Category:Apiru

Habiru 

marginal social class throughout 2nd-millennium BCE Fertile Cresecent
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Instance of	social class social category
Inception	20th century BC
Dissolved, abolished or demolished date	14th century BC
Authority file  Q618656 Reasonator Scholia Wikidocumentaries PetScan statistics WikiMap Locator tool KML file Search depicted

Habiru or Apiru or ˁpr.w (Egyptian) was the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dated, roughly, between 1800 BC and 1100 BC) to a group of people living as nomadic invaders in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran to the borders of Egypt in Canaan. Depending on the source and epoch, these Habiru are variously described as nomadic or semi-nomadic, rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, and bowmen, servants, slaves, migrant laborers, etc.

Idrimi joined the "Hapiru people" in "Ammija in the land of Canaan", where other refugees from Aleppo recognized him as the "son of their overlord" and "gathered around him;" after living among them for seven years, he led his new friends and Habiru allies in a successful attack by sea on Alalakh, where he became king.

In the Kemetic language, Habiru would have been spelled something like hbrw, given "w" denoted plurality, and would have been pronouned with the long "u" sound. The term Habiru was used in the Amarna Letters from the West Asian kings (of city-states and territories) sent to Pharoahs Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten). The West Asian territories were under Kemetic rule, which included the city of Jerusalem (which was not Hebrew or Jewish at the time).