One expedition led him to the mountain group of Nizir, at the end of the chain known to the people of Lullumê as the Kinipa.* He there reduced to ruins seven towns whose inhabitants had barricaded themselves in urgent haste, collected the few herds of cattle he could find, and driving them back to the camp, set out afresh towards a part of Nizir as yet unsubdued by any conqueror. The stronghold of Larbusa fell before the battering-ram, to be followed shortly by the capture of Bara. Thereupon the chiefs of Zamua, convinced of their helplessness, purchased the king’s departure by presents of horses, gold, silver, and corn.** Nurrammân alone remained impregnable in his retreat at Nishpi, and an attempt to oust him resulted solely in the surrender of the fortress of Birutu.*** The campaign, far from having been decisive, had to be continued during the winter in another direction where revolts had taken place,—in Khudun, in Kissirtu, and in the fief of Arashtua,**** all three of which extended over the upper valleys of the lesser Zab, the Radanu, the Turnat, and their affluents.
* Mount Kinipa is a part of Nizir, the Khalkhalân-dagh, if
we may-judge from the direction of the Assyrian campaign.
** None of these places can be identified with certainty.
The gist of the account leads us to gather that Bara was
situated to the east of Dagara, and formed its frontier; we
shall not be far wrong in looking for all these districts in
the fastnesses of the Kara-dagh, in the caza of
Suleimaniyeh. Mount Nishpi is perhaps the Segirmc-dagh of
the present day.
*** The Assyrian compiler appears to have made use of two
slightly differing accounts of this campaign; he has twice
repeated the same facts without noticing his mistake.
**** The fief of Arashtua, situated beyond the Turnat, is
probably the district of Suleimaniyeh; it is, indeed, at
this place only that the upper course of the Turnat is
sufficiently near to that of the Radanu to make the marches
of Assur-nazir-pal in the direction indicated by the
Assyrian scribe possible. According to the account of the
Annals, it seems to me that we must seek for Khudun and
Kissirtu to the south of the fief of Arashtua, in the modern
cazas of Gulanbar or Shehrizôr.
The king once more set out from Kakzi, crossed the Zab and the Eadanu, through the gorges of Babiti, and halting on the ridges of Mount Simaki, peremptorily demanded tribute from Dagara.* This was, however, merely a ruse to deceive the enemy, for taking one evening the lightest of his chariots and the best of his horsemen, he galloped all night without drawing rein, crossed the Turnat at dawn, and pushing straight forward, arrived in the afternoon of the same day before the walls of Ammali, in the very heart of the fief of Arashtua.** The town vainly attempted a defence; the whole population was reduced to slavery or dispersed in the forests, the ramparts were demolished, and the houses reduced to ashes. Khudun with twenty, and Kissirtu with ten of its villages, Bara, Kirtiara, Dur-Lullumê, and Bunisa, offered no further resistance, and the invading host halted within sight of the defiles of Khashmar.***
* The Annals of Assur-nazir-pal go on to mention that
Mount Simaki extended as far as the Turnat, and that it was
close to Mount Azira. This passage, when compared with that
in which the opening of the campaign is described, obliges
us to recognise in Mounts Simaki and Azira two parts of the
Shehrizôr chain, parallel to the Seguirmé-dagh. The fortress
of Mizu, mentioned in the first of these two texts, may
perhaps be the present Gurân-kaleh.
** Hommel thinks that Ammali is perhaps the present
Suleimaniyeh; it is, at all events, on this side that we
must look for its site.
*** I do not know whether we may trace the name of the
ancient Mount Khashmar-Khashmir in the present Azmir-dagh;
it is at its feet, probably in the valley of Suleimanabad,
that we ought to place the passes of Khashmar.
One kinglet, however, Amika of Zamru, showed no intention of capitulating. Entrenched behind a screen of forests and frowning mountain ridges, he fearlessly awaited the attack. The only access to the remote villages over which he ruled, was by a few rough roads hemmed in between steep cliffs and beds of torrents; difficult and dangerous at ordinary times, they were blocked in war by temporary barricades, and dominated at every turn by some fortress perched at a dizzy height above them. After his return to the camp, where his soldiers were allowed a short respite, Assur-nazir-pal set out against Zamru, though he was careful not to approach it directly and attack it at its most formidable points. Between two peaks of the Lara and Bidirgi ranges he discovered a path which had been deemed impracticable for horses, or even for heavily armed men. By this route, the king, unsuspected by the enemy, made his way through the mountains, and descended so unexpectedly upon Zamru, that Amika had barely time to make his escape, abandoning everything in his alarm—palace, treasures, harem, and even his chariot.* A body of Assyrians pursued him hotly beyond the fords of the Lallu, chasing him as far as Mount Itini; then, retracing their steps to headquarters, they at once set out on a fresh track, crossed the Idir, and proceeded to lay waste the plains of Ilaniu and Suâni.**
* This raid, which started from the same point as the
preceding one, ran eastwards in an opposite direction and
ended at Mount Itini. Leaving the fief of Arashtua in the
neighbourhood of Suleimaniyeh, Assur-nazir-pal crossed the
chain of the Azmir-dagh near Pir-Omar and Gudrun, where we
must place Mounts Lara and Bidirgi, and emerged upon Zamru;
the only-places which appear to correspond to Zamru in that
region are Kandishin and Suleimanabad. Hence the Lallu is
the river which runs by Kandishin and Suleimanabad, and
Itini the mountain which separates this river from the
Tchami-Kizildjik.
** I think we may recognise the ancient name of Ilaniu in
that of Alan, now borne by a district on the Turkish and
Persian frontier, situated between Kunekd ji-dagh and the
town of Serdesht. The expedition, coming from the fief of
Arashtua, must have marched northwards: the Idir in this
case must be the Tchami-Kizildjik, and Mount Sabua the chain
of mountains above Serdesht.
Despairing of taking Amika prisoner, Assur-nazir-pal allowed him to lie hidden among the brushwood of Mount Sabua, while he himself called a halt at Parsindu,* and set to work to organise the fruits of his conquest.
* Parsindu, mentioned between Mount Ilaniu and the town of
Zamru, ought to lie somewhere in the valley of Tchami-
Kizildjik, near Murana.
He placed garrisons in the principal towns—-at Parsindu, Zamru, and at Arakdi in Lullumê, which one of his predecessors had re-named Tukulti-Ashshur-azbat,* —“I have taken the help of Assur.” He next imposed on the surrounding country an annual tribute of gold, silver, lead, copper, dyed stuffs, oxen, sheep, and wine. Envoys from neighbouring kings poured in—from Khudun; Khubushkia, and Gilzân, and the whole of Northern Zamua bowed “before the splendour of his arms;” it now needed only a few raids resolutely directed against Mounts Azîra and Simaki, as far as the Turn at, to achieve the final pacification of the South. While in this neighbourhood, his attention was directed to the old town of Atlîla,** built by Sibir,*** an ancient king of Karduniash, but which had been half ruined by the barbarians. He re-named it Dur-Assur, “the fortress of Assur,” and built himself within it a palace and storehouses, in which he accumulated large quantities of corn, making the town the strongest bulwark of his power on the Cossæan border.
*The approximate site of Arakdi is indicated in the
itinerary of Assur-nazir-pal itself; the king comes from
Zamru in the neighbourhood of Sulei-manabad, crosses Mount
Lara, which is the northern part of the Azmir-dagh, and
arrives at Arakdi, possibly somewhere in Surtash. In the
course of the preceding campaign, after having laid waste
Bara, he set out from this same town (Arakdi) to subdue
Nishpi, all of which bears out the position I have
indicated. The present town of Baziân would answer fairly
well for the site of a place destined to protect the
Assyrian frontier on this side.
** Given its position on the Chaldæan frontier, Atlîla is
probably to be identified with the Kerkuk of the present
day.
*** Hommel is inclined to believe that Sibir was the
immediate predecessor of Nabubaliddin, who reigned at
Babylon at the same time as Assur-nazir-pal at Nineveh;
consequently he would be a contemporary of Rammân-nirâri
III. and of Tukulti-ninip II. Peiser and Rost have
identified him with Simmash-shikhu.