[21] Birejik and the Tell Aḥmar passage (whatever may have been its ancient name) and Thapsacus do not exhaust the number of recorded routes, for Chosroes, in his first expedition against Justinian, crossed at Obbanes, somewhere about the modern Meskeneh, and on his third expedition he built a bridge of boats near Europus, which is perhaps the modern Jerâblus. (Mr. Hogarth doubts the accepted identification of Jerâblus with Europus: _Annals of Arch. and Anthrop._, Vol. II. p. 169.) During the Mohammedan period other points are mentioned. Ibn Khurdâdhbeh, writing in the ninth century, makes the road from Aleppo to Babylon cross at Bâlis, the ancient Barbalissos (ed. de Goeje, p. 74), but Iṣṭakhrî, a hundred years later, says that Bâlis, though it was once the Syrian port on the Euphrates, had fallen into decay since the days of Seif ed Dauleh, and was little used by merchants (ed. de Goeje, p. 62). In the twelfth century, and perhaps earlier, its place had been taken by Ḳal’at en Nejm, where Nûr ed Dîn, who died in 1145, built a great fortress, famous during the wars against the Crusaders. The bridge there was called Jisr Manbij (“the bridge of Manbij”), but it cannot have been constructed by Nûr ed Dîn, for Ibn Jubeir, writing about the year 1185 a description of his journey from Ḥarrân (Carrhae) to Manbij, says that he “crossed the river in small boats, lying ready, to a new castle called Ḳal’at en Nejm” (Gibb Memorial edition, p. 248). In Yâḳût’s day (circa 1225) the caravans from Ḥarrân to Syria always crossed here. [22] Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk. XXIII. ch. ii. 6. [23] _The Buildings of Justinian_ (Palest. Pilgrims’ Text Society), p. 66. [24] A few of these may have preserved a certain importance in a later age: Tell el Ghânah, directly to the east of Tell Aḥmar, has been conjectured to be Thilaticomum (possibly incorrectly: Regling, _Beiträge zur alten Geschichte_, 1902, Vol. I. p. 474) and Tell Bada’ah to be Aniana, the first being mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary and the second by Ptolemy. [25] Mr. Hogarth (at whose request I visited Tell Aḥmar) has published the carved slabs and the stela in the _Annals of Archæology and Anthropology_, Vol. II. No. 4. He saw them when he was at Tell Aḥmar in 1908. [26] Jerâblus or Jerâbîs, the names are used indiscriminately. The former is thought by Nöldeke to be an Arabic plural of Jirbâs (mentioned by Yâḳût as opposite Ḳinnesrin, Dictionary, Vol. II. p. 688) and the latter as Arabicized from Europus. [27] The inscription is given by Pognon: _Inscriptions de la Mésopotamie_, p. 17. The tomb was visited by Oppenheim, and is mentioned by him in _Tell Halaf_ (1st number, 10th year of Der alte Orient), and in his _Griechische und lateinische Inschriften_. (_Byzantinische Zeitschrift_, 1905, p. 7.)