Tigris
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About 100 km from its source, the Tigris enables rich agriculture outside Diyarbakır, Turkey
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The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.
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Geography
The Tigris is about 1,850 km long, rising in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey about 25 km southeast of the city of Elazig and circa 30 km from the headwaters of the Euphrates River. The river then flows for 400 km through Turkish territory, before becoming the border between Syria and Iraq. This stretch of 44 km is the only part of the river that is located in Syria. The remaining 1,418 km are entirely within the Iraqi borders.[1]
The Tigris unites with the Euphrates near Basra, and from this junction to the Persian Gulf the mass of moving water is known as the Shatt-al-Arab. According to Pliny and other ancient historians, the Euphrates originally had its outlet into the sea separate from that of the Tigris.[2]
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, stands on the banks of the Tigris. The port city of Basra straddles the Shatt al-Arab. In ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians. Notable Tigris-side cities included Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, while the city of Lagash was irrigated by the Tigris via a canal dug around 2400 BC. Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, is also located on the river and derives its name from it.
The Tigris has long been an important transport route in a largely desert country. It is navigable as far as Baghdad by shallow-draft vessels, but rafts are needed for transport upstream to Mosul. River trade declined in importance during the 20th century as the Basra-Baghdad-Mosul railway and roads took over much of the freight traffic.
Etymology
The original Sumerian name was Idigna or Idigina, probably from *id (i)gina "running water",[3] which can be interpreted as "the swift river", contrasted to its neighbor, the Euphrates, whose leisurely pace caused it to deposit more silt and build up a higher bed than the Tigris. This form was borrowed and gave rise to Akkadian Idiqlat. From Old Persian Tigrā, the word was adopted into Greek as Tigris ("Τίγρις" which is also Greek for "tiger").
Pahlavi tigr means "arrow", in the same family as Old Persian tigra- "pointed" (compare tigra-xauda), Modern Persian têz "sharp". However, it does not appear that this was the original name of the river, but that it (like the Semitic forms of the name) was coined as an imitation of the indigenous Sumerian name. This is similar to the Persian name of the Euphrates, Ufratu, which does have a meaning in Persian, but is still modeled after the Akkadian name Purattu.
Another name for the Tigris, used from the time of the Persian Empire, is Arvand Rud, literally Arvand River. Today the name Arvand Rud is the Persian name for the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers which in Arabic is called Shatt al-Arab.
The name of the Tigris in languages that have been important to the region:
| Language | Name for Tigris |
|---|---|
| Akkadian | Idiqlat |
| Arabic | دجلة, Dijla; حدٌاقل, Ḥudaqil |
| Aramaic | ܕܝܓܠܐܬ, Diglath |
| Armenian | Տիգրիս, Tigris |
| Greek | ἡ Τίγρης, -ητος, hē Tígrēs, -ētos; ἡ, ὁ Τίγρις, -ιδος, hē, ho Tígris, -idos |
| Hebrew | חידקל, Ḥîddeqel Biblical |
| Hurrian | Aranzah[4] |
| Kurdish | Dîcle |
| Persian | Old Persian:Tigrā; Middle Persian:Tigr; Modern Persian:دجله Dijle |
| Sumerian | Idigna/Idigina |
| Syriac | ܕܹܩܠܵܬ Deqlaṯ |
| Turkish | Dicle |
Management and water quality
The Tigris is heavily dammed in Iraq and Turkey to provide water for irrigating the arid and semi-desert regions bordering the river valley. Damming has also been important for averting floods in Iraq, to which the Tigris has historically been notoriously prone following melting of snow in the Turkish mountains around April.
Recent Turkish damming of the river has been the subject of some controversy, for both its environmental effects within Turkey and its potential to reduce the flow of water downstream. Mosul Dam, located on the Tigris, is the largest dam in Iraq.
Religion and mythology
The Tigris appears twice in the Bible. In the Book of Genesis, the Tigris is the third of the four rivers branching off the river issuing out of the Garden of Eden.[5] Daniel received one of his visions "when I was by that great river the Tigris".[6]
In Sumerian mythology, the Tigris was created by the god Enki, who ejaculated and filled the river with flowing water.[7]
In Hittite and Hurrian mythology, Aranzah (or Aranzahas in the Hittite nominative form) is the Hurrian name of the Tigris River, which was divinized. He was the son of Kumarbi and the brother of Teshub and Tašmišu, one of the three gods spat out of Kumarbi's mouth onto Mount Kanzuras. Later he colluded with Anu and the Teshub to destroy Kumarbi (The Kumarbi Cycle).
See also
- Assyria
- Cradle of civilization
- Euphrates
- Ilisu Dam Campaign campaign against a planned dam on Tigris in Turkey
- List of places in Iraq
- Mesopotamia
Notes
- ↑
- ↑ Pliny: Natural History, VI, XXVI, 128-131
- ↑ F. Delitzsch, Sumerisches Glossar, Leipzig (1914), IV, 6, 21.
- ↑ E. Laroche, Glossaire de la langue Hourrite, Paris (1980), p. 55.
- ↑ Genesis 2:14
- ↑ Daniel 10:4
- ↑ Jeremy A. Black, The Literature of Ancient Sumer, Oxford University Press 2004, ISBN 0-19-926311-6 p. 220-221