Calah

Calah appears in the Table of Nations as one of the cities founded in Assyria after the dispersion at Babel. It belongs to a cluster of four cities credited to a single builder who went out from Shinar into Assyrian territory.

A City of Assyria

The notice falls in the Hamite genealogy and traces the origin of Assyrian urbanization to a movement out of Shinar: "Out of that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (the same is the great city)" (Gen 10:11-12). Calah is paired with Nineveh as a fixed point in the geography of Assyria — Resen is located by reference to it, and the parenthetical "the same is the great city" attaches to the four-city complex as a whole.