The Khazir River ( ar, الخازر) is a river of northern

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

, a tributary of the

Great Zab The Great Zab or Upper Zab ( (''al-Zāb al-Kabīr''), or , , ''(zāba ʻalya)'') is an approximately long river flowing through Turkey and Iraq. It rises in Turkey near Lake Van and joins the Tigris in Iraq south of Mosul. The drainage basin o ...

river, joining its right bank.

Geomorphology

The area around the Khazir River is geologically active and crosses three

anticline In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the ...

s from the north to the south and this has greatly affected the course of the river. The river has a catchment of 2,900 km. The net yearly recharge rate of the valley water table is 111.6 mm/year and the region is considered to be fertile.

History

At a site called

M'lefaat M'lefaat is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in Upper Mesopotamia that was occupied during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. History of research The site was first excavated by Robert Braidwood in 1954 as part of their larger project o ...

evidence has been found of a small village of

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

s dating to the 10th millennium BC that was contemporary with the

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to years ago, that is, 10,000–8,800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and Up ...

in the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

. Latter the river was part of an irrigation area that supported the

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

n city of

Nimrud Nimrud (; syr, ܢܢܡܪܕ ar, النمرود) is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, south of the city of Mosul, and south of the village of Selamiyah ( ar, السلامية), in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a majo ...

. Known to the

Hellenistic Greeks Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of the country following Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek Achaean League heartlands by the Roman Republic. This culminated ...

as the Boumelus River the river was site of a battle between

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, wikt:Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Maced ...

and Darius of Persia. In August 686 AD, the river was a site of a battle between the armies of

Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar Ibrahim ibn Malik al-Ashtar ibn al-Harith al-Nakha'i (; died October 691), better known as Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar ( ar, إبراهيم بن الأشتر, Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ashtar) was an Arab commander who fought in the service of Caliph Ali (r. 656 ...

and

Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ziyād ( ar, عبيد الله بن زياد, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ziyād) was the Umayyad governor of Basra, Kufa and Khurasan during the reigns of caliphs Mu'awiya I and Yazid I, and the leading general of the Umayyad army unde ...

, during the revolt of

Mukhtar al-Thaqafi Al-Mukhtar ibn Abi Ubayd al-Thaqafi ( ar, المختار بن أبي عبيد الثقفي, '; – 3 April 687) was a pro-Alid revolutionary based in Kufa, who led a rebellion against the Umayyad Caliphate in 685 and ruled over most of Iraq f ...

. On 25 January 750, the

Battle of the Zab The Battle of the Zab ( ar, معركة الزاب), also referred to in scholarly contexts as Battle of the Great Zāb River, took place on January 25, 750, on the banks of the Great Zab River in what is now the modern country of Iraq. It spel ...

was fought nearby. In 2014, following bombing by United States planes,

ISIL An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...

forces retreated back to the Khazir River, where ISIL destroyed bridges built by the Americans 10 years prior.COALITION EFFORTS AID IRAQ'S RECOVERY
3 May 2003.

References

{{coord, 36.1703, 43.5412, type:river_region:IQ, format=dms, display=title Rivers of Iraq Rivers of Kurdistan Tributaries of the Tigris River Geography of Iraqi Kurdistan