Anah

The town was called ^(d)Ha-na-at{{sup|KI}} in cuneiform texts from the Old Babylonian period,{{Cite book|title=Excavations at ʻĀna, Qalʻa island|last=Northedge, Alastair.|date=1988|publisher=Published for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the Directorate of Antiquities by Aris & Phillips Ltd|others=Northedge, Alastair., Bamber, Andrina., Roaf, Michael.|isbn=978-0856684258|location=Warminster, England|oclc=24430256}} A-na-at of the land Suhum by the scribes of Tukulti-Ninurta {{c.|lk=no|885}} BC,{{cite book |author=Albert Kirk Grayson |url=https://archive.org/details/assyrian-rulers-of-the-early-first-millennium-bc-i-1114-859-bc |title=Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114–859 BC) |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=1991 |pages=38, 43, 174}} and An-at by the scribes of Assur-nasir-pal II in 879 BC.{{cite book |author=Albert Kirk Grayson |url=https://archive.org/details/assyrian-rulers-of-the-early-first-millennium-bc-i-1114-859-bc |title=Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114–859 BC) |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=1991 |pages=213}}{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}} The name has been connected with the widely worshipped war goddess Anat.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}} It was known as Anathō ({{langx|grc|Άναθω}}){{what?|date=February 2024}} to Isidore Charax and Anatha to Ammianus Marcellinus; early Arabic writers described it variously as ʾĀna or (as if plural) ʾĀnāt.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}}{{what?|date=February 2024}}

The earliest references to Anah are probably found in letters of the period of Zimri-Lim of Mari.

Under Hammurapi of Babylon the town was under Babylonian control, being included in the governorate of Sūḫu. Later, the town was under Assyrian rule.

At the beginning of the 8th century BC, Šamaš-rēša-uṣur and his son Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur succeeded in creating an independent political entity, and called themselves "governors of Sūḫu and Mari".Cavigneaux, A., and B.K. Ismail, 'Die Statthalter von Suḫu und Mari im 8. Jh. v. Chr. anhand neuer Texte aus den irakischen Grabungen im Staugebiet des Qadissiya-Damms', Baghdader Mitteilungen 21 (1990), pp. 321–456 + pls. 35–38. The land of Sūḫu occupied a quite extensive region on the Middle Euphrates, approximately from the area near Falluja in the southeast to the area of Ḫindanu (modern Tell Jabiriyah, near Al-Qa'im) in the northwest.{{Cite web|url=http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/suhu/introduction/index.html|title='A Short Introduction on the Sūḫu Texts', Suhu: The Inscriptions of Suhu online Project, The Suhu Inscriptions Project|last=Bartelmus|first=Alexa|date=2016|access-date=22 May 2019}} Important evidence for this period was recovered during English and Iraqi salvage excavation campaigns at Sur Jurʿeh and on the island of ʿAna (Anah) in the early 1980s.{{Cite journal|date=1983|title=Excavations in Iraq, 1981–82|journal=IRAQ|language=en|volume=45|issue=2|pages=199–224|doi=10.1017/S0021088900002424|s2cid=249896016 |issn=0021-0889}}{{Cite journal|date=1987|title=Excavations in Iraq 1985-86|journal=Iraq|volume=49|pages=231–251|issn=0021-0889|jstor=4200274|doi=10.1017/S0021088900006653|s2cid=249895688 }}

Xenophon recorded that the army of Cyrus the Younger resupplied during a campaign in 401 BC at "Charmande" near the end of a 90-parasang march between Korsote and Pylae,Xenophon, Anabasis. which likely intends Anah.{{fact|date=February 2024}}

Anatha was the site where the Roman emperor Julian first met opposition in his AD 363 expedition against the Sassanid Empire. He got possession of the place and relocated its inhabitants.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}}

File:Manarat Anah 2.jpg, Abbasid era heritage site, before its destruction.]]

In 657, during the Muslim conquest of Iraq, Ali's lieutenants Ziyad and Shureih were refused passage across the Euphrates at Anah.Tabari I. 3261. Later, in 1058, Anah was the place of exile of the caliph Qaim when al-Basasiri was in power.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}}Longrigg, p. 461. In the 14th century, Anah was the seat of the catholicos who served as primate over the Persian Christians.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}} Throughout early Islamic rule, it was a prosperous trade town, well known for its date palms and gardens; in the 14th century, Mustafi wrote of the fame of its palm groves. Medieval Arab poets celebrated Anah's wine;Yaqut, iii. 593f. Between the 14th and 17th centuries, Anah served as a headquarters for a host of regional Arab tribes.

Starting around 1535, the town served as the de facto capital of the Abu Rish bedouin emirs, whom the Ottomans appointed as governors of several {{lang|ar-Latn|sancak}}s (provinces) as well as çöl beyis or "desert emirs".{{cite book|first=Stefan|last=Winter|editor1-first=Stefan|editor1-last=Winter|editor2-first=Mafalda|editor2-last=Ade|title=Aleppo and its Hinterland in the Ottoman Period / Alep et sa province à l'époque ottomane|chapter=Alep et l'émirat du désert (çöl beyligi) au XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle|year=2019|publisher=Brill|isbn=978-90-04-37902-2|url=https://brill.com/view/title/38977}}pp. 86-108 In 1574, Leonhart Rauwolff found the town divided into two parts, the Turkish "so surrounded by the river that you cannot go into it but by boats" and the larger Arab section along one of the banks. In 1610, Texeira said Anah lay on both banks of the river, with which Pietro Della Valle agreed.Della Valle, i. 671. In that year, Della Valle found the Scot George Strachan resident at Anah, working as the physician to the emir and studying Arabic;Della Valle, i. 671–681. he also found some "sun worshippers" (actually Alawites) still living there.{{cite book|first=Stefan|last=Winter|title=A History of the 'Alawis: From Medieval Syria to the Turkish Republic|year=2016|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691173894|url=https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691173894/a-history-of-the-alawis}}pp. 24-25 Della Valle and Texeira called Anah the principal Arab town on the Euphrates, controlling a major route west from Baghdad and territory reaching Palmyra.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}}

About 1750, the Ottomans installed a rudimentary administration to run Anah and its district. After roughly a century, a more organized local government was put in place, whereby Anah became the center of a kaza belonging to the Baghdad Vilayet.

At the beginning of the 19th century, G.A. Olivier found only 25 men in service of the local prince, with residents fleeing daily to escape from bedouin attacks against which he offered no protection.{{sfnp|Olivier|1807}} He described the city as a single long street of five or six miles along a narrow strip of land between the river and a ridge of rocky hills.{{sfnp|Olivier|1807|p=451}} W. F. Ainsworth, chronicling the British Euphrates expedition, reported that in 1835 the Arabs inhabited the northwest part of the town, the Christians the center, and the Jews the southeast.{{sfnp|Ainsworth|1888}} The same year, the steamer Tigris went down in a storm just above Anah, near where Julian's force had suffered from a similar storm.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}}

By the mid-19th century, the houses were separated from one another by fruit gardens, which also filled the riverine islands near the town.{{sfnp|Baynes|1878}} The most easterly island contained a ruined castle, while the ruins of ancient Anatho extended a further two miles along the left bank.{{sfnp|Baynes|1878}} It marked the boundary between the olive (north) and date (south) growing regions in the area.{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}} With the positioning of Turkish troops in the town around 1890, the locals no longer had to pay blackmail ({{lang|ar-Latn|huwwa}}) to the bedouins.Von Oppenheim, 1893. Through the early 20th century, coarse cotton cloth was the only manufacture.{{sfnp|Baynes|1878}}{{sfnp|Hogg|1911}} In 1909 Anah had an estimated population of 15,000 and 2,000 houses.{{cite book|title=A Handbook of Mesopotamia, Volume III: Central Mesopotamia with Southern Kurdistan and the Syrian Desert|date=January 1917|publisher=Admiralty and War Office, Division of Intelligence|pages=351–352}} Most of the inhabitants were Sunni Muslim Arabs, though a small Jewish community lived on the town's southern edge.

Image:Mosque in Anah Iraq protected by USMC in August 2008.jpg

In 1918, the town was captured by British forces and by 1921, became incorporated into the Kingdom of Iraq. It remained an administrative center of a qadaa, part of the larger Ramadi-based liwa of Dulaym. Anah's qadaa also included the subdistricts of Hīt, al-Qa'im and Jubba. The townspeople's long feud with the inhabitants of Rawa was settled diplomatically by 1921. Its territory to the west was dominated by the subtribes of Anizzah, while to the east the Jarba branch of the Shammar held sway.

Most of Anah's building were located among a dense belt of date palms and was "reckoned as healthy and picturesque", according to historian S. H. Longrigg. The date palms were irrigated by water wheels. There were also more scattered dwelling in the mid-stream islands of the Euphrates near the town center. The women of the town were well known for their beauty and the weaving of cotton and wool textiles. The men, many of whom were compelled to emigrate to lack of living space, were largely engaged as boatmen and transporters of water to Baghdad. The town had relatively high educational standards, with eight schools built there by 1946.

F. R. Chesney reported about 1800 houses, two mosques, and 16 waterwheels. One minaret is particularly old. Northedge reported the locals commonly attributed it to the 11th century but opined that it was more likely from about a century after that. It rose from one of the islands and belonged to the local mosque. Dr. Muayad Said described it as an octagonal body "enhanced by alcoves, some of which are blind" and noted earlier conservation work undertaken in 1935, 1963 and 1964. When the valley was flooded by the Haditha Dam in 1984/85, the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities cut it into sections and removed it to the new Anah, where it was re-erected to a height of {{convert|28|m|sp=us}} at the end of the 1980s.

ISIS captured the town in 2014.Alissa J. Rubin (22 June 2014). [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/world/middleeast/iraq.html Sunni Militants Capture Iraq's Last Major Border Post With Syria] The New York Times On September 19, 2017, an offensive to retake the town from ISIS control began.{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41319905|title=Iraq 'attacks IS bastion on Syria border'|date=2017-09-19|work=BBC News|access-date=2017-10-17|language=en-GB}} After two days of fighting the town was recaptured by the Iraqi army.{{Cite web|url=https://isis.liveuamap.com/en/2017/21-september-iraq-the-town-of-anah-in-western-anbar-has-been|title=Iraq: the town of Anah in western Anbar has been completely cleared by the ISF, next town is Rawa, after that al-Qaim and then the border - News from war on ISIS in English from Iraq, Syria - Deir ez-Zur operation, Raqqa operation - isis.liveuamap.com|website=News from war on ISIS in English from Iraq, Syria - Deir ez-Zur operation, Raqqa operation - isis.liveuamap.com|language=en|access-date=2017-10-17}}

Anah has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWh). Most rain falls in the winter. The average annual temperature in Anah is {{convert|20.7|°C|1}}. About {{convert|127|mm|2|abbr=on}} of precipitation falls annually.

{{Weather box|width=auto

|metric first=y

|single line=y

|location = Anah

|Jan high C = 12.8

|Feb high C = 16.2

|Mar high C = 21.8

|Apr high C = 27.1

|May high C = 34.2

|Jun high C = 38.5

|Jul high C = 41.2

|Aug high C = 41.0

|Sep high C = 38.0

|Oct high C = 31.8

|Nov high C = 22.0

|Dec high C = 14.1

| year high C =

|Jan mean C = 7.6

|Feb mean C = 10.3

|Mar mean C = 15.8

|Apr mean C = 20.8

|May mean C = 27.7

|Jun mean C = 32.0

|Jul mean C = 34.0

|Aug mean C = 33.4

|Sep mean C = 29.7

|Oct mean C = 24.0

|Nov mean C = 14.8

|Dec mean C = 8.5

| year mean C =

|Jan low C = 3.9

|Feb low C = 5.4

|Mar low C = 8.1

|Apr low C = 12.6

|May low C = 18.0

|Jun low C = 21.8

|Jul low C = 24.5

|Aug low C = 23.5

|Sep low C = 19.6

|Oct low C = 14.8

|Nov low C = 7.1

|Dec low C = 3.2

| year low C =

|precipitation colour = green

|Jan precipitation mm = 19

|Feb precipitation mm = 17

|Mar precipitation mm = 20

|Apr precipitation mm = 22

|May precipitation mm = 6

|Jun precipitation mm = 0

|Jul precipitation mm = 0

|Aug precipitation mm = 0

|Sep precipitation mm = 0

|Oct precipitation mm = 5

|Nov precipitation mm = 10

|Dec precipitation mm = 23

|year precipitation mm =

| source 1 = FAO{{cite web

| url = https://www.fao.org/land-water/land/land-governance/land-resources-planning-toolbox/category/details/fr/c/1028000/

| title = World-wide Agroclimatic Data of FAO (FAOCLIM)

| publisher= Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations

| access-date = 21 December 2024}}

}}

{{reflist|group=n}}

{{Reflist|20em}}

• {{cite EB9 |mode=cs2 |wstitle=Anna |volume=2 |page=59 }}
• {{citation |last=Ainsworth |first=W.H. |title=Euphrates Expedition |date=1888 }}
• {{cite encyclopedia |mode=cs2 |title=ʿĀna|first=S. H.|last=Longrigg|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Islam |edition=New |volume=I: A–B|publisher=BRILL|location=Leiden and New York|year=1960|isbn=978-90-04-08114-7|page=461}}
• {{citation |last=Olivier |first=G.A. |title=Voyage dans l'empire ottoman |volume=III |date=1807 |language=fr}}

Attribution:

• {{EB1911 |mode=cs2 |wstitle=Anah |volume=1 |page=911 |first=Hope W. |last=Hogg}}

{{Commons category|Anah}}

{{Al Anbar cities}}

{{Districts of Iraq}}

Category:Populated places in Al Anbar Governorate

Category:Populated places on the Euphrates River

Category:District capitals of Iraq

Category:First Babylonian Empire

Category:Anat