Tell Ajaja (Shadikanni)

Tell Ajaja is a mound on the lower Khabur, south of Hasakah. Its ancient name was Shadikanni. It was one of Assyria’s provincial cities along the Khabur and the city of the god Samnuha, generally thought to be of Hurrian origin. In the Roman period it was called Horaba. The site was heavily looted during the war, and there is no recent source describing what is left on the mound today.

Where it is

More than 30 kilometres south of Hasakah as the crow flies, on the lower Khabur in the Shaddadi district; the nearest village is Ajaja Sharqiya. The sources place the site more than 100 metres apart, so this page carries no map.

Shadikanni and the god Samnuha

Bel-Eresh, ruler of Shadikanni, was a contemporary of the Assyrian king Ashur-resh-ishi I. He restored the temple of the city god Samnuha and the temple of a goddess whose name is read as Kubaba or Guba(ba). His inscribed cylinder is debated as evidence against the view that Assyria had withdrawn from the region at the time. Under Tukulti-Ninurta I the city was an Assyrian province. In an inscription of Ashurnasirpal II, Samnuha appears as the personal god of the provincial governor Mushezib-Ninurta, whose father, Samanuha-shar-ilani, had also been a ruler of Shadikanni. Personal names show that Samnuha was still worshipped as late as the Achaemenid Persian period.

Horaba: Rome’s mounted archers

In the Roman period the city was known as Horaba. The ala prima nova Diocletiana, a unit of local mounted archers, was stationed between Horaba and Thannuris to the north, today’s Tell Tuneinir. The two sites were part of the same frontier line along the Khabur.

Excavation and destruction

A team led by Asad Mahmoud excavated the site in 1982-1990, with the German archaeologist Hartmut Kühne taking part. In May 2014 ISIS smashed a 3000-year-old Neo-Assyrian statue that had come from the site. The statue is gone. Later reports say that more than 40 per cent of the site’s antiquities were looted.

The site today

Control of the area changed in early 2026, and we could not confirm current access. We found no source that knows what remains on the mound after the looting, or whether there is a guard. If you are thinking of going, ask first in Hasakah or Shaddadi; the ground on a mound riddled with looters’ pits is not safe.