Battle of Qarqar (853 BC): Shalmaneser III Against a Coalition

The Battle of Qarqar was fought in 853 BC near the Orontes River in north-western Syria between the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III and a coalition of a dozen kings from Syria and the Levant. Among them was Ahab of Israel, whose name appears in the Assyrian account of the battle. Shalmaneser claimed a crushing victory, but the coalition held, and the battle is now seen as an early example of smaller states uniting to stop a rising empire.

Background: Assyria moves west

In the 9th century BC Assyria, based in northern Mesopotamia, was expanding again after a long period of weakness. Ashurnasirpal II had rebuilt Assyrian power and made Kalhu (Nimrud) his capital, as described in Ashurnasirpal II and the Northwest Palace at Nimrud. His son Shalmaneser III, who reigned from 859 to 824 BC, pushed further west, seeking tribute, timber, metals and control of the trade routes of Syria.

The lands west of the Euphrates were divided among many small kingdoms. The most powerful were Aram-Damascus in southern Syria and Hamath on the middle Orontes. Further south lay the kingdom of Israel, then ruled by Ahab of the Omride dynasty, as well as Phoenician port cities on the coast. These states often fought one another; Israel and Damascus, in particular, were frequent rivals, which makes their alliance against Assyria all the more striking.

The coalition

Faced with Assyrian expansion, these rival kingdoms formed an alliance. Its leaders were Hadadezer of Damascus (in Assyrian, Adad-idri) and Irhuleni of Hamath. According to the Kurkh Monolith, the coalition’s forces included:

The text speaks of “twelve kings”, although fewer are named. Several readings are disputed. Ahab’s 2,000 chariots, more than any other ally, has puzzled historians; some think it is a scribal error, while others accept it as evidence of Israel’s real military strength under the Omrides. The mention of Gindibu’s camel riders is the earliest known reference to Arabs in written history.

The battle

The campaign took place in Shalmaneser’s sixth regnal year. The Assyrian army left Nineveh, crossed the Euphrates while it was in flood and passed through Aleppo, where the king made offerings to the storm god Hadad. It then entered the territory of Hamath, captured several towns and burned Qarqar, a royal city of Irhuleni.

The coalition army met the Assyrians near Qarqar. The site is usually identified with Tell Qarqur, near the Orontes in the modern Idlib region of Syria. Shalmaneser’s inscription claims he killed 14,000 enemy soldiers, filled the plain with their bodies and blocked the Orontes with corpses. Later Assyrian accounts raise the figure to 20,500, then 25,000 and finally 29,000, a pattern historians see as royal exaggeration.

Armies and warfare

Both sides fought with the typical forces of the early Iron Age Near East. Chariots, light two-wheeled vehicles pulled by horses and carrying a driver and an archer, were the elite striking arm and the most expensive part of any army. Cavalry was still a fairly new arm. Assyrian reliefs of this period show riders working in pairs, one controlling both horses while the other shot his bow.

Most soldiers were infantry: spearmen, archers and slingers raised from the population or provided by vassals. The Kurkh Monolith does not state the size of Shalmaneser’s own army, but it was probably comparable in scale to the coalition’s, and Assyria could draw on a large network of provinces and subject states.

Key people

• Shalmaneser III (reigned 859–824 BC): Son of Ashurnasirpal II, who campaigned in most years of his 35-year reign. His annals describe campaigns in about 31 of his regnal years, many of them aimed at Syria and the Levant.
• Hadadezer of Damascus: Leader of the coalition. Some scholars link him with a king called Ben-Hadad in the books of Kings, but this identification is debated.
• Irhuleni of Hamath: Co-leader of the alliance, whose territory bore the brunt of the Assyrian attack.
• Ahab of Israel: King of the northern kingdom of Israel in the mid-9th century BC. The Bible portrays him critically for tolerating the worship of Baal, and says he died fighting the Arameans at Ramoth-Gilead, probably soon after Qarqar.
• Gindibu the Arab: A chief who brought 1,000 camel riders, the first Arab named in a historical text.

Who really won?

Assyrian royal inscriptions never admit defeat, and Shalmaneser described Qarqar as a great triumph. Yet after the battle he turned back without taking Hamath or Damascus. He had to fight the same coalition again in 849, 848 and 845 BC, the last time with an army he numbered at 120,000 men, without breaking it.

For this reason most historians regard Qarqar as indecisive at best for Assyria, and as a successful defensive action by the allies. The coalition broke apart only after about 842 BC, when Hazael seized the throne of Damascus and the alliance dissolved. In 841 BC Shalmaneser was able to besiege Damascus and receive tribute from several kings, including Jehu of Israel, a scene shown on the Black Obelisk.

The Kurkh Monolith

The main source for the battle is the Kurkh Monolith, a stone stele carved with an image of Shalmaneser III and a long inscription describing his campaigns up to 853 BC. It was found in 1861 by John George Taylor, the British consul at Diyarbakir, at the village of Kurkh near the Tigris in south-eastern Turkey, and is now in the British Museum.

The monolith is significant because it names “Ahab the Israelite” as a member of the coalition. This is one of the earliest datable references to a king of Israel outside the Hebrew Bible, a few decades before the Mesha Stele. Strikingly, the Bible itself does not mention the battle at all.

Dating the battle

The year 853 BC is unusually secure for such an ancient event. Assyria named each year after an official called the eponym, and the surviving eponym lists record a solar eclipse that astronomers date to 15 June 763 BC. Counting back through the lists fixes Shalmaneser’s sixth year, and so the Battle of Qarqar, to 853 BC.

Because the Kurkh Monolith names Ahab, and the Black Obelisk names Jehu in 841 BC, these two inscriptions also help scholars date the kings of Israel and Judah described in the books of Kings.

Timeline

• 859 BC: Shalmaneser III becomes king of Assyria.
• 853 BC: Battle of Qarqar against the coalition led by Damascus and Hamath.
• 849, 848 and 845 BC: Further Assyrian campaigns against the same coalition.
• c. 842 BC: Hazael takes power in Damascus; the alliance collapses.
• 841 BC: Shalmaneser receives tribute from Jehu of Israel and other kings.
• 824 BC: Death of Shalmaneser III.
• 1861: The Kurkh Monolith is found near Diyarbakir.

Why it matters

Qarqar is one of the best-documented battles of the early Iron Age and one of the largest recorded up to its time. It shows rival kingdoms of the Levant uniting, briefly but effectively, against an imperial power. Through the Kurkh Monolith it also provides a rare fixed point linking Assyrian history with the history of ancient Israel.