According to Abulfeda and some other writers, it is mainly, if not wholly, artificial, owing its origin to a dam or embankment across the stream, which is from four to five hundred yards in length, and about twelve or fourteen feet high.

In Abulfeda's time the construction of the embankment was ascribed to Alexander the Great, and the lake consequently was not regarded as having had any existence in Babylonian times; but traditions of this kind are little to be trusted, and it is quite possible that the work above mentioned, constructed apparently with a view to irrigation, may really belong to a very much earlier age.
Finally, in Northern Syria, 115 miles north of the Bahr-el-Kades, and about 60 miles N.W.W.of the Bahr-el-Melak, is the Bahr-el-Abyad (White Lake), or Sea of Antioch.

[PLATE.

VIII., Fig.

1.] This sheet of water is a parallelogram, the angles of which face the cardinal points: in its greater diameter it extends somewhat more than ten miles, while it is about seven miles across.