Aà ¡à ¡ur-rabi II, inscribed <sup>m</sup>aà ¡-à ¡ur-<small>RA</small>-bi, "(the god) Aà ¡à ¡ur is great," was king of Assyria 1012âÂÂ972 BC. Despite his lengthy reign (41 years), one of the longest of the Assyrian monarchs, his tenure seems to have been an unhappy one judging by the scanty and laconic references to his setbacks from later sources.
He was a younger son of the earlier Assyrian monarch, Aà ¡à ¡urnaá¹£irpal I. He succeeded his nephew Aà ¡à ¡ur-nerari IV's brief six year rule, and if this succession was like earlier usurpations by uncles of their nephews, it would have been a violent affair. The Assyrian Kinglist records his accession and genealogy but provides no further information. His construction of the Bit-nathi, part of the temple of Ià ¡tar in Nineveh, was recalled in a dedicatory cone of Aà ¡à ¡ur-nÃÂá¹£ir-apli II (883âÂÂ859 BC) commemorating his own repair work.
Some Assyrian settlements on the Middle Euphrates were lost to the Arameans as they were able to cross the river and establish a network of autonomous but interrelated settlements that began to encroach on the Assyrian heartland. à  ulmÃÂnu-aà ¡arÃÂdu III recalled the loss of Ana-Aà ¡à ¡ur-utÃÂr-aá¹£bat (Pitru, possibly Tell Aushariye) and Mutkinu, two towns close to Til Barsip, which had originally been taken and colonized by Tiglath Pileser II around a hundred or so years earlier; in one of his inscriptions: "At the time of Aà ¡à ¡ur-rabi (II), king of Assyria, the king of Aram (Syria) took [two cities] by forceâÂÂI restored these cities. I installed the Assyrians in their midst." The king of Aram (à ¡ar<sub>4</sub> <small>KUR</small>-a-ru-mu) is unlikely to have been Hadadezer of Zobah, in southern Syria, but a northern Aram, in or near Ḫanigalbat. His authority continued to stretch as far west as the Khabur river in northeast Syria as recorded on the cylinder of Bel-ereà ¡, a à ¡angû or governor of à  adikanni, somewhat contradicting the picture of Assyrian retreat and decline painted elsewhere.
His era must have stretched from the reigns of his Babylonian contemporaries, Simbar-à  ipak (1025âÂÂ1008 BC) to Nabû-mukin-apli (978âÂÂ943 BC), although there is no extant contemporary proof of contact which might help fix this chronology more precisely. The Synchronistic Kinglist gives his contemporary as à  irikti-à ¡uqamuna, a king of Babylonia who reigned just 3 months c. 985 BC. Severe distress and famine was recorded under Kaà ¡à ¡u-nÃÂdin-aḫi (c. 1006âÂÂ1004 BC), the midpoint in Aà ¡à ¡ur-rabi's reign, and this possibly points to the underlying cause of the Aramean migration.
He was followed on the throne by his son, the equally obscure Aà ¡à ¡ur-reà ¡i-ià ¡à ¡i II, who ruled for five years.