al-Jārūd was a small city in the
Wadi Hamar
Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water on ...
area, about 40 km east of the
Balikh River in present-day
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
, inhabited during the 9th century.
It is identified with Kharāb Sayyār, a ruin site covering 42
hectares and consisting of a square-shaped town surrounded by a system of walls and ditches.
At its peak during the mid-9th century, al-Jarud was a minor regional center in the middle of "a flourishing agricultural landscape" on the fertile Wadi Hamar, with at least 60 contemporary settlements identified within a 13 km radius.
History
Excavator Jan-Waalke Meyer originally proposed that occupation at the site began during the
Umayyad period, perhaps in the 730s or 740s,
but has since revised her chronology of the site to exclude an Umayyad and early
Abbasid phase at al-Jarud.
In any case, according to Stefan Heidemann, al-Jarud was only built "to any significant extent" in the middle of the 9th century.
At this point, the Abbasid capital was in
Samarra
Samarra ( ar, سَامَرَّاء, ') is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Saladin Governorate, north of Baghdad. The city of Samarra was founded by Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutasim for his Turkish professional army ...
, and the demand for agricultural produce was at its peak.
The latest dated evidence found at al-Jarud is a coin fragment dated to the reign of
al-Mu'tadid, between the years 892 and 902, and it was probably abandoned not too long after that.
Layout
The general layout of al-Jarud is almost identical to that of the nearby towns of
Hisn Maslama and
Tall Mahra Tall Maḥrā was a small city of the central Balikh River valley, in what is now northern Syria, inhabited from the Hellenistic period until about the 13th century. It is identified with the 21-hectare tell now called Tall Shaykh Hasan, also roma ...
.
Like them, al-Jarud was surrounded by square city walls, 650x650 m in length and embellished with projecting half-towers.
The towers served basically zero defensive purpose and were probably instead built as "symbols of urban pride and wealth in
small rural town".
Inside the walls, near the southeastern corner of al-Jarud, there was a large multi-roomed building with stucco decoration that possibly belonged to members of the economic elite.
A geomagnetic survey revealed a large rectangular building with a large courtyard near the town's northwest corner; this building was probably a
mosque.
Excavation in the northeastern area uncovered a "series of abutting houses with courts, bathrooms, wells, cisterns, and nicely decorated walls".
There was a
bathhouse with multicolored walls, which later got turned into a workshop, as well as two large cisterns connected to a canal that flowed through the town's northern gate.
Outside the walls, there was a structure that may have been a
khan
Khan may refer to:
*Khan (inn), from Persian, a caravanserai or resting-place for a travelling caravan
*Khan (surname), including a list of people with the name
*Khan (title), a royal title for a ruler in Mongol and Turkic languages and used by ...
, possibly indicating that al-Jarud was a trade center of some sort.
See also
*
Hisn Maslama
*
Tall Mahra Tall Maḥrā was a small city of the central Balikh River valley, in what is now northern Syria, inhabited from the Hellenistic period until about the 13th century. It is identified with the 21-hectare tell now called Tall Shaykh Hasan, also roma ...
*
Bajarwan (Syria)
Bājarwān was a small town or village in the Balikh River valley inhabited during the early Islamic period, located between Raqqa and Tall Mahra. It is attested in textual sources until the 10th century and probably peaked during the early Abbasi ...
*
Bajadda Bājaddā was a small town in the Balikh River valley inhabited during the early Islamic period. It is identified with the present-day Khirbat al-Anbār, located a few kilometers south of the contemporary town of Hisn Maslama. The site measures 800x ...
References
External links
Kharab Sayyar's entryfrom the
Museum with No Frontiers website
{{coord, 36, 35, 0, N, 39, 35, 0, E, display=title, region:SY_type:city
Former populated places in Syria
Syria under the Abbasid Caliphate
Medieval Upper Mesopotamia
Archaeological sites in al-Hasakah Governorate