An ancient city of northern Mesopotamia mentioned in Hittite, Old Testament, and Assyrian texts, now a village in southeastern Turkey. The town was located on the road that ran from Nineveh to Carchemish. It is frequently mentioned in the Bible; Abraham's family settled there when they left Ur of the Chaldeans. It was the scene of a disastrous defeat of the Roman governor Crassus by the Parthians (53 BC) and of a later defeat of the emperor Galerius by the Persian king Narses (297 AD).