Khabur south of
|- elevation||350 m (1,148 ft)|
|Length||486 km (302 mi)|
|Basin||37,081 km2 (14,317 sq mi)|
|- average||45 m3/s (1,589 cu ft/s)|
|- max||57 m3/s (2,013 cu ft/s)|
|- min||2 m3/s (71 cu ft/s)|
The Khabur River (
1 Geography 1.1 Tributaries
2 History 3 Modern Khabur River Valley 4 References
The course of the Khabur can be divided in two distinct zones: the Upper Khabur area or Khabur Triangle north of Al-Hasakah, and the Middle and Lower Khabur between Al-Hasakah and Busayrah.
The tributaries to the Khabur are listed from east to west. Most of these
Wadi Radd Wadi Khnezir Wadi Jarrah Jaghjagh River Wadi Khanzir Wadi Avedji
The Khabur river is sometimes identified with the Chebar, the setting of several important scenes of the book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible, including the opening verse: "Now it came about in the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was by the river Chebar among the exiles, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God". (New American Standard Bible). Ezekiel references this river seven more times: 1,3; 3:15, 23; 10:15, 20; and 43:3. Those who challenge the identification assert that the Khabur is too far north to be associated with the Chebar. Instead, their likely candidate is the Shatt el-Nil, a silted up canal toward the east of Babylon, which may be the ka-ba-ru waterway mentioned among the 5th century BCE Murushu archives from Nippur.
The river is also mentioned in 1 Chronicles 5:26: "Tiglath Pileser...took the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh into exile. He took them to Halah, Habor (Khabur), Hara and the River Gozan, where they are to this day. (NIV). The identification of the Khabur with the Habor is not contested.
During the second phase of the Armenian Genocide in the spring and summer of 1916 the Khabur River in the Der Zor district was the site of the worst massacres of Armenians.
Since the 1930s, numerous archaeological excavations and
Modern Khabur River Valley[
The Khabur River Project, begun in the 1960s, involved the construction of a series of
] ^Hole F, Zaitchik, BF (2007). "Policies, plans, practice, and prospects: irrigation in northeastern Syria". Land Degradation & Development 18 (2): 133–152. doi: 10.1002/ldr.772. ^Burdon, DJ, Safadi, C (1963). "Ras-el-Ain: the great karstic spring of Mesopotamia. An hydrogeological study". Journal of Hydrology 1: 58–95. doi: 10.1016/0022-1694(63)90033-7. ^Thompson, Henry O. (1992). "Chebar," in ABD. Vol 1: Doubleday. p. 893. ISBN 0-385-19351-3. ^Nishiaki, Y. (1992). "Preliminary results of the prehistoric survey in the Khabur Basin, Syria: 1990–91 seasons". Paléorient 18 (1): 97–102. doi: 10.3406/paleo.1992.4566. Retrieved 7 July 2010. ^Mutin, Georges (2003). "Le Tigre et l'Euphrate de la discorde". VertigO (in French) 4 (3): 1–10. doi: 10.4000/vertigo.3869. Retrieved 18 December 2009.