Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. After the Arab Islamic conquest of the mid-7th century AD the region has been known by the traditional Arabic name of al-Jazira ( "the island"), also transliterated "Djazirah", "Djezirah", "Jazirah" & the Syriac (Aramaic) variant "Gāzartā" or "Gozarto" (). The Euphrates and Tigris rivers transform Mesopotamia into almost an island, as they are joined together at the Shatt al-Arab in the Basra Governorate of Iraq, and their sources in eastern Turkey are
Mesopotamia used throughout the Greek Septuagint (c. 250 BC) to translate the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent "Naharaim". An even earlier Greek usage of the name "Mesopotamia" is evident from "The Anabasis of Alexander", which was written in the late 2nd century AD, but specifically refers to sources from the time of Alexander the Great. In the "Anabasis", Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria. The Aramaic term "biritum/birit narim" corresponded to a similar geographical concept. Later, the term Mesopotamia was more generally applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, thereby