Qarqur ( ar, قرقور, also spelled Qarqar or Karkour) is a village in northern Syria, administratively part of the

Hama Governorate Hama Governorate ( ar, مُحافظة حماة / ALA-LC: ''Muḥāfaẓat Ḥamā'') is one of the 14 governorates of Syria. It is situated in western-central Syria, bordering Idlib and Aleppo Governorates to the south, Raqqa Governorate to t ...

, located northwest of

Hama Hama ( ar, حَمَاة ', ; syr, ܚܡܬ, ħ(ə)mɑθ, lit=fortress; Biblical Hebrew: ''Ḥamāṯ'') is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in west-central Syria. It is located north of Damascus and north of Homs. It is the provinci ...

. It is situated in the

al-Ghab plain The Ghab Plain ( ar, سَهْلُ ٱلْغَابِ, Sahl al-Ġāb, literally: Forest Plain) is a fertile depression lying mainly in the Al-Suqaylabiyah District in northwest Syria. The Orontes River, flowing north, enters the Plain near Muhradah ...

, on the eastern bank of the

Orontes River The Orontes (; from Ancient Greek , ) or Asi ( ar, العاصي, , ; tr, Asi) is a river with a length of in Western Asia that begins in Lebanon, flowing northwards through Syria before entering the Mediterranean Sea near Samandağ in Turkey. ...

. Nearby localities include

Jisr al-Shughur Jisr ash-Shughūr ( ar, جِسْرُ ٱلشُّغُورِ, jisr aš-šuġūr, , also rendered as ''Jisser ash-Shughour'' and other spellings), known in antiquity as Seleucobelus ( el, Σελευκόβηλος, translit=Seleukóbēlos), is a city in ...

6 kilometers to the north,Lipinsky, p. 264. Farikah to the northeast, Qastun to the southeast, al-Ziyarah 7 kilometers to the south, Sirmaniyah to the southwest and al-Najiyah to the northwest. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Qarqur had a population of 2,356 in the 2004 census, making it the largest locality in the al-Ziyarah sub-district (''

nahiyah A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'').General Census of Population and Housing 2004
Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Hama Governorate. Qarqur is situated one kilometer west of the archaeological site of

Tell Qarqur , alternate_name = , image = Qarquruppertell.jpg , alt = Photograph of a double, overgrown mound , caption = The upper mound of Tell Qarqur as seen from the northern, lower mound , map_type = Syria , map_alt = , map_size = , loc ...

, which is also on the eastern bank of the Orontes River.

History

Qarqur, or the nearby '' tell'' ("artificial mound"), is identified with the

Aramean The Arameans ( oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; syc, ܐܪ̈ܡܝܐ, Ārāmāyē) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people in the Near East, first recorded in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. The Aramean ...

town of ''Qarqara'' which was captured in

battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

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 As ...

n emperor

Shalmaneser III Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurnasirpal II in 859 BC to his own death in 824 BC. His long reign was a constant series of campaign ...

in 853 BCE. The town was later burned down by Assyrian emperor

Sargon II Sargon II (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "the faithful king" or "the legitimate king") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 722 BC to his death in battle in 705. Probably the son of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727), Sargon is genera ...

in 720 BCE. Archaeological findings from excavations in 1993 indicate that Tell Qarqur had been settled from the

Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

through the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

with gaps of no settlement in between. Tell Qarqur continued to be inhabited through the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantin ...

period (late 4th-6th centuries CE), early Islamic rule (7th-11th centuries), the Crusader period (12th-century), until

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty ( ar, الأيوبيون '; ) was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish origin, Saladin ...

rule (12th-13th centuries.) Coins from the Crusader and Arab and Muslim periods were discovered on the site, as well as some pieces of

Mamluk Mamluk ( ar, مملوك, mamlūk (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural), translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave", also transliterated as ''Mameluke'', ''mamluq'', ''mamluke'', ''mameluk'', ''mameluke'', ''mamaluke'', or ''marmeluke'') i ...

-era pottery. Muslim rule continued in the modern settlement of Qarqur on the eastern bank of the Orontes.

Modern era

In 1953 the Syrian government commenced what was known as the "Ghab Project" to drain the waters of the

in order to sufficiently distribute water from the Orontes River to the various communities of the area. Of the infrastructural works included in the project,De Miranda, p. 267. was the construction of a dam at Qarqur between 1963-1965. The Qarqur Dam blocks the Orontes on one side, while it supplies water to the other side when necessary. However, it lacks an artificial basin. When the nearby Zeyzoun Dam collapsed, mass flooding resulted in hundreds of homes being damaged and destroyed in Qarqur, al-Ziyarah, Zaizoun and Qastun.Syria calls for urgent disaster aid after 10 killed in dam burst
. '' Agence France-Presse''. 2002-06-05.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Hama Governorate, suqaylabiyah Populated places in al-Suqaylabiyah District Populated places in al-Ghab Plain