volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

4
The Plain of Nineveh.
a comparatively small city. But outside the walls large
vegetable gardens must have extended in all directions,
and the whole region round about must have been filled
with villages of various sizes, and if all these were regarded
by ancient writers as parts of Nineveh, it is easy to understand
their statements. In fact, Jonah, Strabo and others
confused the suburbs of Nineveh with the city of Nineveh.
The region on the east bank of the Tigris, which may
properly be regarded as the greater Nineveh, was well
defined by Felix Jones in 1852.' It is the plain, a
somewhat irregular parallelogram in shape, 25 miles by
15 miles in extent, lying between the river Khusur, which
falls into the Tigris just opposite Mosul, and the Upper
Zab, which flows into the Tigris in latitude 35° 59' N.
On this " highly arable plain " are most of the Assyrian
sites with which we are acquainted. It has a gradual
inclination westward from Jabal Maklub and the hill of
'Ain as-Safra, and is protected by these and the Gomel
river on the north-east and east, and by the Zab and the
Tigris on the west, south, and south-east, and by the
Khusur stream on the north and north-west. The whole
of this plain is capable of tillage, and it has always afforded
abundant pasture for flocks and herds at most seasons of
the year. It is crossed by many watercourses, the dews
which fall upon it are frequent and heavy, and in the
winter it receives heavy rain and snow.
One of the most fertile parts of this plain lies near the
junction of the Khusur stream^ (which flowed through the
city of Nineveh) with the Tigris. Here the primitive
inhabitants or conquerors of Assyria, who do not seem to
have been Semites, established on the east bank of the
Tigris, close to the river, a frontier market and trade
centre. Exactly why they settled there cannot be said,
but whatever was their reason for doing so, it was sufficiently
important and permanent to make their descendants
build city after city on the same site for three
thousand years at least. Both Arab and Persian
' Notes on the Topography of Nineveh {Records of Bombay Govern-
ment, No. XLIII), p. 404 f£.
' In Assyrian {ndru) Khu-zu-ur yj jQt >-y^ *SrlT IfcJ-