Anah - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This article is about the Iraqi town of Anah. For the district, see Anah (district)
Anah (district)
Anah is a district in Al Anbar Governorate, Iraq. It is centred around the town of Anah....

, and for the character in the Book of Book of Genesis, see List of minor Biblical figures: Anah.

Anah, or Ana, is an Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i town on the Euphrates

Euphrates

The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...

river, approximately mid-way between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...

Etymology

It is called Hanat in a Babylonia

Babylonia

Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...

n letter, (about 2200 BC), a-na-at by the scribes of Tukulti-Ninurta (885 BC), and An-at by the scribe of Assur-nasir-pal (879 B.C.), Anatho (Isidore Charax), Anatha (Ammianus Marcellinus) by Greek and Latin writers in the early Christian centuries, Ana (sometimes, as if plural, Anat) by Arabic writers. The name has been connected with that of the deity Anat.

Background

Whilst Anah has thus retained its name for forty-two centuries the site is variously described. Most early writers concur in placing it on an island; so Tukulti-Ninurta II

Tukulti-Ninurta II

Tukulti-Ninurta II was King of Assyria from 891 BC to 884 BC. He was the second king of the Neo Assyrian Empire.-Family:His father was Adad-nirari II, the second king of the Neo-Assyrian period. His son succeeded him and was named Ashurnasirpal II...

, Assur-nasir-pal

Ashur-nasir-pal II

Ashur-nasir-pal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC.Ashurnasipal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, in 883 BC...

, Isidore

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...

, Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...

, Ibn Serapion, al-Istakri, Abulfeda and al-Karamani. Ammianus calls it a munimentum, Theophylactus Simocatta to 'Anathon frourion, Zosimus

Zosimus

Zosimus was a Byzantine historian, who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I . According to Photius, he was a comes, and held the office of "advocate" of the imperial treasury.- Historia Nova :...

a frourion, opp. Fathusai, which may be the Beth(th) ina of Ptolemy (v. 19). Leonhart Rauwolff, in AD 1574, found it "divided ... into two towns," the one "Turkish," "so surrounded by the river, that you cannot go into it but by boats," the other, much larger, on the Arabian side of the river.

History

This southernmost town of Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

proper (Jazira
Al-Jazira, Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey which is known by the traditional Arabic name of Al-Jazira , variously transliterated into Roman script as Djazirah, Djezirah and Jazirah...

) must have shared the chequered history of that land. Of Anah's fortunes under the early Babylonian
empire the records have not yet been unearthed; but in a letter dating from the third millennium BC, six men of Hanat (Ha-na-atK1) are mentioned in a statement as to certain disturbances which had occurred in the sphere of the Babylonian
Resident of Suhi, which would include the district of Anah.

How Anah fared at the hands of the Mitanni and others is unknown. The suggestion that Amenophis (Amenhotep) I

Amenhotep I

Amenhotep I was the second Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt. His reign is generally dated from 1526 to 1506 BC. He was born to Ahmose I and Ahmose-Nefertari, but had at least two elder brothers, Ahmose-ankh and Ahmose Sapair, and was not expected to inherit the throne...

. (16th century BC

16th century BC

The 16th century BC is a century which lasted from 1600 BC to 1501 BC.-Events:* 1700 BC – 1500 BC: Hurrian conquests.* 1595 BC: Sack of Babylon by the Hittite king Mursilis I....

) refers to it is improbable; but we seem to be justified in holding Anah to be the town "in the middle of the Euphrates" opposite (ina put) to which
Assur-nasir-pal halted in his campaign of 879 BC. The supposed reference to Anah in the speech put into the mouth of Sennacherib

Sennacherib

Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...

's messengers to Hezekiah (2 Kings xix. 13, Is. xxxvii. 13) is exceedingly improbable. The town may be mentioned, however, in four 7th century documents edited by Claude Hermann Walter Johns

Claude Hermann Walter Johns

Claude Hermann Walter Johns was an Assyriologist and Church of England clergyman.He was born at Banwell, Somerset...

.

It was at Anah that the emperor Julian met the first opposition on his disastrous expedition against Persia

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

(363), when he got possession of the place and transported the people; and there that Ziyad and Shureih with the advanced guard of Ali's army were refused passage across the Euphrates (36/657) to join Ali in Mesopotamia (Tabari i. 3261).

Later Anah was the place of exile of the caliph Qaim (al-qaim bi-amr-illah) when Basisiri was in power (450/1058.) In the 14th century Anah was the seat of a
Catholicos, primate of the Persians (Marin Sanuto). In 1610 Pietro Della Valle

Pietro Della Valle

Pietro della Valle was an Italian who traveled throughout Asia during the Renaissance period. His travels took him to the Holy Land, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and as Far as India.-Biography:...

found a Scot

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, George Strachan, resident at Anah (to study Arabic) as physician to the amir (i. 671-681). In 1835 the steamer "Tigris" of the English Euphrates expedition went down in a hurricane just above Anah, near where Julian's force had suffered from a similar storm. Della Valle described Anah as the chief Arab town on the Euphrates, an importance which it owes to its position on one of the routes from the west to Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

; Texeira said that the power of its amir extended to Palmyra

Palmyra

Palmyra was an ancient city in Syria. In the age of antiquity, it was an important city of central Syria, located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus and 180 km southwest of the Euphrates at Deir ez-Zor. It had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert...

(early 17th century); but Olivier found the ruling prince with only twenty-five men in his service, the town becoming more depopulated every day from lack of protection from the Arabs of the desert.

Modern Anah

Modern Anah lies from west to east on the right bank along a bend of the river just before it turns south towards Hit, and presents an attractive appearance. It extends, chiefly as a single street, for several miles along a narrow strip
of land between the river and a ridge of rocky hills. The houses are separated from one another by fruit gardens. Anah marks the boundary between the olive (north) and the date (south).

Arab poets celebrated its wine, and Mustaufi (8/14th century) tells of the fame of its palm-groves. In the river, facing the town, is a succession of equally productive islands. The most easterly contains the ruins of the old castle, whilst the remains of the ancient Anatho extend from this island for about 2 miles down the left bank. Coarse cloth is almost the only manufacture.

One of 'Anah's prized possessions was an ancient minaret. Dr. Alastair Northedge, a British archaeologist who wrote a book about findings in 'Anah, wrote that the minaret is 'commonly attributed to the Uqaylid (dynasty) and the 5th/11th century (AH/AD), though ... more probably of the 6th/12th century [AH/AD]. It was situated on the island at 'Anah and belonged to ... the congregational mosque.

When the valley was flooded by the Haditha Dam

Haditha Dam

The Haditha Dam or Qadisiya Dam is an earth-fill dam on the Euphrates, north of Haditha , creating Lake Qadisiyah . The dam is just over long and high. The purpose of the dam is to generate hydroelectricity, regulate the flow of the Euphrates and provide water for irrigation...

at Haditha 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 at the end of the 1980s.' Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq Dr. Muayad Said described the structure before the filling of the reservoir: 'It has an octagonal body enhanced by alcoves, some of which are blind. ... Conservation work on the building was undertaken in 1935 and again in 1963 and 1964, and today it stands 28 metres high and fully restored.'

Etymology

Background

History

Modern Anah

Further reading