Tiglath-Pileser died in B.C. 727, and was succeeded by Shalmaneser IV. The refusal of Hosea to continue the annual tribute brought the new Assyrian monarch into the west. Tyre was besieged unsuccessfully, Hosea carried away captive, and Samaria blockaded for three years. During the blockade Shalmaneser died, and the crown was seized by one of the Assyrian generals. The latter assumed the name of Sargon, in memory of the famous Babylonian monarch who had reigned so many centuries before. The capture of Samaria took place in his first year (B.C. 722); 27,280 of its inhabitants were sent into exile, but only fifty chariots were found in the city. An Assyrian governor was appointed over it, who was commissioned to send each year to Nineveh the same tribute as that paid by Hosea. The comparatively small number of Israelites who were carried into captivity shows that Sargon contented himself with removing only those persons and their families who had taken part in the revolt against him; in fact, Samaria was treated pretty much as Jerusalem was by Nebuchadrezzar in the time of Jehoiachin. The greater part of the old population was allowed to remain in its native land. This fact disposes of the modern theories which assume that the whole of the Ten Tribes were carried away. The districts to which the captives were taken were Halah, the banks of the Habor, or river of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes. Halah was not far from Haran in Mesopotamia, on the western side of the Habor, the modern Khabur, which flows into the Euphrates, and rises in the country called Guzana, or Gozan, in the Assyrian inscriptions. The Medes were the tribes who lived eastward of Kurdistan, which, like Mesopotamia, had been overrun by Tiglath-Pileser. The places of the captive Israelites were not supplied immediately. We learn from the Old Testament that it was from Hamath and the cities of Babylonia that the new inhabitants were brought. Now Hamath was not conquered by Sargon until B.C. 720, and Babylonia not until B.C. 710. Hamath had broken into revolt under Yahu-bihdi or Ilu-bihdi, who induced Arpad, Damascus, and Samaria to follow its example. But its chastisement was speedy and sharp. Sargon captured Ilu-bihdi in the city of Aroer, and flayed him alive; while Hamath received a colony of 4,300 Assyrians and an Assyrian governor. Samaria was next punished, and Sargon then marched southward against the combined forces of Khanun of Gaza and Sabako or So of Egypt. A battle at Raphia decided the fate of the struggle, and Khanun fell into the hands of his enemies.