The Yarmuk River (, ;

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: Ἱερομύκης, ; or ''Heromicas''; sometimes spelled Yarmouk) is the largest

tributary A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...

of the

Jordan River The Jordan River or River Jordan (, ''Nahr al-ʾUrdunn''; , ''Nəhar hayYardēn''), also known as ''Nahr Al-Sharieat'' (), is a endorheic river in the Levant that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and drains to the Dead ...

. It runs in

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

and

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, and drains much of the

Hauran The Hauran (; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, to the northeast by the al-Safa field, to the east and south by the Harrat ...

plateau. Its main tributaries are the

wadi Wadi ( ; ) is a river valley or a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) Stream bed, riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portion ...

s of 'Allan and Ruqqad from the north, Ehreir and Zeizun from the east. Although the Yarmuk is narrow and shallow throughout its course, at its mouth it is nearly as wide as the Jordan, measuring thirty feet in breadth and five in depth.

History

Yarmuk forms a natural border between the plains to the north - Hauran,

Bashan Bashan (; ; or ''Basanitis'') is the ancient, biblical name used for the northernmost region of Transjordan during the Iron Age. It is situated in modern-day Jordan and Syria. Its western part, nowadays known as the Golan Heights, was occupied b ...

and

Golan Golan (; ) is the name of a biblical town later known from the works of Josephus (first century CE) and Eusebius (''Onomasticon'', early 4th century CE). Archaeologists localize the biblical city of Golan at Sahm el-Jaulān, a Syrian village eas ...

- and the

Gilead Gilead or Gilad (, ; ''Gilʿāḏ'', , ''Jalʻād'') is the ancient, historic, biblical name of the mountainous northern part of the region of Transjordan.''Easton's Bible Dictionary'Galeed''/ref> The region is bounded in the west by the J ...

mountains to the south. Thus it has often served as boundary line between political entities. Bowl shaped canion

Neolithic

The Yarmukian is a Pottery Neolithic culture that inhabited parts of Israel and Jordan. Its

type site In archaeology, a type site (American English) or type-site (British English) is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and H ...

is at Sha'ar HaGolan, on the river mouth.

Bronze Age

Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

I is represented in the Golan only in the area of the river. Abila (Tel Abil) is attested in the 14th-century BC Amarna Letters. This is possibly the case also for Geshur, assumed to have lain north of the river. Other historical cities on the course of the river are Dara'a, Hit, Jalin; and the archaeological sites of Tell Shihab and Khirbet ed-Duweir (See Lo-debar).Ma'oz, p. 420

Iron Age

The

Aramean The Arameans, or Aramaeans (; ; , ), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered ce ...

kingdoms and the

northern Kingdom of Israel The Kingdom of Israel ( ), also called the Northern Kingdom or the Kingdom of Samaria, was an Israelite kingdom that existed in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Its beginnings date back to the first half of the 10th century BCE. It c ...

, of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' 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 and

Persian empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the larg ...

s the province of

Ashteroth Karnaim Ashteroth Karnaim () was a city east of the Jordan River in Bashan in the northern part of the Transjordan There were originally two neighbouring cities, Ashtaroth, and northeast of it Karnaim, the latter annexing the name of the former after As ...

laid to the north, and that of Gal'azu (Gilead) to the south.

Hellenistic period

In Hellenistic times, the territory of

Hippos A hippo or hippopotamus is either of two species of large African mammal which live mainly in and near water: * Hippopotamus * Pygmy hippopotamus Hippo or Hippos may also refer to: Toponymy * The ancient city of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba, Alg ...

was across from those of

Gadara Gadara ( or ; ), in some texts Gedaris, was an ancient Hellenistic city in what is now Jordan, for a long time member of the Decapolis city league, a former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see. Its ruins are today located at Umm ...

and Abila (Abel) on the south, while Dion sat on the eastern tributaries.

Roman period

When

Pompey Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey ( ) or Pompey the Great, was a Roman general and statesman who was prominent in the last decades of the Roman Republic. ...

conquered the region in 64/63 BCE, he liberated the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

city of

from Jewish Hasmonean rule (see also

Decapolis The Decapolis (Greek: ) was a group of ten Greek Hellenistic cities on the eastern frontier of the Greek and late Roman Empire in the Southern Levant in the first centuries BC and AD. Most of the cities were located to the east of the Jordan ...

). It seems that one way they celebrated the event was by damming the Yarmuk and organising a ''

naumachia A naumachia (in Latin , from the Ancient Greek /, literally "naval combat") was a mock naval battle staged as mass entertainment by the Ancient Romans. The staging would typically occur in a specially-dug basin, also known as a naumachia. Earl ...

'' as part of games held in honour of Pompey, possibly at what is now Hammat Gader.

Byzantine period

The

Battle of the Yarmuk The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk; ) was a major battle between the Byzantine army, army of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Muslim Rashidun army, forces of the Rashidun Caliphate. The battle consisted of a series of engagements ...

, where Muslim forces defeated those of the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...

and gained control of Syria, took place north of the river in CE 636.

1905–1948

A fork of the Hejaz Railway (connecting to the Jezreel Valley railway in Samakh) ran in the river valley from 1905 to 1946.Yarmuk River railway bridges
1933 aerial photographs. Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East / National Archives, London. It was deprecated after being bombed by the Jewish

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

in the

Night of the Bridges The Night of the Bridges (formally Operation Markolet) was a Haganah venture on the night of 16 to 17 June 1946 in the British Mandate of Palestine, as part of the Jewish insurgency in Palestine (1944–47). Its aim was to destroy eleven brid ...

on 16 June 1946. The hydroplant of

Naharayim Naharayim ( literally "Two rivers"), historically the Jisr Majami area ( literally "Meeting bridge" area), is the area where the Yarmouk River flows into the Jordan River. It was the site of the "First Jordan Hydro-Electric Power House", con ...

, on the confluence with Jordan River, served

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

from 1932 to

1948 Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The current Constitutions of Constitution of Italy, Italy and of Constitution of New Jersey, New Jersey (both later subject to amendment) ...

.Hussein, Hussam, and Mattia Grandi. "Dynamic political contexts and power asymmetries: the cases of the Blue Nile and the Yarmouk Rivers." International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics (2017): 1-20

After 1948

200px, Israeli-Jordanian border at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers Today, the lower part of the river, close to the Jordan Valley, forms part of the border between Israel and

. Further upstream it forms part of the

border Borders are generally defined as geography, geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by polity, political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other administrative divisio ...

between

and Jordan (a border largely inherited from the 1923 Franco-British Boundary Agreement). The area of Al-Hamma, or Hamat Gader in the valley is held by Israel but claimed by Syria. The

Al-Wehda Dam The Al-Wehda Dam (), formerly known as Maqarin Dam, is a roller-compacted concrete gravity dam on the Yarmouk River on the Jordan–Syria border, border between Syria and Jordan. It can hold up to water and is designed to provide Jordan with wat ...

was constructed on the Jordan-Syria border in the 2000s. There are political agreements between Jordan and Syria (1953 and 1987) and between Jordan and Israel (1994), about the management and allocation of the shared waters of the Yarmouk.

References

External links

*
Yarmouk Hydro-Political Story Map
by the UEA Water Security Research Centre
Photos of Yarmouk river
at the American Center of Research {{Authority control Tributaries of the Jordan River Great Rift Valley Rivers of Israel Rivers of Jordan Rivers of Syria Hebrew Bible rivers Israel–Jordan relations International rivers of Asia Jordan–Syria border Israel–Jordan border Gilead Yarmukian culture