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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 Tigris (/ ˈ t aɪ ɡ r ɪ s / TY-griss; see below) is the eastern of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, before merging with the Euphrates and reaching to the Persian Gulf.
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; Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ Beth Nahrain "(land) between the (two) rivers") comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος (mesos ...
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 ...
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.
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.