| Yarim-Lim I | |
| Great King of Yamhad | |
| Reign: | . Middle chronology |
| Predecessor: | Sumu-Epuh |
| Successor: | Hammurabi I |
| Succession1: | Great King of Yamhad |
| Spouse: | Gashera |
| Spouse-Type: | Wife |
| Consort: | yes |
| Issue: | Hammurabi I Shibtu |
| Father: | Sumu-Epuh |
| Mother: | Sumunna-Abi |
Yarim-Lim I, also given as Yarimlim, (reigned) was the second king of the ancient Amorite kingdom of Yamhad in modern-day Aleppo, Syria.
Yarim-Lim was the son and successor of the first king Sumu-Epuh and his queen Sumunna-Abi.
His wife was Gashera, of unknown parents. She outlived her husband and became a strong-willed widow who was part of politics during the reign of Hammurabi.
Their daughter Shibtu married Zimri-Lim of Mari.
The kingdom of Yamhad was being threatened by the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I who had surrounded Yamhad through his alliance with Carchemish and Urshu to the north, Qatna to the south, and conquering Mari to the east, appointing his son Yasmah-Adad on its throne.[1] Yarim-Lim ascended the throne after his father was killed in 1780 BC during his campaigns against Shamshi-Adad.[2] He was able to stand up to Shamshi-Adad by surrounding him with deft alliances with Hammurabi of Babylon and Ibal-pi-el II of Eshnunna. His alliance with Hammurabi was credited with saving Babylon from an Assyrian attack by attacking their rear.[3]
In 1777 BC, Yarim-Lim conquered the city of Tuttul, on the confluence of the rivers Balikh and Euphrates. He appointed his ally, Zimri-Lim, the heir to the throne of Mari who was living in exile at his court, as king. When Shamshi-Adad died in 1776 BC, he helped Zimrilim regain his throne in Mari and oust Yasmah-Adad. The alliance between Mari and Yamhad was cemented with the royal marriage between Zimrilim and Yarim-Lim's daughter Shibtu. Two days after the marriage ceremony queen Sumunna-Abi died.[4]
Ibal-pi-el II of Eshnuna exploited the death of Shamshi-Adad to pursuit an expansionist policy, advancing on the account of Assyria and causing stress to the alliance.[5] He later allied himself with Elam, the enemy of Hammurabi who was Yarim-Lim's ally.[6]
Zimri-Lim's ascension to the throne with the help of Yarim-Lim I affected the status of Mari, Zimri-Lim referred to Yarim-Lim as his father and acted under the guidance of the Yamhadite main deity Hadad, of which Yarim-Lim was the mediator.[7]
The tablets of Mari recorded many events that revealed Zimri-Lim's subordination. On two occasions Zimri-Lim demanded the extradition of his subordinates from Yarim-Lim I. The first case was related to a vassal king of Zimri-Lim who addressed him as a brother instead of a father and the demand was refused,[8] while the second was through the Mariote ambassador in Aleppo Daris-Libur in which Zimri-Lim asked for some fugitives to which Yarim-Lim answered with decline twice before agreeing on the Mariote ambassador's third attempt.[9]
At one instance Nur-Sin the Mariote ambassador in Aleppo wrote to his master for the handing of an estate called Alahtum to Hadad (meaning Aleppo),[10] and in another instance, Ibal-pi-el offered peace and fixing the borders to Zimri-Lim who sent envoys to Yarim-Lim asking for authorization which was not given, leading Zimri-Lim to refuse the treaty on three occasions.[11]
Yarim-Lim extended his influence to several other important city-states in Syria through alliance and vassalage, including Urshu and the rich kingdom of Ugarit.[3] The relationship between Qatna and Yamhad seems to have improved during Yarim-Lim's reign as well.[2] The armies of Aleppo campaigned as far as Elam near the modern southern Iraqi-Iranian borders: a tablet discovered at Mari revealed the extent of those military interventions in Mesopotamia; the tablet includes a declaration of war against Dēr and Diniktum in retaliation for their evil deeds, a reminder to the king of Dēr about the military help given to him for fifteen years by Yarim-Lim and the stationing of 500 Aleppan warships for twelve years in Diniktum.[12] By the time of his death, Yarim-Lim, had more than twenty kings as vassals and allies. According to Historian William J. Hamblin he was at the time the "mightiest ruler in the Near East outside of Egypt,"[3] He died c. 1764 BC and was succeeded by his son Hammurabi I.
. William J. Hamblin. Warfare in Ancient Near East. Taylor & Francis. 2002. 9780415255882.
. Trevor R. Bryce . The Routledge Handbook of The People and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the fall of the Persian Empire. 2009 . Routledge . 978-0415394857.
. Stephanie Dalley. Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities. Gorgias Press LLC. 2002. 9781931956024.