El-‘Iraq

a Pleiades place resource

Creators: S.T. Parker

Contributors: R. Talbert, Sean Gillies, Tom Elliott, Jeffrey Becker

Last modified May 21, 2025 11:42 PM — History

At modern El-‘Iraq in Jordan's Karak region, archaeologists have identified Byzantine pottery, architecture (including a church), and inscriptions. They argue, based on the archaeology and on the relative placement of other contemporary settlements on the Madaba map, that this site should be identified as ancient Tharais.

Show place in Google Earth.

Show area in GeoNames, Google Maps, or OpenStreetMap.

Canonical URI for this page:
https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/699913

Representative Point (Latitude, Longitude):
31.091385, 35.634276

Locations:

Representative Locations:
- Imagery Location of ancient site west of Al Iraq (AD 1 - AD 1200) accuracy: +/- 5 meters.

Names:

Geographic Names:
- Less than certain: Θαραίς (Tharais: Ancient Greek, AD 300 - AD 640)
Associated Modern Names:
- العراق (Al Iraq: Arabic, AD 2000 - AD 2099)

El-‘Iraq makes connections with:

None

El-‘Iraq receives connections from:

None

Place type:
settlement, archaeological site

References:

See Further:

Initial Provenance:
Barrington Atlas: BAtlas 71 Tharais

Details:

The Barrington Atlas Directory notes: E Dead Sea

Alternate representations:
Atom, JSON, KML, RDF+XML, Turtle

Suggested citation:
S.T. Parker, R. Talbert, Sean Gillies, Tom Elliott, and Jeffrey Becker, 'El-‘Iraq: a Pleiades place resource', Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places, 2025 <https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/699913> [accessed: 10 February 2026]

Cite this resource in Wikipedia:

            {{cite web |url=https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/699913 |title=Places: 699913 (El-‘Iraq) |author=Parker, S. |accessdate=February 10, 2026 10:39 pm |publisher=Pleiades}}