Samʾal
former country and archaeological site in Islahiye, Gaziantep, Turkey
Zincirli Höyük is an archaeological site located in the Anti-Taurus Mountains of modern Turkey's Gaziantep Province. During its time under the control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 700 BC) it was called, by them, Sam'al. It was founded at least as far back as the Early Bronze Age and thrived between 3000 and 2000 BC, and on the highest part of the upper mound was found a walled citadel of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1600 BC).
Location
Zinjirli Höyük is located at the northern end of the Kara Su river valley. The site is situated on the western side of the valley at the base of the Amanus Mountains, and measures approximately 40 ha in area. Its location was on the overland route that connected Carchemish to the fertile Cilician plain and further on west to Anatolia.
The city was protected by a double, almost circular wall with a diameter of 720 to 800 meters. Each of the two walls, made of air-dried clay bricks, was over three meters thick with the distance between them being seven meters.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1039186. Authority coordinates are 37.104, 36.679. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000 and 1600.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samʾal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.