QARQAR. The place of a battle between the Assyrian army of Shalmaneser III (858-823) and a coalition of states from Syria and Palestine. Qarqar has not yet been identified with certainty but was located in the Orontes Valley in Syria. The importance of this battle is not limited to its outcome—the coalition managed temporarily to stop the Assyrian advance to the west—but the date of the battle has been linked to a solar eclipse that happened that year. This coincidence has made the battle a sort of pivotal point in the establishment of ancient Near Eastern chronology of the early first millennium B.C.E.