Hīt

Hit stands beside the Euphrates at the edge of the western Iraqi desert, in a district famed for its bitumen springs. The dark substance was used from ancient times to waterproof boats and in building, and gave the town a valuable resource besides the produce of its riverbank. Palm groves and irrigated fields surround the settlement, while the river provides a passage between the upper Euphrates and the cultivated plains downstream.

In the fourteenth century the geographer Hamdallah Mustawfi described Hit as a small town with many villages dependent upon it. Its gardens produced dates, oranges, lemons and other fruit, though he remarked upon the smell of the bitumen springs. The contrast between cultivated riverbanks and the barren land beyond them was already a conspicuous feature of this stretch of the Euphrates.