Anah or Ana (, ), formerly also known as Anna, is an

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

i town on the

Euphrates The Euphrates ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of West Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (). Originati ...

approximately midway between the

Gulf of Alexandretta The Gulf of Alexandretta or İskenderun () is a gulf of the eastern Mediterranean or Levantine Sea. It lies beside the southern Turkish provinces of Adana and Hatay. Names The gulf is named for the nearby Turkish city of İskenderun, the cl ...

and the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf, sometimes called the Arabian Gulf, is a Mediterranean seas, mediterranean sea in West Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Arabian Sea and the larger Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.Un ...

. Anah lies from west to east on the right bank along a bend of the river just before it turns south towards

Hīt Hit or Heet (, ''Hīt'') is a city in Al Anbar Governorate of Iraq. Situated on the banks of the Euphrates River, it lies northwest of Ramadi, the provincial capital. The city is administrative capital for Hit District. A major city in the cent ...

Name

The town was called ^(d)Ha-na-at in cuneiform texts from the

Old Babylonian period The Old Babylonian Empire, or First Babylonian Empire, is dated to , and comes after the end of Sumerian power with the destruction of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the subsequent Isin-Larsa period. The chronology of the first dynasty of Babyloni ...

, A-na-at of the land Suhum by the scribes of Tukulti-Ninurta BC, and An-at by the scribes of Assur-nasir-pal II in 879 BC. The name has been connected with the widely worshipped war goddess

Anat Anat (, ), Anatu, classically Anath (; ''ʿnt''; ''ʿĂnāṯ''; ; ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:ꜥntjt, ꜥntjt'') was a goddess associated with warfare and hunting, best known from the Ugaritic texts. Most researchers assume tha ...

. It was known as Anathō () to Isidore Charax and Anatha to

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus, occasionally anglicized as Ammian ( Greek: Αμμιανός Μαρκελλίνος; born , died 400), was a Greek and Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquit ...

; early Arabic writers described it variously as ʾĀna or (as if plural) ʾĀnāt.

History

Antiquity

The earliest references to Anah are probably found in letters of the period of

Zimri-Lim __NOTOC__ Zimri-Lim was in the Middle Bronze Age the king of Mari, Syria, Mari (c. 1767–1752 BCE; low chronology). Background Family Zimri-Lim (Akkadian language, Akkadian: ''Zi-im-ri Li-im'') was the son or grandson of king Yahdun-Lim of Ma ...

of Mari. Under

Hammurapi Hammurabi (; ; ), also spelled Hammurapi, was the sixth Amorites, Amorite king of the Old Babylonian Empire, reigning from to BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquere ...

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

the town was under

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

n control, being included in the governorate of Sūḫu. Later, the town was under

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

n rule. At the beginning of the 8th century BC, Šamaš-rēša-uṣur and his son Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur succeeded in creating an independent political entity, and called themselves "governors of Sūḫu and Mari". The land of Sūḫu occupied a quite extensive region on the Middle Euphrates, approximately from the area near Falluja in the southeast to the area of Ḫindanu (modern Tell Jabiriyah, near Al-Qa'im) in the northwest. Important evidence for this period was recovered during English and Iraqi salvage excavation campaigns at Sur Jurʿeh and on the island of ʿAna (Anah) in the early 1980s.

Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; ; 355/354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian. At the age of 30, he was elected as one of the leaders of the retreating Ancient Greek mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, the Ten Thousand, who had been ...

recorded that the army of

Cyrus the Younger Cyrus the Younger ( ''Kūruš''; ; died 401 BC) was an Achaemenid prince and general. He ruled as satrap of Lydia and Ionia from 408 to 401 BC. Son of Darius II and Parysatis, he died in 401 BC in battle during a failed attempt to oust his ...

resupplied during a campaign in 401 BC at "Charmande" near the end of a 90-

parasang The parasang, also known as a farsakh (from Arabic), is a historical Iranian peoples, Iranian unit of Walking distance measure, walking distance, the length of which varied according to terrain and speed of travel. The European equivalent is the ...

march between Korsote and

Pylae Yalova is a market-gardening town located in northwestern Turkey on the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara. It is the seat of Yalova Province and Yalova District.Julian first met opposition in his AD 363 expedition against the

Sassanid Empire The Sasanian Empire (), officially Eranshahr ( , "Empire of the Iranians"), was an Iranian empire that was founded and ruled by the House of Sasan from 224 to 651. Enduring for over four centuries, the length of the Sasanian dynasty's reign ...

. He got possession of the place and relocated its inhabitants.

Middle Ages

In 657, during the

Muslim conquest of Iraq As part of the early Muslim conquests, which were initiated by Muhammad in 622, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Sasanian Empire between 632 and 654. This event led to the decline of Zoroastrianism, which had been the official religion of ...

Ali Ali ibn Abi Talib (; ) was the fourth Rashidun caliph who ruled from until his assassination in 661, as well as the first Shia Imam. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Born to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib an ...

's lieutenants Ziyad and Shureih were refused passage across the Euphrates at Anah. Later, in 1058, Anah was the place of exile of the caliph Qaim when

al-Basasiri Abuʾl-Ḥārith Arslān al-Muẓaffar al-Basāsīrī (died 15 January 1059) was a Turkoman (ethnonym), Turkoman slave-soldier (''mamlūk'') who rose to become a military commander of the Buwayhid dynasty in Iraq (region), Iraq. When the Buwayhids ...

was in power.Longrigg, p. 461. In the 14th century, Anah was the seat of the

catholicos A catholicos (plural: catholicoi) is the head of certain churches in some Eastern Christian traditions. The title implies autocephaly and, in some cases, it is the title of the head of an autonomous church. The word comes from ancient Greek ( ...

who served as

primate Primates is an order (biology), order of mammals, which is further divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and Lorisidae, lorisids; and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include Tarsiiformes, tarsiers a ...

over the Persian Christians. Throughout early Islamic rule, it was a prosperous trade town, well known for its date palms and gardens; in the 14th century, Mustafi wrote of the fame of its palm groves. Medieval Arab poets celebrated Anah's wine; Between the 14th and 17th centuries, Anah served as a headquarters for a host of regional

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

tribes.

Ottoman rule

Starting around 1535, the town served as the de facto capital of the Abu Rish

bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

emirs, whom the Ottomans appointed as governors of several 's (provinces) as well as ''çöl beyis'' or "desert emirs". In 1574, Leonhart Rauwolff found the town divided into two parts, the Turkish "so surrounded by the river that you cannot go into it but by boats" and the larger Arab section along one of the banks. In 1610, Texeira said Anah lay on both banks of the river, with which Pietro Della Valle agreed. In that year, Della Valle found the Scot George Strachan resident at Anah, working as the physician to the emir and studying Arabic; he also found some "sun worshippers" (actually

Alawites Alawites () are an Arab ethnoreligious group who live primarily in the Levant region in West Asia and follow Alawism, a sect of Islam that splintered from early Shia as a ''ghulat'' branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate Ali ...

) still living there. Della Valle and Texeira called Anah the principal Arab town on the Euphrates, controlling a major route west from

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

and territory reaching

Palmyra Palmyra ( ; Palmyrene dialect, Palmyrene: (), romanized: ''Tadmor''; ) is an ancient city in central Syria. It is located in the eastern part of the Levant, and archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first menti ...

. About 1750, the

Ottomans Ottoman may refer to: * Osman I, historically known in English as "Ottoman I", founder of the Ottoman Empire * Osman II, historically known in English as "Ottoman II" * Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empir ...

installed a rudimentary administration to run Anah and its district. After roughly a century, a more organized local government was put in place, whereby Anah became the center of a

kaza A kaza (, "judgment" or "jurisdiction") was an administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire, administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. It is also discussed in English under the names district, subdistrict, and juridical district. Kazas co ...

belonging to the Baghdad Vilayet. At the beginning of the 19th century,

G.A. Olivier Guillaume-Antoine Olivier (; 19 January 1756, Les Arcs, Var, Les Arcs near Toulon – 1 October 1814, Lyon) was a French entomologist and naturalist. Life Olivier studied medicine in Montpellier, where he became good friends with Pierre Mari ...

found only 25 men in service of the local prince, with residents fleeing daily to escape from bedouin attacks against which he offered no protection. He described the city as a single long street of five or six miles along a narrow strip of land between the river and a ridge of rocky hills. W. F. Ainsworth, chronicling the British Euphrates expedition, reported that in 1835 the Arabs inhabited the northwest part of the town, the Christians the center, and the Jews the southeast. The same year, the steamer ''Tigris'' went down in a storm just above Anah, near where Julian's force had suffered from a similar storm. By the mid-19th century, the houses were separated from one another by fruit gardens, which also filled the riverine islands near the town. The most easterly island contained a ruined castle, while the ruins of ancient Anatho extended a further two miles along the left bank. It marked the boundary between the olive (north) and date (south) growing regions in the area. With the positioning of Turkish troops in the town around 1890, the locals no longer had to pay blackmail (') to the bedouins. Through the early 20th century, coarse cotton cloth was the only manufacture. In 1909 Anah had an estimated population of 15,000 and 2,000 houses. Most of the inhabitants were

Sunni Muslim Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr () rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Musli ...

Arabs, though a small Jewish community lived on the town's southern edge.

Kingdom of Iraq

In 1918, the town was captured by British forces and by 1921, became incorporated into the

Kingdom of Iraq The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq was the Iraqi state located in the Middle East from 1932 to 1958. It was founded on 23 August 1921 as the Kingdom of Iraq, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Mesopotamian campaign of the First World W ...

. It remained an administrative center of a

qadaa A kaza (, "judgment" or "jurisdiction") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. It is also discussed in English under the names district, subdistrict, and juridical district. Kazas continued to be used by some of the empire's succe ...

, part of the larger

Ramadi Ramadi ( ''Ar-Ramādī''; also formerly rendered as ''Rumadiyah'' or ''Rumadiya'') is a city in central Iraq, about west of Baghdad and west of Fallujah. It is the capital and largest city of Al Anbar Governorate which shares borders with Syri ...

-based liwa of Dulaym. Anah's ''qadaa'' also included the subdistricts of

, al-Qa'im and Jubba. The townspeople's long feud with the inhabitants of Rawa was settled diplomatically by 1921. Its territory to the west was dominated by the subtribes of Anizzah, while to the east the Jarba branch of the

Shammar The tribe of Shammar () is a tribal Arab Qahtanite confederation, descended from the Tayy, which migrated into the northern Arabian Peninsula from Yemen in the second century. It is the largest branch of the Tayy, and one of the largest and mos ...

held sway. Most of Anah's building were located among a dense belt of date palms and was "reckoned as healthy and picturesque", according to historian S. H. Longrigg. The date palms were irrigated by

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the kinetic energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a large wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with numerous b ...

s. There were also more scattered dwelling in the mid-stream islands of the Euphrates near the town center. The women of the town were well known for their beauty and the weaving of cotton and wool textiles. The men, many of whom were compelled to emigrate to lack of living space, were largely engaged as boatmen and transporters of water to Baghdad. The town had relatively high educational standards, with eight schools built there by 1946. F. R. Chesney reported about 1800 houses, two

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

s, and 16 waterwheels. One minaret is particularly old. Northedge reported the locals commonly attributed it to the 11th century but opined that it was more likely from about a century after that. It rose from one of the islands and belonged to the local mosque. Dr. Muayad Said described it as an octagonal body "enhanced by alcoves, some of which are blind" and noted earlier conservation work undertaken in 1935, 1963 and 1964. When the valley was flooded by the Haditha Dam in 1984/85, the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities cut it into sections and removed it to the new Anah, where it was re-erected to a height of at the end of the 1980s.

ISIS Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...

captured the town in 2014. On September 19, 2017, an offensive to retake the town from ISIS control began. After two days of fighting the town was recaptured by the Iraqi army.

Climate

Anah has a

hot desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

''BWh''). Most rain falls in the winter. The average annual temperature in Anah is . About of precipitation falls annually.

Notes

References

* * * * Attribution: *

External links

{{Districts of Iraq Populated places in Al Anbar Governorate Populated places on the Euphrates River District capitals of Iraq First Babylonian Empire Anat