Tell Mohammed Diyab

Tell Mohammed Diyab is a broad mound south-east of Qamishli, about 12 kilometres south of Qahtaniyah. The whole site covers some 50 hectares, the main hill 12 hectares. A French team worked here from 1987, and one of its members, Dominique Charpin, counts the town among those of the land of Apum named in the archives of Mari, the Bronze Age palace city on the Euphrates. What a visitor sees is mudbrick and earth; the mound’s story is in the excavation reports. Whether it can be visited today could not be confirmed.

Where it is

In the east of the Khabur triangle, 7 kilometres south-east of Tell Leilan, which was Shubat-Enlil, the capital of Apum. Beside the mound is the village of Mohammed Diyab, which shares its name; administratively it lies in the Qahtaniyah subdistrict of Qamishli district. No second, independent source for its position could be found, so this page carries no map.

Who dug it

Excavation began in 1987 under Jean-Marie Durand; the team included Louis Bachelot, Corinne Castel, Dominique Charpin and Martin Sauvage. From 2005 the dig was directed by Christophe Nicolle, and the last published season is autumn 2010. Bertille Lyonnet’s surface survey shows the busiest periods: the 3rd millennium BC, the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, and the Seleucid-Parthian period. In the latest phase settlement moved down to the foot of hills A and B, leaving what may have been a fortress and pits on the hilltops.

What the excavation found

On hill A a residential quarter and a double mudbrick wall were exposed from the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, the period archaeologists call Old Jazira II. In what was probably the religious quarter of the same hill a sequence of temples was found: the first temple was built, enlarged, abandoned for a while, rebuilt as several temples, and finally left for good. In the Khabur period four separate settlement cores formed on the site (Nicolle, 2014).

In the Middle Assyrian level, from the 13th and 12th centuries BC, cremation jars holding the ashes of the dead and ordinary burials were found side by side in a domestic setting. They are among the earliest known cremations in Upper Mesopotamia (Sauvage, 2005). There are also publications on mudbrick vaulting, a drainage network, a 3rd-millennium tomb and the grave of an Amorite-period warrior.

Don’t miss

What an Old Assyrian cylinder seal suggests. In 1990 Corinne Castel used it to argue that the town was a stop on the road of Assyrian merchants travelling to Cappadocia. It is a small but concrete trace of caravan trade between Anatolia and Assyria crossing this plain; the seal is not on the mound, but the road ran past here.

Where it stands now

Not confirmed. There is no source from the past year specific to the mound. The last published excavation season was in 2010, and the present state of the open trenches is unknown. According to the Arabic Wikipedia entry on the village, control of the surrounding village changed in January 2026. No dated report of looting or unexploded ordnance specific to the mound was found; that does not mean there is no risk. This page is not a recommendation to visit.