Anciently the country on both sides of the Euphrates was habitable as far as the river Khabur; at the present time it is all desert from Birejik downward, the camping ground of Bedouin Arabs, the great tribe of Anazeh occupying esh-Sham, the right bank, and the Shammar the left bank, Mesopotamia of the Romans, now called elJezireh or the island.
Here the roads from Damascus, by way of Palmyra, and from Mosul, by way of the Khabur, reach the Euphrates, and here there must always have been a town of considerable commercial and strategic importance.
Hirmas) flows south through the land of Gozan in which Sargon settled the deported Israelites in 721 B.C. At the mouth of the Khabur stood the Roman frontier fortress of Circesium (Assyrian, Sirki; Arab.
As far as the Khabur Mesopotamia seems to have been a wellinhabited country from at least the 15th century B.C., when it constituted the Hittite kingdom of Mitanni, down to about the 12th century A.D., and the same is true of the country on the Syrian side of the Euphrates as far as the eastern limit of the Palmyrene.
In view of historical and geographical facts there is much to be said for applying the name Mesopotamia to the country drained by the Khabur, the Belikh, and the part of the Euphrates connected therewith.