Jebel Bishri

Jebel Bishri is a broad mountain ridge immediately west of the Euphrates, running from north-west of Deir ez-Zor south-west towards Palmyra. It sits on the border of the Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Homs governorates and forms part of the Palmyrene mountain belt. Akkadian sources call it “the mountain of the Amorites”, and traces of settlement found along it span half a million years. But the first thing this record has to say is this: the area cannot be recommended for travel today.

Can you go now

No, not for now. The ridge was held by ISIS until 2017. Armed attacks were recorded in the area after that too, two of them in April 2022 and March 2024. This is unmarked ground deep in the steppe, far from any settlement. The record is written to describe the place; it gives no directions while the security situation stays as it is.

Where the mountain is

Arabic sources place the ridge 55 kilometres west of Deir ez-Zor, while its eastern foothills reach the city itself. Together with the Palmyrene mountains it divides two steppes: the Rusafa steppe to the north and the Syrian steppe, the badiya of al-Sham, to the south. The ridge fills the whole gap between Rusafa on the Raqqa side and Palmyra.

The mountain of the Amorites

The cuneiform texts of Mesopotamia link the ridge with the Amorites. In Akkadian records its name appears as “ba-sa-ar” or “bi-si-ir”. It is thought to be the homeland of the Amorites, nomads who for a time dominated central and southern Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC, and their god Bishir took his name from the mountain.

What was found

The University of Helsinki’s SYGIS project, led by Minna Lönnqvist, surveyed the ridge between 2000 and 2004 using NASA X-SAR radar data. The sites it recorded span half a million years. Between 2007 and 2010 a joint Syrian-Japanese mission dug test pits at Rujm al-Haddaja and Bir Rahum and surveyed Early Bronze Age graves at Ghanem al-Ali. At Bir Rahum the traces go back to the Neolithic, to 8000 BC.

What not to miss

The story of the mountain’s replanting. ACSAD, the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, ran a project against desertification on the ridge from 1994 to 2006. Studies in 1995 identified rain-fed dry farming as the main cause, and that farming was banned the same year. On the slopes of the wadis the project replanted Atlas pistachio (Pistacia atlantica) and wild almond, the trees that once formed woodland here.

The ridge has an underground side too: in 2007 a natural asphalt reserve estimated at 50 to 60 million tonnes was found here.