[5] It was known as Anathō (Ancient Greek: Άναθω)[clarification needed] to Isidore Charax and Anatha to Ammianus Marcellinus; early Arabic writers described it variously as ʾĀna or (as if plural) ʾĀnāt.

At the beginning of the 8th century BC, Šamaš-rēša-uṣur and his son Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur succeeded in creating an independent political entity, and called themselves "governors of Sūḫu and Mari".

[7] Important evidence for this period was recovered during English and Iraqi salvage excavation campaigns at Sur Jurʿeh and on the island of ʿAna (Anah) in the early 1980s.

[2][8][9] Xenophon recorded that the army of Cyrus the Younger resupplied during a campaign in 401 BC at "Charmande" near the end of a 90-parasang march between Korsote and Pylae,[10] which likely intends Anah.

[citation needed] Anatha was the site where the Roman emperor Julian first met opposition in his AD 363 expedition against the Sassanid Empire.

[14] In 1574, Leonhart Rauwolff found the town divided into two parts, the Turkish "so surrounded by the river that you cannot go into it but by boats" and the larger Arab section along one of the banks.

[17] Della Valle and Texeira called Anah the principal Arab town on the Euphrates, controlling a major route west from Baghdad and territory reaching Palmyra.

[12] After roughly a century, a more organized local government was put in place, whereby Anah became the center of a kaza belonging to the Baghdad Vilayet.

Olivier found only 25 men in service of the local prince, with residents fleeing daily to escape from bedouin attacks against which he offered no protection.

[19] W. F. Ainsworth, chronicling the British Euphrates expedition, reported that in 1835 the Arabs inhabited the northwest part of the town, the Christians the center, and the Jews the southeast.

[12] The men, many of whom were compelled to emigrate to lack of living space, were largely engaged as boatmen and transporters of water to Baghdad.

When the valley was flooded by the Haditha Dam in 1984/85, the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities cut it into sections and removed it to the new Anah, where it was re-erected to a height of 28 meters (92 ft) at the end of the 1980s.