Mosul - Etymology

Etymology

The name of the city is first mentioned by Xenophon in 401 BC in his expeditionary logs. There, he notes a small town of "Mepsila" (Μέπσιλα) on the Tigris at about where modern Mosul is today (Anabasis, III.iv.10). It may be safer to identify Xenophone's Mepsila with the site of Iski Mosul, or "Old Mosul", 20 miles north of modern Mosul, where six centuries after Xenophon's report, the Sasanian Persian center of Budh-Ardhashīr was built. Be as it may, the name Mepsila per se, however, is doubtlessly the root for the modern name, albeit, in its metathetic form of Mosul.

Nineveh gave its place to Mepsila after its violent fall to the Babylonians, Medes and Scythians in 612 BC. In fact, Xenophon makes no mention of it in his expedition of 401 BC (during the reign of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty in this region), although he does note Mepsila.

In its current Islamic form and spelling, the term Mosul, or rather "Mawsil" stands for the "linking point" – or loosely, the Junction City, in Arabic. Mosul should not be confused with the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh which is located across the Tigris from Mosul on the eastern banks, at the famed archaeological mound of Kuyunjik (Turkoman for "sheep's hill"). This area is better known today as the town of Nebi Yunus ("prophet Jonah"). The site contain the tomb of the Biblical Jonah as he lived and died in Nineveh, then the capital of ancient Assyria. Today, this entire area has been absorbed into Mosul metropolitan area. The surviving Assyrians, refer to entire city of Mosul as Nineveh (or rather, Ninweh).

It is also named al-Faiha ("the Paradise"), al-Khaḍrah ("the Green") and al-Hadbah ("the Humped"). It is sometimes described as "The Pearl of the North".