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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 ...
The Euphrates (/ juː ˈ f r eɪ t iː z / ⓘ yoo-FRAY-teez; see below) 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 (lit. ' the land between the rivers ').
The regional toponym Mesopotamia (/ ˌ m ɛ s ə p ə ˈ t eɪ m i ə /, Ancient Greek: Μεσοποταμία '[land] between rivers'; Arabic: بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن Bilād ar-Rāfidayn or بَيْن ٱلنَّهْرَيْن Bayn an-Nahrayn; Persian: میانرودان miyân rudân; Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ Beth Nahrain "(land) between the (two) rivers") comes from the ...
In ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians. Notable Tigris-side cities included Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, while the city of Lagash was irrigated by the Tigris via a canal dug around 2900 B.C.
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 Aramaic name has been attested since the adoption of Old Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Neo Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE, [5] but the Greek name Mesopotamia was first coined in the 2nd century BCE by the historian Polybius during the Seleucid period [6] and introduced the misnomer that Beth Nahrain strictly referred to the "land between the rivers" rather than the "land of ...
Located along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in West Asia, the name later given to that civilization, Mesopotamia, means "between rivers". The Nile valley in Egypt had been home to agricultural settlements as early as 5500 BCE, but the growth of Ancient Egypt as a civilization began around 3100 BCE. [4]
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.