Around 1761 BCE Hammurabi of Babylon turned on Zimri-Lim of Mari, who had fought alongside him against Larsa only two years earlier, and took Mari, ending the Lim dynasty; Hammurabi's year names celebrate the defeat of Mari's army and the subjugation of 'Mari and its villages'. Zimri-Lim disappears from the record and his fate is unknown. Babylonian officials occupied the city for months and stripped the Great Royal Palace, removing the texts they considered important, and after an apparent revolt around 1759 BCE the palace was set on fire and the city razed; the collapse of its roof and walls sealed and baked the thousands of cuneiform tablets that excavators recovered from 1935 onwards. The evidence is Hammurabi's own year names and two inscriptions, the archaeology of Tell Hariri, and the absence of later texts from the palace; none of these records casualties, captives or deportations from Mari. Mari never recovered its importance and persisted only as a minor settlement until it disappears from the record in the Hellenistic period.
Hammurabi of Babylon defeated his former ally Zimri-Lim, annexed the kingdom of Mari on the middle Euphrates and, after a revolt, had the palace pillaged and the city destroyed
Estimates of Mari's size refer to its earlier third-millennium phase, for which a peak of about 40,000 is sometimes cited; no comparable figure exists for the city or kingdom under Zimri-Lim, and no deportee or casualty count exists to set against one, so any percentage would be invented.
No death toll can be given. Hammurabi's year names claim a battlefield defeat of Mari's army but give no figures, it is unclear whether the city itself resisted, and neither the texts nor the excavation of Tell Hariri provide evidence of mass killing in the destruction.
The Babylonian pillage and burning of Mari's royal palace and the razing of the city are documented by Dominique Charpin (Collège de France), World History Encyclopedia and the Wikipedia articles on Mari and Zimri-Lim, drawing on Hammurabi's year names and the excavation of Tell Hariri.
Syria