, the name of two left-bank tributaries of the Tigris [see did̲j̲la ] in northern ʿIrāḳ, both of them rising in the Zagros mountain chain in Kurdistān.
1. The Great or Upper Zāb ( al-Zāb al-akbar or al-aʿlā ) was already known to the Assyrians, as Zabu ēlū “the upper Zāb”, and appears in classical Greek as Λύκος (cf. PW, xiii, cols. 2391-2), Byzantine Greek as ὁ μέγας Ζάβας, in Syriac as Zāb̲ā and in later Armenian as Zav . In Kurdish it is known today as the Zēʾ-i Bādinān and in Turkish as Zap J. Markwart discussed possible etymologies and suggested a link with older Aramaic dēb̲ā , also in Syriac, …