HABOR (hd'hor), (Heb. khaw-bore', join ing together).
1. A country of Media. to which portions of the ten tribes were transported, first by Tig lath-pileser (t Chron. v:26), and afterward by Shalmancser (2 Kings xvii :6, xviii:if ). ft is thought by some to be the same mountainous re gion between Media and Assyria, which Ptolemy ( Geog. vi:1) calls Chaboras (XaPpas.) This notion has the name, and nothing but the name. in its favor. Habor was by the river Gozan, and as we accept Major Rennell's conclusions that Gozan was the present Kizzil-Ozan (sec GozAt4), we are bound to follow him in fixing the posi tion of Habor at the town of Abhar. which is sit natecl on a branch of that river and has the repu tation of being vcry ancient. At this place Mr.
Morier found ruins composed of large sun-dried bricks compacted with straw, like some of those found at Babylon. As this kind of construction is an infallible sign of remote antiquity, it so far af fords a most important corroboration of Major Rennell's conjecture.
2. A river. There seems to be good ground for making the river the modern Khabour, which empties into the Euphrates (Rawlinson, Ancient Monarch. i :247). The name of the Hab'or is found in the Assyrian inscriptions.
"Tiglath-pileser I (B. C. about rt2o) boasts of having killed ten mighty elephants in the land of Haran and 'on the banks of the Habor.' Assur nazir-apli (B. C. 885-86o) crossed the Tigris, con quered the district of the Harmis (or Har-rit or Harsit), then marched to the Euphrates after sub jugating the district around the mouth of the Habor (plate sa Habur), 'the mouths of the river Habor,' from which it would seem that the river flowed into the Euphrates through several outlets" (I. A. Pinches, Hastings' Bib. Diet.).