Near East Kingdoms

Samanum (Amorite State of Ubrabu) (Northern Mesopotamia)

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The city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture.

It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent, a period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, initially in the form of pastoralists but soon as farmers too.

Sumer was soon divided into approximately a dozen independent city states which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. Many smaller cities also emerged in two broad waves, in the mid-third millennium BC and at the start of the second millennium BC. At the same time, northern Mesopotamia experienced its own burgeoning development processes, largely starting under the Hassuna culture.

These processes took longer here than they did in the south, also including the south-eastern corner of modern Turkey and the eastern wedge of modern Syria as part of ancient Mesopotamia. An urban lifestyle only really appeared in the third millennium BC, thanks in part to imposed influences from Sumerian empire-building periods.

One of the early second millennium BC cities to arise was Samanum. It was the centre of a small Amorite state known as Ubrabu which was part of the Yaminite tribal confederation. It briefly flourished between about 1850 BC and its conquest by Hammurabi's Babylon in the 1760s BC. It is highly likely that this is the same location as Šimānum, although a modern archaeological site for that city is yet to be pinned down.

The tribal world of pastoralist groups in ancient Syria and northern Mesopotamia was in general made up of two distinct confederacies: the Yaminites whose selected pastures were located in the middle Euphrates and lands in the west, and the Sim'alites, who preferred the Habur river valleys, the steppe on each side, and the land of Ida-Maras (in the upper Habur).

Five tribes are said to have formed the Yaminite confederacy: the Uprapû (or Ubrabu), Yahrurû, Amnanû, Yarihû, and Rabbû (or Rabbum), each one with a supreme individual leader. In contrast the Sim'alites seem not to have exhibited the same level of organisation, since the Mari texts depict them as numerous clans which had divided into two groups, with no single ruler attested. Those texts were written some time after events, so even that little detail must be treated with caution.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and Evolution of Sumerian kingship (Ancient World Magazine), and Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (Published between 2003-2021, part of the Babylonian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology), and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, and About the matum in Early Second Millennium Middle Euphrates Region: the Royal Inscriptions of Yahdun-Lım, Diego A Barreyra Fracaroli (Claroscuro, Year 18, No 18, Vol 2, December 2019, pp 1-23, available via Academia.edu).)

c.1897 BC

Although records are sketchy and imprecise, the small Amorite kingdom of Babylon seems to emerge approximately a century after the collapse of Sumer.

Babylon began life as a modest town which had been seized from Kazallu, but was quickly fortified by the building of a city wall in the nineteenth century BC

By now, many cities in northern Mesopotamia and Syria are under Amorite control, with each local ruler being associated with a city, such as Tuttul, and a land or territory which bears a tribal (and state) name, such as Amnanum, and this evidently refers to the ruler's less sedentary Amorite subject peoples.

This practice is prevalent down to the smallest tribal 'kingdoms' such as Yaminite Samanum and Abattum in the middle Euphrates, near Terqa. Neither of these tribal states are well-attested in the historical record.

c.1800? BC

Yahdun-Lim of Mari sends troops to join those of Yamkhad to fight against several hostile Syrian 'states', including Tuttul, defeating their armies and attacking their towns.

This tablet from eighteenth century BC Mari contains records of food supplies, with the symbol of a human head with a triangular object in front of it being the verb 'to eat' in later Sumerian

The other states which are allied to Tuttul and are defeated alongside it include the city of Samanum and the land of Ubrabu, and the city of Abattum and the land of Rabbum (all are Yaminite towns and regions which are located close by Terqa, under Mari's overall control, and headed by little more than tribal organisations).

Yahdun-Lim claims to destroy their ramparts and turn their cities into ruin mounds. Given the fact that Shamshi-Adad's kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia soon conquers Mari and replaces its ruler, this would seem to be an attempt to fight back against him which ultimately fails.

Shamshi-Adad's soldiers, who had proven to be so successful in forming a short-lived but powerful regional empire to the east of the Euphrates which is generally known as the kingdom of 'Upper Mesopotamia', are shown in this Assyrian relief

fl c.1800? BC

Amorite king of the city of Samanum & the land of Ubrabu.

c.1770s BC

Bahdi-Lim, an official of the court of Zimri-Lim of Mari in the city of Tuttul, records the arrival of Dagan's entry into the city, accompanied by two persons.

One of these is a Yaminite chief called Dadi-hadun (assuming the Rabbeans to be the people of the land of Rabbum), and the other, Sumu-laba, may also be a chief (of the Uprapeans, assuming them to the the people of the land of Ubrabu).

fl c.1770s? BC

Amorite chief (possibly) of the clan of the Uprapeans?

c.1760s BC

The city state of Babylon suddenly expands under Hammurabi to conquer huge swathes of southern, central, and northern Mesopotamia, including many of the states mentioned above.

While southern Mesopotamia flourished during the third millennium BC, it took longer for the same effect to be felt in northern Mesopotamia, with the first larger cities and city states only really emerging towards the end of the millennium (click or tap on map to view full sized)