Middle Bronze Age The earliest references to Anah are probably found in letters of the period of
Zimri-Lim of
Mari. Under
Hammurapi of
Babylon the town was under
Babylonian control, being included in the governorate of
Sūḫu. Later, the town was under
Assyrian rule.
Iron Age 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 recorded that the army of
Cyrus the Younger resupplied during a campaign in 401 BC at "Charmande" near the end of a 90-
parasang march between
Korsote and
Pylae, which likely intends Anah. Anatha was the site where the Roman emperor
Julian first met opposition in
his AD 363 expedition against the
Sassanid Empire. He got possession of the place and relocated its inhabitants.
Middle Ages , Abbasid era heritage site, before its destruction. In 657, during the
Muslim conquest of Iraq,
Ali'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 was in power. In the 14th century, Anah was the seat of the
catholicos who served as
primate over the Persian Christians. Throughout early Islamic rule, it was a prosperous trade town, well known for its date palms and gardens; Between the 14th and 17th centuries, Anah served as a headquarters for a host of regional
Arab tribes. 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) still living there. Della Valle and Texeira called Anah the principal Arab town on the Euphrates, controlling a major route west from
Baghdad and territory reaching
Palmyra. About 1750, the
Ottomans installed a rudimentary administration to run Anah and its district. 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 Arabs, though a small Jewish community lived on the town's southern edge. 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==