EUPHRATES, yu-fr@'tiz: The greatest river of
western Asia, mentioned in
Gen. i. 14
as one of
the four rivers of Eden. Thereafter it finds fre
quent mention, either by name or by epithet, in
the Old Testament. It is sometimes called simply
"the river"
(Gen. xxxi. 21),
and even "river,"
without the article
(Isa. vii. 20,
Heb. text).
The Euphrates is formed by the union of two
small streams at about lat. 39° n. and long. 39° e.
in the Armenian Mountains. The
larger of these
two streams, the Kara Sir or western Euphrates,
rises on the Domli Dagh, northeast of
Its Course. Erzerum. The other, the Mural Su
or Eastern Euphrates, a charming
mountain stream, rises on the Ala Dagh, not far
from Lake Van. At their junction above Keben
Maden they form a noble river 120 yards wide. At
no point in its long course is the river finer than
here. From this point the river flows south for a
short distance, and then bends in a great westerly
course around the Musher Dagh, and pierces the
Taurus range with many sharp bends. At this
part of its course the Euphrates seems destined to
discharge its waters into the Mediterranean at the
Gulf of Alexandretta, but the way is blocked by
the Amanals and the Lebanon, and the river as
sumes a southeasterly course which is maintained
to the Persian Gulf. It is this lower course which
is the historic river, known to all the great peoples
of Western Asia.
The tributaries of the Euphrates, after the union
of the Kara Sir and the Mural Su are few. The
most important are the Sajur (Assyrian
Satigura
or
Sagura)
which enters from the west about lat.
36° 40'; the Belik (Assyrian
Balikhu),
from the
east and north in long. 39° 9'; and, most important
of all, the Khabur (Assyrian
Haburu)
entering
from the northeast in lat. 35° T, long.
Tributaries 40° 30'. From the Khabur to its
and Size. mouth, a distance of 800 miles, the
Euphrates receives no tributary, and
in the lower part of its course shows a marked
tendency to split up into different channels. When
it receives the Khabur it is 400 yards wide and
eighteen feet deep. From that point it begins to
diminish in volume. At Irzah or Werdi, seventyfive miles lower down, it is 350 yards wide and of
the same depth; at Hadiaeh, 140 miles belo^'
Werdi, it is 300 yards wide and of the same depth;
at Hit, fifty miles below Hadiseh, its width has increased to 350 yards, but its depth has been diminished to sixteen feet; at Felujiah, seventy-five
miles from Hit, the depth is twenty feet, but the
width has diminished to 250 yards. From this
point the contraction is rapid and striking. The
Saklowijeh Canal is given out upon the left, and
some way farther down the Hindiyeh branches off
upon the right, each carrying, when the Euphrates
is full, a large body of water. The consequence is
that at Hillah, ninety miles below Felujiah, the
stream is no more than 200 yards wide and fifteen
feet deep; and at Lamlun, eighty-five miles lower
down, it is reduced to 120 yards wide with a depth
of no more than twelve feet. Some of the channels which take water out of the river afterward
return to it again, but it never again attains its
earlier greatness. The channel from Kurnah to
El Khitr was found by Colonel Chesney to have
"an average width of only 200 yards, and a depth
of about eighteen or nineteen feet, which implies a
body of water far inferior
to that carried between
the junction of the Khabur and Hit."
The Euphrates, and also the Tigris, has a flood
season exactly as the Nile has. This fact is perfectly clear and indisputable, though Herodotus
directly asserts the contrary. The
inundation is
indeed
not so great as that of the Nile, but it is
regular and extensive. The river beInundation. gins to swell very slowly about the
beginning of March, and gradually
increases until the highest point is reached about
the end of May, when the waters stand about thirteen feet above low water. At this point the river
remains for
about a month, sinks slightly toward
the middle of July, and then more rapidly till September. At the junction of the Khabur the river is
described as "spreading over the surrounding
country like a sea." The slow and regular rise of
the river made it exceedingly valuable for irrigation, of which the Babylonian people fully availed
themselves. Along the banks were constructed
brick walls provided with breakwaters to divert
and control the swift current at its rise. Sluice
gates controlled the rise so that the eastern bank
received an inundation equal to the west, while
canals almost innumerable diverted the retreating
waters, and prevented the overflow from damaging the cultivable area. Furthermore, the water
was retained in sufficient quantity to supply an
irrigation system, far back from the river, after the
fall of the river. This entire system is now a vast
ruin. The river rises and falls as it uills, and
sweeping far over the western bank, turns the
country into a desolate morass. The harm of this
is both positive and negative. It makes impossible any such great ingathering of grain as was
usual when this great valley was the world's granary, and it fills the land with a dangerous miasma.
The Euphrates and the Tigris originally reached
the Persian Gulf by separate estuaries, but they
now unite and form the Shatt-al-Arab. It is be-
lieved that the Persian Gulf once extended 150
or perhaps even 200 miles farther north than at
present, and the formation of alluvial land
continues at the rate of about a mile in seventy years.
The whole course of the river is about 1,780
miles, and it is navigable for small vessels for about
1,200 miles. It has been well said that the "upper
region of the Euphrates resembles that of the
Rhine, while its middle course may be compared
with that of the Danube, and its lower with the
Nile."
See
Assyria, II., §2;
Babylonia, II., §§1-2.
Robert W. Rogers.
Bibliography:
F. R. Chesney, Expedition for the Survey
of the . . . Euphrates, London, 1850 (the best); W. K.
Loftus, Chaldea and Susiana, ib. 1857; A. H. Layard,
Nineveh and Babylon, chaps. xxi.-xxii., ib. 1867; G.
Rawlinson, Herodotus, Essay ix., London, 1875; F. Delitzsch,
We lag das Paradies? pp. 169-170, Leipsic, 1881;
Schrader, KAT, pp. 26-28, 122, 148, 239, 359, 528; DB, i.
794; ED, ii. 1427-29.
