Since the 1930s, numerous archaeological excavations and
surveys have been carried out in the Khabur Valley, indicating that the region has been occupied since the
Lower Palaeolithic period. Important sites that have been excavated include
Tell Halaf,
Tell Brak,
Tell Leilan,
Tell Mashnaqa,
Tell Mozan and
Tell Barri. The region has given its name to a distinctive painted ware found in
northern Mesopotamia and Syria in the early 2nd millennium BCE, called
Khabur ware. The region of the Khabur River is also associated with the rise of the Kingdom of the
Mitanni that flourished c. 1500–1300 BC. The Khabur River is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible: "
Tiglath-Pileser ... took the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh into exile. He took them to Halah, Habor (Khabur), Hara and the River Gozan, where they are to this day". The identification of the Khabur with the Habor is not contested. The Khabur river was sometimes identified with the Chebar or Kebar, the location of
Tel Abib and setting of several important scenes of the
Book of Ezekiel. However, recent scholarship identifies the Chebar as the
ka-ba-ru waterway mentioned among the 5th century BCE Murushu archives from
Nippur, close to Nippur and the Shatt el-Nil, a silted up canal toward the east of Babylon. The ancient city of
Corsote, visited by
Cyrus the Younger on his ill-fated expedition against the Persians as told by
Xenophon, was located at the confluence of the Khabur River, known by them as the 'Mascas', and the Euphrates according to
Robin Waterfield. Other authors have been circumspect upon the precise location of Corsote due to the changing names and courses of the rivers since that time.
Ptolemy (5.18.6) mentions a town called
Chabora (Χαβώρα), on the Euphrates, which he places near
Nicephorion, and which probably derives its name from the river, and
Theophylact Simocatta mentions Ἀβορέων φρούριον, which is, as certainly, the same place. Procopius speaks of it as a river of importance, and Ammianus states that
Julian the Apostate crossed it "per navalem Aborae pontem". Strabo describes it as near the town of
Anthemusias. In the seventh and eight century, several monasteries from the
Tur Abdin such as the
monastery of Qartmin, the
monastery of Mar Awgin and the monastery of Mar Yoḥannān Ṭayyāyā, owned farmland in the upper Khabur valley and often had depended monasteries, so-called Lower Monasteries. As such,
Simeon, who was a monk and administrator at the Qartmin abbey, planted 12,000 trees at the Lower Monastery near
Sisauranon (which earned him the name 'of the olives').
Modern Khabur River Valley in Khabur River Valley. The Khabur River Project, begun in the 1960s, involved the construction of a series of
dams and
canals. Three dams were built in the Khabur Basin as part of a large irrigation scheme that also includes the
Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates. The section of the Khabur River within
Tell Tamer Subdistrict are home to a self-governing Assyrian enclave. Two dams, Hasakah West and Hasakah East, have been constructed on tributaries to the Khabur between Ra's al-'Ayn and Al-Hasakah. The capacity of the reservoir of Hasakah West is 0.09 km3, and is also the southeastern end of the Assyrian enclave. The capacity of Hasakah East is 0.2 km3. A third dam, Hassakeh South, was constructed on the Khabur 25 km south of Al-Hasakah. The reservoir of this dam has a capacity of 0.7 km3. The Khabur Valley, which now has about four million acres (16,000 km2) of farmland, is Syria's main
wheat-cultivation area. The northeastern part is also the center for Syria's oil production. ==References==