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Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia. The geography of Mesopotamia, encompassing its ethnology and history, centered on the two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.While the southern is flat and marshy, the near approach of the two rivers to one another, at a spot where the undulating plateau of the north sinks suddenly into the Babylonian alluvium, tends to separate them still more ...
Mesopotamia [a] is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq. [1] [2] In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait. [3] [4]
The Tigris–Euphrates Basin is shared between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait. [6] [3] [4] [5] [7] Many tributaries of the Tigris river originate in Iran, and the Shatt al-Arab, formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, makes up a portion of the Iran–Iraq border, with Kuwait's Bubiyan Island being part of its delta.
The Tigris is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) long, rising in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey about 25 km (16 mi) southeast of the city of Elazığ and about 30 km (19 mi) from the headwaters of the Euphrates. The river then flows for 400 km (250 mi) through Southeastern Turkey before forming part of the Syria-Turkey border.
Tigris river flows through Mosul, near the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, which is a major settlement and hosts farmland in Upper Mesopotamia. The name al-Jazira has been used since the 7th century AD by Islamic sources to refer to the northern section of Mesopotamia, [citation needed] while the Lower Mesopotamia, also known as Sawād, is the southern part of Mesopotamia.
Map of Syria. The upper reaches of the Euphrates flow through steep canyons and gorges, southeast across Syria, and through Iraq. From west to east, the Euphrates is in Syria joined by the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur. Lake Assad is a large lake in Syria on the Euphrates River formed by the construction of the Tabqa Dam in 1973.
Mesopotamia was one of the earliest river valley civilizations: it started to form around 4000 BCE. The civilization was created after regular trading relationships started between multiple cities and states around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Mesopotamian cities became self-run civil governments.
[15] [38] The Glory River was also constructed to divert water from the Tigris's southern-flowing distributaries east and parallel along the Tigris until they reached the Euphrates near its confluence with the Tigris at Qurna. [15] By the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the marshes had lost 90% of their size from the previous decades.