr. 20) . In the time of Tiglath-pileser I. (c. 1100 B.C.) the name seems to have been “District of (not Edessa, but) Ḥarrān” (Annals, vi. 71) . The Arabs pronounced the name er-Ruhā (see above) , and that form prevailed till it gave place to Urfa in the 15th century.
The Greek name Edessa appears in the Jerusalem Targum to Gen. x. 10 as Hădas (הדס‎, myrtle) ”

“ The rolling plains north of the ʽAbd al ʽAzīz Sinjār mountain wall are intersected by the many streams of the Khābūr system (the Arab geographer Mustaufī speaks of 300 feeders) , which under favourable political and administrative conditions would produce a marked fertility. At Naṣībīn (Nisibis) rice is cultivated with success. (3) The country south of the mountain range is steppe land, imperfectly known, and of little use except for nomadic tribes, apart from the banks of the rivers (on which see Euphrates, Tigris) . ”

“ W. of Eski-Ḥarrān, in 1906 a very interesting 6th-century Assyrian inscription (see Mesopotamia) .
In the later Assyrian empire the population was largely Aramaic-speaking; but S. Schiffer’s theory (Beiheft I. zur Orientalistischen Litteratur-Zeitung) finds contemporary evidence of Israelites settled in the neighbourhood of Edessa in the second half of the 7th century B.C. At the fall of Nineveh many towns in Mesopotamia suffered severely at the hands of the Medes. The period remains dark, notwithstanding the obscure light that has been thrown on it lately (Pognon, Inscriptions) . ”

“ Possibly the rulers of Babylon had a freer hand in a city that they apparently raised to a dominant position than the Semitic rulers of Asshur, who seem to have succeeded to men of the stock which we have hitherto called Mitanni, if we may judge from the names of Ushpia who, according to Shalmaneser I. and Esarhaddon, built the temple, and Kikia who, according to Ashur-rem-nisheshu, built the city wall. [25] The considerable number of such names already found in First Dynasty records seems to show that people of this race were to be found at home as far south as Babylonia. ”

“ In the bazaar, which lies between the chief mosque and the sacred pool, and contains several streets, are displayed not only the native woollen stuffs, pottery and silver work, but also a considerable variety of European goods, especially cloth stuffs. The principal manufactures are fine cotton stuffs and yellow leather. The streets are of course narrow and winding; but the houses are well built of stone. ”

“ When Phraates II. turned the Scythians against himself, however, even Mesopotamia suffered from the plunderers (Joh. Antioch, in Müller iv. 561) . The immigration of Arabs must have been going on for long. About this time they even founded a dynasty in Aramaean Osroene (see Edessa) .
Under Mithradates II. Mesopotamia was a definite part of the Parthian empire, of which the Euphrates became the western boundary ”

“ The form of this last statement shows that at the time of writing (206) the rulers had not adopted Christianity themselves. Abgar IX. is now commonly supposed to be the ruler to whom the famous legend was first attached (see Abgar) ; but though he visited Rome there is no proof that he ever became a Christian (Gomperz, in Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich-Ungarn, xix. 154-157) . It was at Edessa that Caracalla, who made it a military colony under the style of Colonia Marcia Edessenorum, spent the winter of 216–217, and near there that he was murdered. ”

“ Measured on the Tigris Mesopotamia would stretch from somewhere between Jezīret-ibn-ʽOmar and Mōṣul to somewhere below Tekrīt.
In the tract defined, physical changes unconnected with civilization have been slight as compared with those in Babylonia; the two great rivers, having cut themselves deep channels, could not shift their courses far.
i. Natural Divisions.—The stretch from Samsāṭ and, Jezīret-ibn-ʽOmar to the alluvial plain seems to divide itself naturally into three parallel belts, highland watershed district, undulating plains and steppe. ”

“ The fragmentary nature of the records does not enable us to follow the steps by which Cyrus became master of Mesopotamia, in which he probably met with little or no resistance. How much of Mesopotamia was involved in the revolt of what the Persian inscription calls Assyria (Athur) is not clear. Nor does it appear with certainty to which of the Persians. twenty satrapies into which, according to Herodotus, the Persian empire was divided, Mesopotamia belonged ”