Chabur

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Chabur
Khabur, Habur
Meandering lower reaches about 60 km before the confluence with the Euphrates at Tell Schech Hamad

Meandering lower reaches about 60 km before the confluence with the Euphrates at Tell Schech Hamad

Data
location Turkey , Syria
River system Shatt al-Arab
Drain over Euphrates  → Shatt al-Arab  → Persian Gulf
muzzle near Busayra (Gouvernement Deir ez-Zor ) in the Euphrates Coordinates: 35 ° 7 ′ 49 "  N , 40 ° 25 ′ 38"  E 35 ° 7 ′ 49 "  N , 40 ° 25 ′ 38"  E

length 320 km
Catchment area 33,200 km²
Drain MQ
70 m³ / s
Big cities al-Hasakah
Course of the Chabur

Course of the Chabur

The Chabur (also Khabur , Turkish Habur , Arabic نهر الخابور Nahr al-Chābūr , DMG Nahr al-Ḫābūr , Aramaic ܓ݂ܰܒܽܘܪ ğabur ) is the longest tributary of the Euphrates in Syria . It receives its main amount of water from the Turkish border region near Raʾs al-ʿAin and has enabled irrigated agriculture for thousands of years on its 320-kilometer route south through the eastern Syrian steppe area.

In Roman antiquity the river was named Chaboras . By the name Araxes, Xenophon probably did not mean the Chabur, but the river Aras . The only other major tributary of the Euphrates in Syria is the Belich , which flows further west in parallel and flows into ar-Raqqa .

River course

Some tributaries of the Chabur have their source in the limestone mountains near the Tur Abdin , but it is mainly fed by several karst springs in the area of ​​the Turkish-Syrian border near Raʾs al-ʿAin. By some wadis except that lead only during the winter rainy season, water is the only creek in Syria at al-Hasakah confluent Jaghjagh River . The city is located in the center of the Syrian part of the Jazira region between the Euphrates and the Tigris , in the north of which there is sufficient rainfall and fertile soils, allowing relatively dense rural settlement. The limit of 250 millimeters of annual precipitation, at which rain-fed agriculture is still possible, runs on the Chabur a few kilometers south of al-Hasakah. Less or no precipitation can also cause crop failures further north. So north of al-Hasakah, too, crop failures occur on average every three years in rain-fed crops. When crossing the border from Turkey 300 millimeters are exceeded, in the area where it confluences the Euphrates near the village Buṣayra (Bşēra, east of Deir ez-Zor ), the average annual rainfall is below 150 millimeters.

In this dry steppe region, agriculture is only possible with artificial irrigation. The river bed of the Lower Chabur is up to 60 meters wide and runs in a one to three kilometer wide valley floor. In the summer months, the cattle stay in pens near the settlements and graze the stubble fields; in the rainy season in winter, the herds are led out of the river oasis into the steppe.

history

The analysis of traces of plants ( pollen ) showed that the Chabur must have had similar climatic conditions as today as early as 6000 years ago. Archaeological finds point to settlements from this period. From the 16th to the 14th century BC The Chabur formed the heartland of the Mitanni empire, whose capital Waššukanni , which has not yet been clearly identified , is said to have been in the headwaters of the river. The most important site for the Mitanni period is Tell Brak on the Jaghjagh . Since the beginning of the 13th century, the area was temporarily dependent on the Assyrians . During this Central Assyrian period (up to the 11th century) there was irrigation farming on the lower Chabur, which was made possible by a canal running along the east side of the river. In some areas, the river could be dammed by means of smaller dams and the water could be led directly onto the fields. The possibility of artificial irrigation was the basis of life for numerous settlements also on the lower Chabur, of which the now visible tells have only been partially excavated. After the fall of Assyria in 612 BC The Chabur valley came under Babylonian rule. Ḫabūrītum was worshiped here as the river goddess.

From the Roman period onwards, the fields were probably also irrigated by water wheels; the river region was densely populated during the Byzantine and until the Islamic period. The Romans planted cotton , which needed a lot of water. The Chabur was located in the northern area of ​​the Roman defense line Limes Arabicus , the construction of which began in the 2nd century AD. This included the fortress Circesium (Arabic Ķarķīsiyā) at the mouth of the Chabur , which Diocletian set up or expanded at the end of the 3rd century . The settlement continuity was only interrupted in the Middle Ages by the advance of Bedouins from the desert areas. Their largest tribe in the Jazira are the western Shammar, who practiced sheep nomadism between the grazing regions in summer on the upper Chabur and in winter to the south of the Euphrates.

At the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire began to promote the resettlement and fertility of the ancient cultivated areas. The development of the remote region was continued during the French mandate in Syria after the First World War (1920-1945) by settling semi-nomads from the desert steppe in initially small villages. Previously, in the years 1915–1916, as part of the genocide of the Armenians , this region was the destination of countless death marches with which the then ruling Young Turks managed to exterminate up to one and a half million Armenians . According to eyewitness Armin T. Wegner, at least 150,000 Armenians were murdered on the banks of the Chabur between July and August 1915 alone . According to Wolfgang Gust , a total of 300,000 Armenians are said to have died there. Al-Hasakah was founded in 1922 . In the following years Kurds, Armenians and Christian traders from Aleppo joined them. In the 1930s, between Raʾs al-ʿAin and al-Hasaka am Chabur, around 10,000 Christian Assyrians from the province of Hakkâri who fled the genocide of the Syrian Christians and who lived here as Chabur Assyrians in 36 villages and an Aramaic-speaking island formed. This only changed with the civil war in Syria since 2011 , when a large part of the Assyrians fled abroad from the Daesh (IS) reign of terror .

Lack of water

Upper course at Tell Halaf , near Ras al-Ain, directly on the Turkish border. In the dry season, practically no water comes from Turkey.

Around the middle of the 20th century, in addition to traditional cattle breeding and village agriculture, in the Syrian Jazira, an accelerated development of new arable land on large areas began through the use of modern machines. As a result of the land reform after the Baath Party came to power in 1963, the large fields were distributed to the semi-nomadic cattle breeders who had recently settled here and who now began to grow grain and cotton. As part of the “Chabur Project”, a number of dams and canals were created to irrigate a field area of ​​16,000 square kilometers for the breadbasket to be created in Syria. Due to the increasing population and the fields that are expanding further and further into the steppe, there has been an increasing water shortage since then.

In 1963 the karst springs at Raʾs al-ʿAin alone supplied an average of around 38 cubic meters of water per second. They consist of 13 spring pots located close together and are among the world's richest karst springs. The flow rates of the Chabur indicated in 1971 averaging 50 cubic meters per second, after the winter rain a maximum of 300 cubic meters and a minimum of 35 cubic meters have become significantly lower. In the 1990s, two more dams were built on the Chabur. The use of more powerful diesel pumps allows penetration into deeper groundwater layers, as well as tapping them practically everywhere in the Chabur basin. The strip of up to three kilometers of arable land along the river, which can be irrigated with the previous methods, has thus been considerably expanded and the hydrological situation of the entire area has been fundamentally changed. Since that time, the meandering Chabur in the lower reaches of the river has been falling dry during the summer months, except for ponds in the river bed, a phenomenon not known in history. Further dams and agreements with Turkey should help.

literature

  • Frank Hole, Benjamin Zaitchik: Policies, plans, practice, and prospects: Irrigation in northeastern Syria. Land Degradation & Development 18 (2), 2007, pp. 133–152.
  • Eugen Wirth: Syria, a geographic study of the country. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1971, pp. 427-435.

Web links

Commons : Chabur  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Article Chabur in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D118060~2a%3D~2b%3DChabur
  2. ^ Willem van Zeist: Third to first Millennium BC Plant Cultivation on the Khabur, North-Eastern Syria. In: Palaeohistoria: Acta Et Communicationes Instituti Archaeologici Universitatis Groninganae . 41/42. Swets & Zeitlinger, Lisse 2002, p. 112.
  3. ^ Willem van Zeist, p. 111.
  4. Armin T. Wegner : The expulsion of the Armenian people into the desert. A slide show . Edited by Andreas Meier, Göttingen 2011, pp. 203f; and Wolfgang Gust : The Armenian Genocide. The tragedy of the oldest Christian people in the world . Munich / Vienna 1993, p. 57f
  5. Gust (1993), p. 58.
  6. Georg Gerster , Ralf-B. Wartke: Aerial images from Syria. From ancient to modern. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2003, p. 184.
  7. Shabo Talay : The New Aramaic Dialects of the Khabur Assyrians in Northeast Syria: Introduction, Phonology and Morphology. Semitica Viva 40, Harrassowitz Verlag , Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 10-21.
  8. Malte Henk, Henning Sußebach: The Exodus from Tel Goran. The time 52/2015, December 23, 2015.
  9. David J. Burdon, Chafic Safadi: Ras-el-Ain: The great karst spring of Mesopotamia: An hydrogeological study. Journal of Hydrology, Vol. 1/1, March 1963, pp. 58-64
  10. ^ Eugen Wirth: Syria, a geographical country study. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1971, p. 110. An average of 40 cubic meters of karst springs
  11. Benjamin Zaitchik, Ronald Smith, Frank Hole: Spatial Analysis of Agricultural Land Use Changes in the Khabour River Basin of Northeaster Syria. (PDF; 429 kB) Yale University, 2002