Note 179 — Chapter VIII · ZÂKHÔ TO DIYÂRBEKR May 10—June 4

It has been identified with the Bezabde of Ammianus Marcellinus, the Saphe of Ptolemy (ed. Müller, p. 1005), and the Sapha of the Peutinger Tables. Ammianus Marcellinus is generally supposed to have confused Bezabde-Jezîreh with Phœnice-Finik, saying that the two names are applied to the same place. In his account of the capture of Bezabde by Sapor II, in A.D. 360, his description applies better to Finik than to Jezîreh (Bk. XX. ch. vii. 1. See, however, Hartmann: Bohtân, Part II. p. 98). He relates further that Constantius attempted in vain to re-capture Bezabde (Bk. XX. ch. xi.), but in this passage he must mean Jezîreh. I can find little in the history of Jezîreh except the mention of sieges: by Tîmûr for example (Ritter, Vol. IX. p. 709), and by the emirs of Bohtân (Rich: op. cit., Vol. I. p. 106). When Moltke visited it in 1838 it was a heap of ruins (Briefe aus der Turkei, Berlin, 1893, p. 251), and it was not much more when I saw it.