'Āna

Anah lies on the middle Euphrates, where islands break the river's course through the desert. The ancient and medieval town occupied an island known as Qal'at Ana, a defensible position that had served as a frontier stronghold under successive empires. In Islamic times Anah became a caravan town and a centre of Bedouin power, commanding a route between Iraq and the lands to the west.

From around 1535 the town was the effective seat of the Abu Rish emirs, whom the Ottomans employed as governors and desert rulers. The traveller Leonhart Rauwolff found Anah divided in 1574: one part was surrounded by water and reached by boat, while a larger Arab settlement stretched along the bank. By the seventeenth century the island town had given way to a village and palm gardens, and the main settlement stood on the right bank. Travellers still counted Anah a leading Arab town on the Euphrates, with influence extending towards Palmyra.