1.
Capital city
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A capital city is the municipality exercising primary status in a country, state, province, or other region, usually as its seat of government. A capital is typically a city that encompasses the offices and meeting places of its respective government. In some jurisdictions, including countries, the different branches of government are located in different settlements. In some cases, a distinction is made between the capital and the seat of government, which is in another place. The word capital derives from the Latin caput, meaning head, in several English-speaking states, the terms county town, county seat, and borough seat are also used in lower subdivisions. In unitary states, subnational capitals are known as administrative centres. The capital is often, but not necessarily, the largest city of its constituent, historically, the major economic centre of a state or region often becomes the focal point of political power, and becomes a capital through conquest or federation. Examples are Ancient Babylon, Abbasid Baghdad, Ancient Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Changan, Ancient Cusco, Madrid, Paris, London, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Vienna, and Berlin. Some of these cities are or were also religious centres, e. g. Constantinople, Rome, Jerusalem, Ancient Babylon, Moscow, Belgrade, Paris, and Peking. A capital city that is also the economic, cultural. The convergence of political and economic or cultural power is by no means universal, traditional capitals may be economically eclipsed by provincial rivals, e. g. Nanking by Shanghai, Quebec City by Montreal, and numerous US state capitals. The decline of a dynasty or culture could also mean the extinction of its city, as occurred at Babylon. Although many capitals are defined by constitution or legislation, many long-time capitals have no legal designation as such, for example Bern, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London, Paris, are located in or near them. In Canada, there is a capital, while the ten provinces. The states of such countries as Mexico, Brazil, and Australia all have capital cities, for example, the six state capitals of Australia are Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. In Australia, the capital cities is regularly used, to refer to the aforementioned state capitals plus the federal capital Canberra and Darwin. Abu Dhabi is the city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In unitary states which consist of multiple constituent countries, such as the United Kingdom or the Kingdom of Denmark, the national capitals of Germany and Russia, the Stadtstaat of Berlin and the Federal City of Moscow, are also constituent states of both countries in their own right
2.
Mudhafaria Minaret
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The Mudhafaria Minaret is a minaret located in new the Minare Park on the west region of Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. The minaret is composed of an octagonal base and a tall cylindrical shaft. It is s built of baked bricks, the base being decorated with two tiers of niches with pointed arches, two on each of the eight faces that are inscribed in rectangular frames. The balcony parapet is carved with small niches, the access door to the minaret steps is on the eastern side of the octagonal base. From there a small door gives access to steps inside the shaft that led to the second balcony now collapsed. The shaft tapers inward and is decorated with bands of interlocking diagonal Hazar-Baf motifs that are separated with thin bands. Examples of Kufi calligraphy can be seen, showing the names of Muhammad and Masoudi Muhammadi, history page Minaret of the Great Mosque of Arbil - ArchNet
3.
Citadel of Erbil
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The Erbil Citadel, locally called Qalat is a tell or occupied mound, and the historical city centre of Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The citadel has been inscribed on the World Heritage List since 21 June 2014, the earliest evidence for occupation of the citadel mound dates to the 5th millennium BC, and possibly earlier. It appears for the first time in sources in the Ebla tablets around 2,300 BC. During the Sassanian period and the Abbasid Caliphate, Erbil was an important centre for Christianity, after the Mongols captured the citadel in 1258, the importance of Erbil declined. During the 20th century, the structure was significantly modified, as a result of which a number of houses. In 2007, the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization was established to oversee the restoration of the citadel, in the same year, all inhabitants, except one family, were evicted from the citadel as part of a large restoration project. Since then, archaeological research and restoration works have been carried out at and around the tell by various international teams, the government plans to have 50 families live in the citadel once it is renovated. The buildings on top of the tell stretch over an oval area of 430 by 340 metres occupying 102,000 square metres. The only religious structure that survives is the Mulla Afandi Mosque. The mound rises between 25 and 32 metres from the surrounding plain, when it was fully occupied, the citadel was divided in three districts or mahallas, from east to west the Serai, the Takya and the Topkhana. The Serai was occupied by families, the Takya district was named after the homes of dervishes, which are called takyas. The site of the citadel may have been occupied as early as the Neolithic period, clear evidence for occupation comes from the Chalcolithic period, with sherds resembling pottery of the Ubaid and Uruk periods in the Jazira and southeastern Turkey, respectively. Given this evidence for occupation, the citadel has been called the oldest continuously occupied site in the world. Erbil appears for the first time in literary sources around 2300 BC in the archives of Ebla, according to Giovanni Pettinato, it is mentioned in two tablets as Irbilum. Later, Erridupizir, king of Gutium, captured the city in 2200 BC, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, Erbil is mentioned in historical records of the Ur III period as Urbilum. King Shulgi destroyed Urbilum in his 43rd regnal year, and during the reign of his successor Amar-Sin, Urbilum was incorporated into the Ur III state. In the 18th century BC, Erbil appears in a list of cities that were conquered by Shamshi-Adad of Upper Mesopotamia, Shamshi-Adad installed garrisons in all the cities of the land of Urbil. During the 2nd millennium BC, Erbil was incorporated into Assyria, Erbil served as a point of departure for military campaigns toward the east
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Iraq
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The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds, others include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, around 95% of the countrys 36 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish, two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws, the area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and it was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires. Iraqs modern borders were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres, Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932, in 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Baath Party from 1968 until 2003, after an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Husseins Baath Party was removed from power and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The American presence in Iraq ended in 2011, but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country, the Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name, one dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for city, UR. An Arabic folk etymology for the name is rooted, well-watered. During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿajamī, for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran. The term historically included the south of the Hamrin Mountains. The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ or /ɪˈræk/, the American Heritage Dictionary, the pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in U. S. media. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture where agriculture, the following Neolithic period is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations
6.
Iraqi Kurdistan
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Iraqi Kurdistan, officially called the Kurdistan Region by the Iraqi constitution, is located in the north of Iraq and constitutes the countrys only autonomous region. The region is governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government, with the capital being Erbil. Kurdistan is a democracy with its own regional Parliament that consists of 111 seats. Masoud Barzani, who was elected as president in 2005, was re-elected in 2009. In August 2013 the parliament extended his presidency for two years. His presidency concluded on 19 August 2015 after the parties failed to reach an agreement over extending his term. The new Constitution of Iraq defines the Kurdistan Region as an entity of Iraq. The four governorates of Duhok, Hawler, Silemani, and Halabja comprise around 41,710 square kilometres and have a population of 5.5 million. In 2014, during the 2014 Iraq Crisis, Iraqi Kurdistans forces also took much of the disputed territories of Northern Iraq. The establishment of the Kurdistan Region dates back to the March 1970 autonomy agreement between the Kurdish opposition and the Iraqi government after years of heavy fighting, further, the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, especially the Iraqi Armys Al-Anfal Campaign, devastated the population and environment of Iraqi Kurdistan. As Kurds continued to fight government troops, Iraqi forces finally left Kurdistan in October 1991, in 1992, the major political parties in the region, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, established the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent political changes led to the ratification of a new constitution in 2005, the name Kurdistan literally means Land of the Kurds. The suffix -stan is Iranian for place of or country, in English translations of the Constitution of Iraq, it is called Kurdistan, four times in the phrase region of Kurdistan and once in the phrase Kurdistan region. The regional government calls it the Kurdistan Region, the full name of the government is the Kurdistan Regional Government, abbreviated KRG. Kurds also refer to the region as Başûrê Kurdistanê or Başûrî Kurdistan, during the Baath Party administration in the 1970s and 1980s, the region was called the Kurdish Autonomous Region. The Kurdistan Region is largely mountainous, with the highest point being a 3,611 m point known locally as Cheekha Dar, the mountains are part of the larger Zagros mountain range which also extends into Iran. There are many rivers running through the region, which is distinguished by its fertile lands, plentiful water, the Great Zab and the Little Zab flow from the east to the west in the region. The Tigris river enters Iraqi Kurdistan from Turkish Kurdistan, the mountainous nature of Iraqi Kurdistan, the difference of temperatures in its various parts, and its wealth of waters make it a land of agriculture and tourism
7.
Erbil Governorate
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Erbil Governorate, sometimes referred to by the alternative spelling Arbil Governorate, is a governorate in Iraqi Kurdistan. It derives its name from the city of Erbil, which is its capital, Erbil Governorate covers an area of 15,074 km2 in the north of Iraq, with a population of 2,009,367 people. It is largely populated by Kurds but has minority populations of Assyrians, Turkmen, University of Kurdistan Hewlêr, Public English-medium university Ishik University, Private university that belongs to Fezalar Educational Institutions in Erbil
8.
Arabia Standard Time
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UTC+03,00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +03. In areas using this time offset, the time is three hours later than the Coordinated Universal Time, following the ISO8601 standard, a time with this offset would be written as, for example, 2017-04-05T17,46, 23+03,00. Some areas in the world use UTC+03,00 all year, most of European Russia, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov on Don, Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land. From October 26,2014 Moscow and most other parts of European Russia started using UTC+3 again, also on September 7,2016, Turkey and Northern Cyprus started using UTC+3 all year round. Besides the names mentioned above, the name Eastern Europe Forward Time is sometimes used, belarus Russia - Moscow Time all railroad time in Russia, including railroad in Kaliningrad Oblast. As this time zone is predominantly in the region, there is no significant change in day length throughout the year. Between 1982 and 2007, Iraq observed Arabia Daylight Time but the government abolished DST on March 2008. The easternmost point at which UTC+03 with no DST is applied is the easternmost point of Saudi Arabia, in the Eastern Province, at the border with Oman and this is the largest discrepancy overall for UTC+03 even if UTC+03 with no DST is included. The easternmost point at which UTC+03 with DST is applied is Cape Zhelaniya, Severny Island, Novaya Zemlya, on February 8,2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree cancelling DST in Russia. After strong criticism from the media, on 18 October 2011 the Ukrainian parliament cancelled its previous decision
9.
Daylight saving time
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Daylight saving time is the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour so that evening daylight lasts an hour longer, while sacrificing normal sunrise times. Typically, regions that use Daylight Savings Time adjust clocks forward one hour close to the start of spring, American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin proposed a form of daylight time in 1784. New Zealander George Hudson proposed the idea of saving in 1895. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation, starting on April 30,1916, many countries have used it at various times since then, particularly since the energy crisis of the 1970s. The practice has both advocates and critics, DST clock shifts sometimes complicate timekeeping and can disrupt travel, billing, record keeping, medical devices, heavy equipment, and sleep patterns. Computer software often adjusts clocks automatically, but policy changes by various jurisdictions of DST dates, industrialized societies generally follow a clock-based schedule for daily activities that do not change throughout the course of the year. The time of day that individuals begin and end work or school, North and south of the tropics daylight lasts longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the effect becoming greater as one moves away from the tropics. However, they will have one hour of daylight at the start of each day. Supporters have also argued that DST decreases energy consumption by reducing the need for lighting and heating, DST is also of little use for locations near the equator, because these regions see only a small variation in daylight in the course of the year. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season, unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some monasteries of Mount Athos and all Jewish ceremonies. This 1784 satire proposed taxing window shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells, despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose DST, 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules. However, this changed as rail transport and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklins day. Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him time to collect insects. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk and his solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament Robert Pearce, a select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearces bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915, william Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912. Starting on April 30,1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime, Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the year
10.
Kurds
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The Kurds are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Iranian peoples and, as a result, are often themselves classified as an Iranian people. A recent Kurdish diaspora has also developed in Western countries, primarily in Germany, the Kurdish language refers collectively to the related dialects spoken by the Kurds. It is mainly spoken in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria. Kurdish holds official status in Iraq as a national language alongside Arabic, is recognized in Iran as a regional language, the Kurdish languages belong to the northwestern sub‑group of the Iranian languages, which in turn belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. According to Mackenzie, there are few features that all Kurdish dialects have in common. And the fact that this reflects the sense of ethnic identity and unity of the Kurds. The number of Kurds living in Southwest Asia is estimated at close to 30 million, Kurds comprise anywhere from 18% to 20% of the population in Turkey, possibly as high as 25%,15 to 20% in Iraq, 10% in Iran, and 9% in Syria. Kurds form regional majorities in all four of these countries, viz. in Turkish Kurdistan, the Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in West Asia after the Arabs, Persians, and Turks. The total number of Kurds in 1991 was placed at 22.5 million, with 48% of this number living in Turkey, 18% in Iraq, 24% in Iran, and 4% in Syria. Recent emigration accounts for a population of close to 1.5 million in Western countries and this groups population was estimated at close to 0.4 million in 1990. The land of Karda is mentioned on a Sumerian clay-tablet dated to the 3rd millennium B. C. This land was inhabited by the people of Su who dwelt in the regions of Lake Van. Other Sumerian clay-tables referred the people, who lived in the land of Karda, as the Qarduchi and the Qurti. Many Kurds consider themselves descended from the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, the claimed Median descent is reflected in the words of the Kurdish national anthem, We are the children of the Medes and Kai Khosrow. The Kurdish languages form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian languages like Median, some researchers consider the independent Kardouchoi as the ancestors of the Kurds. The term Kurd, however, is first encountered in Arabic sources of the seventh century, the Kurds have ethnically diverse origins. During the Sassanid era, in Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, after initially sustaining a heavy defeat, Ardashir I was successful in subjugating the Kurds. In a letter Ardashir I received from his foe, Ardavan V, the usage of the term Kurd during this time period most likely was a social term, designating Northwestern Iranian nomads, rather than a concrete ethnic group
11.
Kurdish language
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Kurdish is a continuum of Northwestern Iranian languages spoken by the Kurds in Western Asia. Kurdish forms three dialect groups known as Northern Kurdish, Central Kurdish, and Southern Kurdish, a separate group of non-Kurdish Northwestern Iranian languages, the Zaza–Gorani languages, are also spoken by several million Kurds. Recent studies estimate between 8 to 20 million native Kurdish speakers in Turkey, the majority of the Kurds speak Northern Kurdish. The literary output in Kurdish was mostly confined to poetry until the early 20th century, today, there are two principal written Kurdish dialects, namely Northern Kurdish in the northern parts of the geographical region of Kurdistan and Central Kurdish further east and south. Central Kurdish is, along with Arabic, one of the two languages of Iraq and is in political documents simply referred to as Kurdish. The Kurdish languages belong to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family and they are generally classified as Northwestern Iranian languages, or by some scholars as intermediate between Northwestern and Southwestern Iranian. Martin van Bruinessen notes that Kurdish has a strong south-western Iranian element, whereas Zaza, windfuhr identified Kurdish dialects as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum. The most argued hypothesis on the localisation of the territory of the Kurds remains D. N. Mackenzies theory. He has tried to reconstruct the alleged Persian-Kurdish-Baluchi linguistic unity presumably in the parts of Iran. Kurdish is divided into three groups, where dialects from different groups are not mutually intelligible without acquired bilingualism, Northern Kurdish is the largest dialect group, spoken by an estimated 15 to 20 million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran. Central Kurdish is spoken by an estimated 6 to 7 million Kurds in much of Iraqi Kurdistan, Sorani is a written standard of Central Kurdish developed in the 1920s and was later adopted as the standard orthography of Kurdish as an official language of Iraq. Southern Kurdish is spoken by about 3 million Kurds in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces of Iran, in historical evolution terms, Kurmanji is less modified than Sorani and Pehlewani in both phonetic and morphological structure. The Kermanshahi group has influenced by among other things its closer cultural proximity to Persian. Philip G. Kreyenbroek, a writing in 1992, says. Sorani is normally written in a form of the Arabic script. Reasons for describing Kurmanji and Sorani as dialects of one language are their common origin, for example, Sorani has neither gender nor case-endings, whereas Kurmanji has both. Differences in vocabulary and pronunciation are not as great as between German and English, but they are still considerable, according to Encyclopaedia of Islam, although Kurdish is not a unified language, its many dialects are interrelated and at the same time distinguishable from other Western Iranian languages. The same source classifies different Kurdish dialects as two groups, northern and central
12.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
13.
Syriac language
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Syriac /ˈsɪri. æk/, also known as Syriac Aramaic, is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Arabia. Indeed, Syriac literature comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature, Old Aramaic was adopted by the Neo-Assyrian Empire when they conquered the various Aramean city-kingdoms to its west. The Achaemenid Empire, which rose after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, also adopted Old Aramaic as its official language, during the course of the third and fourth centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. Along with Latin and Greek, Syriac became one of the three most important Christian languages in the centuries of the Christian Era. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic. Syriac remains the language of Syriac Christianity to this day. Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language and, as such, a language of the Northwestern branch of the Semitic family and it is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet. Syriac was the local accent of Aramaic in Edessa, that evolved under the influence of Church of the East and it has been found as far afield as Hadrians Wall in Ancient Britain, with inscriptions written by Assyrian and Aramean soldiers of the Roman Empire. Modern Syriac/Modern Syriac Aramaic is an occasionally used to refer to the modern Eastern Aramaic languages. In this terminology, Modern Syriac is divided into, Modern Western Syriac Aramaic, note however that these are sometimes excluded from the category of Modern Syriac. The modern varieties are, therefore, not discussed in this article, in 132 BC, the kingdom of Osroene was founded in Edessa and Proto-Syriac evolved in that kingdom. Many Syriac-speakers still look to Edessa as the cradle of their language, there are about eighty extant early Syriac inscriptions, dated to the first three centuries AD. All of these examples of the language are non-Christian. As an official language, Syriac was given a relatively coherent form, style, in the 3rd century, churches in Edessa began to use Syriac as the language of worship. There is evidence that the adoption of Syriac, the language of the Assyrian people, was to effect mission, much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible into Syriac, the Peshitta. At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry, in 489, many Syriac-speaking Christians living in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire fled to the Sassanid Empire to escape persecution and growing animosity with Greek-speaking Christians. The Christological differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world, as a result, Syriac developed distinctive western and eastern varieties. Syriac literature is by far the most prodigious of the various Aramaic languages and its corpus covers poetry, prose, theology, liturgy, hymnody, history, philosophy, science, medicine and natural history
14.
Baghdad
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Baghdad is the capital of the Republic of Iraq. The population of Baghdad, as of 2016, is approximately 8,765,000 making it the largest city in Iraq, the second largest city in the Arab world, and the second largest city in Western Asia. Located along the Tigris River, the city was founded in the 8th century, within a short time of its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center for the Islamic world. This, in addition to housing several key institutions, garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the Centre of Learning. Throughout the High Middle Ages, Baghdad was considered to be the largest city in the world with a population of 1,200,000 people. The city was destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state in 1938, in contemporary times, the city has often faced severe infrastructural damage, most recently due to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent Iraq War that lasted until December 2011. In recent years, the city has been subjected to insurgency attacks. As of 2012, Baghdad was listed as one of the least hospitable places in the world to live, the site where the city of Baghdad developed has been populated for millennia. By the 8th century AD, several villages had developed there, including a Persian hamlet called Baghdad, the name is of Indo-European origin and a Middle Persian compound of Bagh god and dād given by, translating to Bestowed by God or Gods gift. In Old Persian the first element can be traced to boghu and is related to Slavic bog god, a similar term in Middle Persian is the name Mithradāt, known in English by its Hellenistic form Mithridates, meaning gift of Mithra. There are a number of locations in the wider region whose names are compounds of the word bagh, including Baghlan. The name of the town Baghdati in Georgia shares the same etymological origins, when the Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, founded a completely new city for his capital, he chose the name Madinat al-Salaam or City of Peace. This was the name on coins, weights, and other official usage. By the 11th century, Baghdad became almost the exclusive name for the world-renowned metropolis, after the fall of the Umayyads, the first Muslim dynasty, the victorious Abbasid rulers wanted their own capital whence they could rule. They chose a site north of the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, on 30 July 762, the caliph Al-Mansur commissioned the construction of the city, mansur believed that Baghdad was the perfect city to be the capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasids. Mansur loved the site so much he is quoted saying, This is indeed the city that I am to found, where I am to live, and where my descendants will reign afterward. The citys growth was helped by its excellent location, based on at least two factors, it had control over strategic and trading routes along the Tigris, the abundance of water in a dry climate
15.
Third Dynasty of Ur
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The Third Dynasty of Ur is commonly abbreviated as Ur III by historians studying the period. The Third Dynasty of Ur was the last Sumerian dynasty which came to preeminent power in Mesopotamia and it began after several centuries of control by Akkadian and Gutian kings. It controlled the cities of Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna and extended as far north as the Jazira, the Third Dynasty of Ur arose some time after the fall of the Akkad Dynasty. Their last king, Tirigan, was out by Utu-hengal of Uruk. Following Utu-Hengals reign, Ur-Nammu founded the Third Dynasty of Ur, the Sumerian King List tells us that Utu-hengal had reigned for seven years, although only one year-name for him is known from records, that of his accession, suggesting a shorter reign. It is possible that Ur-Nammu was originally his governor, there are two stelae discovered in Ur that include this detail in an inscription about Ur-Nammus life. Some scholars theorize that Ur-Nammu led a revolt against Utu-hengal, deposed him, another hypothesis is that Ur-Nammu was a close relative to Utu-hengal, and the latter had asked the former to rule over the city of Ur in his name. After four years of ruling in Ur, Ur-Nammu rose to prominence as a warrior-king when he crushed the ruler of Lagash in battle, after this battle, Ur-Nammu seems to have earned the title king of Sumer and Agade. Urs dominance over the Neo-Sumerian Empire was consolidated with the famous Code of Ur-Nammu, many significant changes occurred in the empire under Shulgis reign. He took steps to centralize and standardize the procedures of the empire and he is credited with standardizing administrative processes, archival documentation, the tax system, and the national calendar. He established an army of Ur. Shulgi was deified during his lifetime, an honor reserved for dead kings. With the fall of the Ur III Dynasty after an Elamite invasion in 2004/1940 BC, assyriologists employ many complicated methods for establishing the most precise dates possible for this period, but controversy still exists. Generally, scholars use either the conventional or the low chronologies and they are as follows, The land ruled by the Ur III kings was divided up into provinces that were each run by a governor. In certain tumultuous regions, military commanders assumed more power in governing, each province contained a redistribution center where provincial taxes, called bala, would all go to be shipped to the capital. Taxes could be payable in forms, from crops to livestock to land. The government would then apportion out goods as needed, including giving food rations to the needy and this is an area where scholars have many different views. It had long been posited that the laborer was nothing more than a serf
16.
Sumer
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Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Proto-writing in the dates back to c.3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and date back to 3300 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later, there are none in Sumer of any kind that have dated before Enmebaragesi. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, todays Persian Gulf region, Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund, Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur approximately 2100-2000 BC, the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ gi ga/, literally meaning the black-headed people, the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, in the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, the Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c.1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian population, 2500–2334 BC Akkadian Empire period, c. 2218–2047 BC Ur III period, c, 2047–1940 BC The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and it is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture
17.
Shulgi
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Shulgi of Ur was the second king of the Sumerian Renaissance in the Third Dynasty of Ur. He reigned for 48 years, from c.2029 BC –1982 BC and his accomplishments include the completion of construction of the Great Ziggurat of Ur which was started by his father Ur-Nammu. Shulgi was the son of Ur-Nammu king of Ur – according to one later text, year-names are known for all 48 years of his reign, providing a fairly complete contemporary view of the highlights of his career. Shortly after his fathers death, Shulgi engaged in a series of wars against the Gutians to avenge his father. The only activity recorded in the year-names for his first few years involved temple construction, Shulgi is best known for his extensive revision of the scribal schools curriculum. Although it is unclear how much he wrote, there are numerous praise poems written by. He proclaimed himself a god in his 23rd regnal year, some early chronicles castigate Shulgi for his impiety, the Weidner Chronicle states that he did not perform his rites to the letter, he defiled his purification rituals. CM48 charges him with improper tampering with the rites, composing untruthful stelae, the Chronicle of Early Kings accuses him of criminal tendencies, and the property of Esagila and Babylon he took away as booty. The inscriptions state that he put its field accounts in order with the pick-axe and his 18th year-name was Year Liwir-mitashu, the kings daughter, was elevated to the ladyship in Marhashi, referring to a country east of Elam and her dynastic marriage to its king, Libanukshabash. Following this, Shulgi engaged in a period of expansionism at the expense of such as the Lullubi. In his 30th year, his daughter was married to the governor of Anshan, in his 34th year and he also destroyed Kimash and Humurtu in the 45th year of his reign. Ultimately, Shulgi was never able to rule any of these distant peoples, at one point, in his 37th year, he was obliged to build a large wall, in an attempt to keep them out. In addition to construction of walls and completion of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, Shulgi spent a great deal of time and resources in expanding, maintaining. He built rest-houses along roads, so travelers could find a place to rest. For this last feat, Samuel Noah Kramer calls him the builder of the first inn, Shulgi also boasted about his ability to maintain high speeds while running long distances. He claimed in his 7th regnal year to have run from Nippur to Ur, Kramer refers to Shulgi as The first long distance running champion. Early uncertainties about the reading of cuneiform led to the readings Shulgi and Dungi being common transliterations prior to the end of the 19th century. However, over the course of the 20th century, the scholarly consensus gravitated away from dun towards shul as the pronunciation of the
18.
Assyrian people
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Assyrian people, or Syriacs, are an ethnic group indigenous to the Middle East. Some of them self-identify as Chaldeans, or as Arameans and they speak modern Aramaic, whose subdivisions include Northeastern, Central, and Western Neo-Aramaic, as well as another language, dependent on the country of residence. The Assyrians are typically Syriac-speaking Christians who claim descent from Assyria, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, the areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria. The majority have migrated to regions of the world, including North America, the Levant, Australia, Europe, Russia. Assyrians are predominantly Christian, mostly adhering to the East and West Syrian liturgical rites of Christianity, whereas the churches of the West Syrian rite, the Syriac Orthodox Church and Syriac Catholic Church, mostly speak the Central and Western branches. According to a 2013 report by a Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council official, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to Neanderthals such as the remains of those which have been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria belonged to the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the history of Assyria begins with the formation of the city of Assur perhaps as early as the 25th century BC. The Assyrian king list records kings dating from the 25th century BC onwards, the earliest being Tudiya, who was a contemporary of Ibrium of Ebla. However, many of early kings would have been local rulers. In the traditions of the Assyrian Church of the East, they are descended from Abrahams grandson, however, there is no historical basis for the biblical assertion whatsoever, there is no mention in Assyrian records. The Assyrian people, after the fall of their empire, fell under foreign domination ever since, the Persian Empire was founded, which consumed the entire Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire in 539 BC. Assyrians became front line soldiers for the Persian Empire under Xerxes I, the Assyrian army accounted for three legions of the Roman army, defending the Parthian border. In the 1st century, it was the Assyrian army that enabled Vespasians coup, from the later 2nd century, the Roman Senate included several notable Assyrians, including Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus and Avidius Cassius. From the 1st century BC, Assyria was the theatre of the protracted Roman–Persian Wars and it would become a Roman province from 116 to 363 AD. Despite the influx of foreign elements, the presence of Assyrians is confirmed by the worship of the god Ashur, the Greeks, Parthians, and Romans had a rather low-level of integration with the local population in Mesopotamia, which allowed their cultures to survive. The Assyrians were Christianized in the first to third centuries in Roman Syria, the population of the Sasanian province of Asōristān was a mixed one, composed of Assyrians, Arameans in the far south and the western deserts, and Persians. The Greek element in the cities, still strong during the Parthian Empire, the majority of the population were Eastern Aramaic speakers. Along with the Arameans, Armenians, Greeks, and Nabataeans, the Council of Seleucia of ca.325 dealt with jurisdictional conflicts among the leading bishops
19.
Assyria
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Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic-speaking kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. Centered on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia, the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times. Assyria is named after its capital, the ancient city of Aššur. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders, Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were centered. The indigenous modern Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrian Christian ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, southeast Turkey, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria were the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, during the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian, and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a sprachbund and it is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name. The city of Aššur, together with a number of other Assyrian cities, however it is likely that they were initially Sumerian-dominated administrative centres. In the late 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash, then the dominant Sumerian ruler in Mesopotamia, similarly, in c. the early 25th century BC, Lugal-Anne-Mundu the king of the Sumerian state of Adab lists Subartu as paying tribute to him. Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is known, in the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. According to Georges Roux he would have lived in the mid 25th century BC, Tudiya was succeeded on the list by Adamu, the first known reference to the Semitic name Adam and then a further thirteen rulers. The earliest kings, such as Tudiya, who are recorded as kings who lived in tents, were independent semi-nomadic pastoralist rulers and these kings at some point became fully urbanised and founded the city state of Ashur in the mid 21st century BC. During the Akkadian Empire, the Assyrians, like all the Mesopotamian Semites, became subject to the dynasty of the city state of Akkad, the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the Great claimed to encompass the surrounding four quarters. Assyrian rulers were subject to Sargon and his successors, and the city of Ashur became an administrative center of the Empire. On those tablets, Assyrian traders in Burushanda implored the help of their ruler, Sargon the Great, the name Hatti itself even appears in later accounts of his grandson, Naram-Sin, campaigning in Anatolia. Assyrian and Akkadian traders spread the use of writing in the form of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script to Asia Minor, the Akkadian Empire was destroyed by economic decline and internal civil war, followed by attacks from barbarian Gutian people in 2154 BC. The rulers of Assyria during the period between c.2154 BC and 2112 BC once again fully independent, as the Gutians are only known to have administered southern Mesopotamia
20.
Gutian people
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The Guti or Quti, also known by the derived exonyms Gutians or Guteans, were a nomadic people of the Zagros Mountains during ancient times. Their homeland was known as Gutium The Guti are often regarded as precursors of the modern Kurds, conflict between people from Gutium and the Akkadian Empire has been linked to the collapse of the empire, towards the end of the 3rd Millennium BCE. The Guti subsequently overran southern Mesopotamia and formed a dynasty in Sumer. The Sumerian king list suggests that the Guti ruled over Sumer for several generations, by the 1st Millennium BCE, usage of the name Gutium, by the peoples of lowland Mesopotamia, had expanded to include all of western Media, between the Zagros and the Tigris. Various tribes and places to the east and northeast were often referred to as Gutians or Gutium, for example, Assyrian royal annals use the term Gutians in relation to populations known to have been Medes or Mannaeans. As late as the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, little is known of the origins, material culture or language of the Guti, as contemporary sources provide few details and no artifacts have been positively identified. As the Gutian language lacks a text corpus, apart from some proper names, the names of Gutian-Sumerian kings, suggest that the language was not closely related to any languages of the region, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite and Elamite. He further suggested that they had migrated to the Tarim. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov explored Hennings suggestion as possible support for their proposal of an Indo-European Urheimat in the Near East, however, most scholars reject the attempt to compare languages separated by more than two millennia. Since Gutian appears to have been a language, for information about the Guti. Initially, according to the Sumerian king list, in Gutium, no king was famous, they were their own kings and ruled thus for three years. This may indicate that the Gutian kingship was rotated between tribes/clans, or within an oligarchical elite, Sumerian sources generally portray the Guti as an unhappy, barbarous and rapacious people from the mountains – apparently the central Zagros east of Babylon and north of Elam. The period of the Gutian dynasty in Sumer is portrayed as chaotic, the Guti appear in texts from Old Babylonian copies of inscriptions ascribed to Lugal-Anne-Mundu of Adab as among the nations providing his empire tribute. These inscriptions locate them between Subartu in the north, and Marhashe and Elam in the south and they were a prominent nomadic tribe who lived in the Zagros mountains in the time of the Akkadian Empire. Sargon the Great also mentions them among his subject lands, listing them between Lullubi, Armanum and Akkad to the north, and Nikku and Der to the south. According to one stele, Naram-Sin of Akkads army of 360,000 soldiers defeated the Gutian king Gulaan, the epic Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin of a later millennium mentions Gutium among the lands around Mesopotamia raided by Annubanini of Lulubum during Naram-Sins reign. Contemporary year-names for Shar-kali-sharri of Akkad indicate that in one year of his reign, he captured Sharlag king of Gutium, while in another year. As the Akkadians went into decline, the Gutians began to practice hit-and-run tactics on Mesopotamia and their raids crippled the economy of Sumer
21.
Medes
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The Medes were an ancient Iranian people who lived in an area known as Media and who spoke the Median language. This allowed new peoples to pass through and settle, in addition Elam, the dominant power in Iran, was suffering a period of severe weakness, as was Babylonia to the west. During the reign of Sinsharishkun the Assyrian empire, which had been in a state of constant civil war since 626 BC, subject peoples, such as the Medes, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Lydians and Arameans quietly ceased to pay tribute to Assyria. The Median kingdom was conquered in 550 BC by Cyrus the Great. However, nowadays there is doubt whether a united Median empire ever existed. There is no evidence and the story of Herodotus is not supported by sources from the Neo-Assyrian Empire nor the Neo-Babylonian Empire. A few archaeological sites and textual sources provide a documentation of the history. Apart from a few names, the language of the Medes is unknown. The Medes had an Ancient Iranian Religion with a priesthood named as Magi, later during the reigns of the last Median kings, the reforms of Zoroaster spread into western Iran. Besides Ecbatana, the other existing in Media were Laodicea. The fourth city of Media was Apamea, near Ecbatana, whose location is now unknown. According to the Histories of Herodotus, there were six Median tribes, Thus Deioces collected the Medes into a nation, now these are the tribes of which they consist, the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi. The six Median tribes resided in Media proper, the triangular shaped area between Ecbatana, Rhagae and Aspadana, in modern Iran, that is the area between Tehran, Isfahan and Hamadan. Of the Median tribes, the Magi resided in Rhaga, modern Tehran and it was a type of sacred caste, which ministered to the spiritual needs of the Medes. The Paretaceni tribe resided in and around Aspadana, modern Isfahan, the Arizanti lived in and around Kashan, the Struchates and the Budii lived in villages in the Median triangle. The original source for different words used to call the Median people, their language, the meaning of this word is not precisely established. The Median people are mentioned by name in many ancient texts. According to the Histories of Herodotus, The Medes were called anciently by all people Aryans, but when Medea, such is the account which they themselves give
22.
Achaemenid Empire
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The Achaemenid Empire, also called the Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. The empires successes inspired similar systems in later empires and it is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Greek city-states during the Greco-Persian Wars and for the emancipation of the Jewish exiles in Babylon. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in a Hellenistic style in the empire as well. By the 7th century BC, the Persians had settled in the portion of the Iranian Plateau in the region of Persis. From this region, Cyrus the Great advanced to defeat the Medes, Lydia, Alexander, an avid admirer of Cyrus the Great, conquered the empire in its entirety by 330 BC. Upon his death, most of the former territory came under the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire. The Persian population of the central plateau reclaimed power by the second century BC under the Parthian Empire, the historical mark of the Achaemenid Empire went far beyond its territorial and military influences and included cultural, social, technological and religious influences as well. Many Athenians adopted Achaemenid customs in their lives in a reciprocal cultural exchange. The impact of Cyruss edict is mentioned in Judeo-Christian texts, the empire also set the tone for the politics, heritage and history of modern Iran. Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details Due to the duration of their reigns, Smerdis, Xerxes II. The Persian nation contains a number of tribes as listed here, the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, upon which all the other tribes are dependent. Of these, the Pasargadae are the most distinguished, they contain the clan of the Achaemenids from which spring the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii, all of which are attached to the soil, the Achaemenid Empire was created by nomadic Persians. The Achaemenid Empire was not the first Iranian empire, as by 6th century BC another group of ancient Iranian peoples had established the short lived Median Empire. The Iranian peoples had arrived in the region of what is today Iran c.1000 BC and had for a number of centuries fallen under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia. However, the Medes and Persians, Cimmerians, Persians and Chaldeans played a role in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire. The term Achaemenid means of the family of the Achaemenis/Achaemenes, despite the derivation of the name, Achaemenes was himself a minor seventh-century ruler of the Anshan in southwestern Iran, and a vassal of Assyria. At some point in 550 BC, Cyrus rose in rebellion against the Medes, eventually conquering the Medes and creating the first Persian empire
23.
Achaemenid Assyria
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Between 605 and 559 BC, Assyria was divided between the Median Empire to the east and the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the west. Both parts were subsumed into the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC, in Herodotus account the Ninth Tributary District comprised Babylonia and the rest of Assyria, and excluded Eber-Nari. Despite a few rebellions, Assyria functioned as an important part of the Achaemenid Empire, the Assyrian people were given the right to govern themselves throughout Achaemenid rule, and the Assyrian language was used diplomatically by the Persians. Known for their skills, Assyrian soldiers constituted the main heavy infantry of the Achaemenid empires military. Due to the destruction of Assyria during the fall of its empire. This wealth was due to the great prosperity for agriculture that the Persians used effectively for almost 200 years. The Battle of Nineveh in 612 BC eventually left Assyria destroyed for years to come, the Assyrians continued to fight on, with the aid of another of their former vassals, Egypt who feared the rise of these new powers. Harran, the new Assyrian capital, was taken in 608 BC. Despite this, the Assyrians continued to fight on until final defeat at Carchemish in 605 BC, a costly but victorious battle at Megiddo against the forces of Judah allowed the Egyptians to advance to the rescue, only to be defeated by the Babylonian-Median-Scythian alliance. Assyria was conquered by the alliance, Babylonian rule was unpopular, but did not last long. In 539, Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonian King Nabonidus, took Babylon and made it, along with Assyria, the former major Assyrian capitals of Nineveh, Dur Sharrukin and Kalhu were only sparsely populated during the Achaemenid rule. Much Assyrian settlement was mostly in cities, towns and villages at plain level, in the mountains. However, according to more recent Assyriologists such as Georges Roux, cities such as Arrapkha, Guzana and Arbela remained intact, the testimony is an example of the rich agricultural resources of Assyrias region and the existence of a satrap’s palace. It is not known exactly where this palace was located, Assyrian religion within the empire were tolerated, and the judicial system, calendar and imperial standards imposed by the Assyrians remained in force everywhere. The Assyrians, like all other peoples of the Persian Empire, were obliged to pay taxes to the King of Persia and, whenever the King campaigned. The Assyrian Empire resorted to a policy of deporting troublesome conquered peoples into the lands of Mesopotamia, while this allowed some integration, it may have also led to the various rebellions within the Empire in the 7th century. Consequently, during the Persian rule of Assyria, Aramaic gradually became the language spoken by the Assyrians. Frye reclassifies Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Achaemenid territories, for centuries after the fall of the Achaemenids, Imperial Aramaic – or near enough for it to be recognizable – remained an influence on the various native Iranian languages
24.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
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Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and at first ruled by the royal Argead dynasty, the reign of Philip II saw the rise of Macedonia, during which the kingdom rose to control the entire Greek world. With a reformed army containing phalanxes wielding the sarissa pike, Philip II defeated the old powers of Athens and Thebes in the decisive Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Sparta was kept isolated and was occupied a century later by Antigonus III Doson. Alexander then led a roughly decade-long campaign of conquest against the Achaemenid Empire, in the ensuing wars of Alexander the Great, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered a territory that stretched as far as the Indus River. For a brief period, his Macedonian empire was the most powerful in the world – the definitive Hellenistic state, Greek arts and literature flourished in the new conquered lands and advances in philosophy, engineering, and science were spread throughout much of the ancient world. Of particular importance were the contributions of Aristotle, who had been imported as tutor to Alexander, important cities such as Pella, Pydna, and Amphipolis were involved in power struggles for control of the territory. New cities were founded, such as Thessalonica by the usurper Cassander, Macedonias decline began with the Macedonian Wars and the rise of Rome as the leading Mediterranean power. At the end of the Second Macedonian War in 168 BC, a short-lived revival of the monarchy during the Third Macedonian War in 150–148 BC ended with the establishment of the Roman province of Macedonia. The name Macedonia comes from the ethnonym Μακεδόνες, which itself is derived from the ancient Greek adjective μακεδνός, meaning tall and it also shares the same root as the noun μάκρος, meaning length in both ancient and modern Greek. The name is believed to have meant either highlanders, the tall ones. Robert S. P. Beekes supports that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology. Contradictory legends state that either Perdiccas I of Macedon or Caranus of Macedon were the founders of the Argead dynasty, the kingdom of Macedonia was situated along the Haliacmon and Axius rivers in Lower Macedonia, north of Mount Olympus. Historian Malcolm Errington posits the theory one of the earliest Argead kings must have established Aigai as their capital in the mid-7th century BC. Prior to the 4th century BC, the kingdom covered a region corresponding to the western. Achaemenid Persian hegemony over Macedonia was briefly interrupted by the Ionian Revolt, although Macedonia enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and was never made a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, it was expected to provide troops for the Achaemenid army. Following the Greek victory at Salamis in 480 BC, Alexander I was employed as an Achaemenid diplomat to strike a treaty and alliance with Athens. Soon afterwards the Achaemenid forces were forced to withdraw from mainland Europe, although initially a Persian vassal, Alexander I of Macedon fostered friendly diplomatic relations with his former Greek enemies, the Athenian and Spartan-led coalition of Greek city-states. Two separate wars were fought against Athens between 433 and 431 BC, spurred by an Athenian alliance with a brother and cousin of Perdiccas II who had rebelled against him
25.
Seleucid Empire
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Seleucus received Babylonia and, from there, expanded his dominions to include much of Alexanders near eastern territories. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and what is now Kuwait, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan and Turkmenistan. The Seleucid Empire was a center of Hellenistic culture that maintained the preeminence of Greek customs where a Greek political elite dominated. The Greek population of the cities who formed the dominant elite were reinforced by immigration from Greece, Seleucid expansion into Anatolia and Greece was abruptly halted after decisive defeats at the hands of the Roman army. Their attempts to defeat their old enemy Ptolemaic Egypt were frustrated by Roman demands, contemporary sources, such as a loyalist degree from Ilium, in Greek language define the Seleucid state both as an empire and as a kingdom. Similarly, Seleucid rulers were described as kings in Babylonia and he refers to either Alexander Balas or Alexander II Zabinas as a ruler. Alexander, who conquered the Persian Empire under its last Achaemenid dynast, Darius III, died young in 323 BC. Alexanders generals jostled for supremacy over parts of his empire, Ptolemy, a former general and the satrap of Egypt, was the first to challenge the new system, this led to the demise of Perdiccas. Ptolemys revolt led to a new subdivision of the empire with the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC, Seleucus, who had been Commander-in-Chief of the Companion cavalry and appointed first or court chiliarch received Babylonia and, from that point, continued to expand his dominions ruthlessly. Seleucus established himself in Babylon in 312 BC, the used as the foundation date of the Seleucid Empire. The whole region from Phrygia to the Indus was subject to Seleucus, but Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus in consequence of a marriage contract, and received in return five hundred elephants. Following his and Lysimachus victory over Antigonus Monophthalmus at the decisive Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, Seleucus took control over eastern Anatolia, in the latter area, he founded a new capital at Antioch on the Orontes, a city he named after his father. An alternative capital was established at Seleucia on the Tigris, north of Babylon, Seleucuss empire reached its greatest extent following his defeat of his erstwhile ally, Lysimachus, at Corupedion in 281 BC, after which Seleucus expanded his control to encompass western Anatolia. He hoped further to take control of Lysimachuss lands in Europe – primarily Thrace and even Macedonia itself, nevertheless, even before Seleucus death, it was difficult to assert control over the vast eastern domains of the Seleucids. Seleucus invaded the Punjab region of India in 305 BC, confronting Chandragupta Maurya and it is said that Chandragupta fielded an army of 600,000 men and 9,000 war elephants. Archaeologically, concrete indications of Mauryan rule, such as the inscriptions of the Edicts of Ashoka, are known as far as Kandahar in southern Afghanistan and it is generally thought that Chandragupta married Seleucuss daughter, or a Macedonian princess, a gift from Seleucus to formalize an alliance. In a return gesture, Chandragupta sent 500 war elephants, an asset which would play a decisive role at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. In addition to this treaty, Seleucus dispatched an ambassador, Megasthenes, to Chandragupta, Megasthenes wrote detailed descriptions of India and Chandraguptas reign, which have been partly preserved to us through Diodorus Siculus
26.
Parthian Empire
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The Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran and Iraq. Mithridates I of Parthia greatly expanded the empire by seizing Media and Mesopotamia from the Seleucids, at its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han Empire of China, became a center of trade and commerce. The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures. For about the first half of its existence, the Arsacid court adopted elements of Greek culture, the court did appoint a small number of satraps, largely outside Iran, but these satrapies were smaller and less powerful than the Achaemenid potentates. With the expansion of Arsacid power, the seat of government shifted from Nisa to Ctesiphon along the Tigris. The earliest enemies of the Parthians were the Seleucids in the west, however, as Parthia expanded westward, they came into conflict with the Kingdom of Armenia, and eventually the late Roman Republic. Rome and Parthia competed with other to establish the kings of Armenia as their subordinate clients. The Parthians soundly defeated Marcus Licinius Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, however, Mark Antony led a counterattack against Parthia, although his successes were generally achieved in his absence, under the leadership of his lieutenant Ventidius. Also, various Roman emperors or their appointed generals invaded Mesopotamia in the course of the several Roman-Parthian Wars which ensued during the few centuries. The Romans captured the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon on multiple occasions during these conflicts, native Parthian sources, written in Parthian, Greek and other languages, are scarce when compared to Sassanid and even earlier Achaemenid sources. These include mainly Greek and Roman histories, but also Chinese histories, Parthian artwork is viewed by historians as a valid source for understanding aspects of society and culture that are otherwise absent in textual sources. The Parni most likely spoke an eastern Iranian language, in contrast to the northwestern Iranian language spoken at the time in Parthia, the latter was a northeastern province, first under the Achaemenid, and then the Seleucid empires. Why the Arsacid court retroactively chose 247 BC as the first year of the Arsacid era is uncertain, Bivar concludes that this was the year the Seleucids lost control of Parthia to Andragoras, the appointed satrap who rebelled against them. Hence, Arsaces I backdated his regnal years to the moment when Seleucid control over Parthia ceased, however, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis asserts that this was simply the year Arsaces was made chief of the Parni tribe. It is unclear who immediately succeeded Arsaces I, Bivar and Katouzian affirm that it was his brother Tiridates I of Parthia, who in turn was succeeded by his son Arsaces II of Parthia in 211 BC. Yet Curtis and Brosius state that Arsaces II was the successor of Arsaces I, with Curtis claiming the succession took place in 211 BC. Bivar insists that 138 BC, the last regnal year of Mithridates I, is the first precisely established regnal date of Parthian history, due to these and other discrepancies, Bivar outlines two distinct royal chronologies accepted by historians
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Assyria (Roman province)
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Assyria was a Roman province that lasted only two years. Assyria was one of three created by the Roman emperor Trajan in 116 AD following a successful military campaign against Parthia. Despite Romes military victory, Trajans province was plagued with difficulties from the start, in 116, a Parthian prince named Santruces organized an armed revolt by the native Assyrians in the new Roman province. During the revolt, Roman garrisons in Assyria and Mesopotamia were driven from their posts, when Trajan died in 117, his successor, Hadrian, implemented a new policy with respect to the recently acquired territories in the east. Hadrian believed that the empire was overextended, and wanted to retract Roman rule to more easily defensible borders, as a result, Hadrian evacuated Trajans three provinces in 118. Although many sources cite the creation of a province named Assyria during Trajans Parthian campaign, usually historians like Theodore Mommsen wrote that it was located north of the Roman Mesopotamia province, in Upper Mesopotamia, stretching into western Persia in actual northwestern Iran. However, other sources contend that the province was located near Armenia and east of the Tigris, in a region known as Adiabene. Hadrians withdrawal from Assyria and its provinces in 118 did not mark the end of Roman rule in this region. A second Parthian campaign was launched from 161-165 under the command of Lucius Verus, rome pursued military action against the Parthians again in 197-8 under the command of emperor Septimius Severus. Following his successful campaign, Severus instituted two new Roman provinces--Osroene and Mesopotamia—on the territories annexed by Trajan in 114-117, Severus also stationed two Roman legions in the new provinces to ensure stability and prevent against first Parthian, and later Sassanian attacks. Despite continued Roman activity in the region, no reference is made to a Roman province of Assyria following Hadrians evacuation in 118 AD. When Septimus Severus created the provinces of Osroene and Mesopotamia at the end of the 2nd century, ammianus Marcellinus also refers to a region called Assyria located between the Tigris and Euphrates, but makes no reference to a current Roman province bearing that name. Thus, it seems that the province of Assyria only existed during Trajans reign, the general area coincided with ancient Assyria however, and the Medes, Achaemenid Persians, Seleucid Greeks, Sassanids and Parthians all had similar names for the area. Asuristan Osroene Achaemenid Assyria Syria Mesopotamia History of the Assyrian people Romans in Persia Roman Armenia
28.
Sasanian Empire
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The Sasanian Empire was founded by Ardashir I, after the fall of the Parthian Empire and the defeat of the last Arsacid king, Artabanus V. According to a legend, the vexilloid of the Sasanian Empire was the Derafsh Kaviani, in many ways, the Sasanian period witnessed the peak of ancient Iranian civilization. Persia influenced Roman culture considerably during the Sasanian period, the Sasanians cultural influence extended far beyond the empires territorial borders, reaching as far as Western Europe, Africa, China and India. It played a prominent role in the formation of both European and Asian medieval art, much of what later became known as Islamic culture in art, architecture, music and other subject matter was transferred from the Sasanians throughout the Muslim world. Conflicting accounts shroud the details of the fall of the Parthian Empire, the Sassanid Empire was established in Estakhr by Ardashir I. Papak was originally the ruler of a region called Khir, however, by the year 200, he managed to overthrow Gochihr, and appoint himself as the new ruler of the Bazrangids. His mother, Rodhagh, was the daughter of the governor of Pars. Papak and his eldest son Shapur managed to expand their power all of Pars. The subsequent events are unclear, due to the nature of the sources. It is certain, however, that following the death of Papak, Ardashir, sources reveal that Shapur, leaving for a meeting with his brother, was killed when the roof of a building collapsed on him. By the year 208, over the protests of his brothers who were put to death. Once Ardashir was appointed shahanshah, he moved his capital further to the south of Pars, the city, well supported by high mountains and easily defendable through narrow passes, became the center of Ardashirs efforts to gain more power. The city was surrounded by a high, circular wall, probably copied from that of Darabgird, in a second attempt to destroy Ardashir, Artabanus V himself met Ardashir in battle at Hormozgan, where Artabanus V met his death. Following the death of the Parthian ruler, Ardashir I went on to invade the provinces of the now defunct Parthian Empire. Ardashir was aided by the geography of the province of Fars, in the next few years, local rebellions would form around the empire. Nonetheless, Ardashir I further expanded his new empire to the east and northwest, conquering the provinces of Sistan, Gorgan, Khorasan, Margiana, Balkh and he also added Bahrain and Mosul to Sassanids possessions. In the west, assaults against Hatra, Armenia and Adiabene met with less success, in 230, he raided deep into Roman territory, and a Roman counter-offensive two years later ended inconclusively, although the Roman emperor, Alexander Severus, celebrated a triumph in Rome. Ardashir Is son Shapur I continued the expansion of the empire, conquering Bactria, invading Roman Mesopotamia, Shapur I captured Carrhae and Nisibis, but in 243 the Roman general Timesitheus defeated the Persians at Rhesaina and regained the lost territories
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Neo-Assyrian Empire
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The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 612 BC. The Assyrians perfected early techniques of imperial rule, many of which became standard in later empires, the Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Old Assyrian Empire, and the Middle Assyrian Empire of the Late Bronze Age. During this period, Aramaic was also made a language of the empire. Upon the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, the empire began to due to a brutal. In 616 BC, Cyaxares king of the Medes and Persians made alliances with Nabopolassar ruler of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th centuries BC. The urbanised Akkadian speaking nation of Assyria emerged in the mid 21st century BC, during the 20th century BC, it established colonies in Asia Minor, and under the 20th century BC King Ilushuma, Assyria conducted many successful raids against the states of the south. Ashur-uballit extended Assyrian control over the farming lands of Nineveh. Tiglath-Pileser controlled the caravan routes that crossed the fertile crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Much campaigning by Tiglath-Pileser and succeeding kings was directed against Aramaean pastoralist groups in Syria, by the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Aramaean expansion had resulted in the loss of much Assyrian territory in Upper Mesopotamia. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC, Assyria was in decline for the next 150 years. The period from 1200 BC to 900 BC was an age for the entire Near East, North Africa, Caucasus, Mediterranean and Balkan regions, with great upheavals. Adad-nirari II and his successors campaigned on a basis for part of every year with an exceptionally well-organized army. He subjugated the areas previously under only nominal Assyrian vassalage, conquering and deporting Aramean and Hurrian populations in the north to far-off places. Adadinirari II then twice attacked and defeated Shamash-mudammiq of Babylonia, annexing an area of land north of the Diyala river. He made further gains over Babylonia under Nabu-shuma-ukin I later in his reign and he was succeeded by Tukulti-Ninurta II in 891 BC, who further consolidated Assyrias position and expanded northwards into Asia Minor and the Zagros Mountains during his short reign. The next king, Ashurnasirpal II, embarked on a vast program of expansion, during his rule, Assyria recovered much of the territory that it had lost around 1100 BC at the end of the Middle Assyrian period. Ashurnasirpal II also campaigned in the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran, repressing a revolt against Assyrian rule by the Lullubi, the Assyrians began boasting in their ruthlessness around this time. Ashurnasirpal II also moved his capital to the city of Kalhu, the palaces, temples and other buildings raised by him bear witness to a considerable development of wealth and art
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Adiabene
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Adiabene was an ancient kingdom in Assyria, with its capital at Arbela. Adiabenian rulers converted to Judaism from paganism in the 1st century, according to the Talmud, both Helena and Monobaz donated large funds for the Temple of Jerusalem. After 115 CE, there are no traces of Jewish royalties in Adiabne. Adiabene occupied a district in Assyria between the Upper Zab and the Lower Zab, though Ammianus speaks of Nineveh, Ecbatana, although nominally a dependency of the Parthian Empire, for some centuries, beginning with the 1st century BCE, it was independent. By the late 1st century CE, its borders extended as far as Nisibis, in the Talmudic writings the name occurs as חדייב, חדייף and הדייב, which is parallel to its Syriac form Hadyab or Hedayab. Its chief city was Arbela, where Mar Uqba had a school, or the neighboring Hazzah, in Kiddushin 72a the Biblical Habor is identified with Adiabene, but in Yerushalmi Megillah i. In the Targum to Jeremiah li,27, Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz are paraphrased by Kordu, Harmini, and Hadayab, i. e. Corduene, Armenia, and Adiabene, while in Ezekiel xxvii. 23 Harran, Caneh, and Eden are interpreted by the Aramaic translator as Harwan, Nisibis, Adiabene had a mixed population, while the Syriac language was dominant. According to Pliny, four tribes inhabited the region of Adiabene, Orontes, Alani, the account of Josephus Antiquities of the Jews shows that there was a substantial Jewish population in the kingdom, which led to the establishment of a prominent rabbinic academy in Arbela. During the Sassanid era, Persians came to the fore politically, the difficult mixing of cultures can be seen in the story of the martyrdom of Mahanuš, a prominent Iranian Zoroastrian who converted to Christianity. In later times Adiabene became an archbishopric, with the seat of the metropolitan at Arbela and it has been suggested that the royal house of Adiabene, after fleeing Trajans invasion, established the later Amatuni dynasty which ruled the area between the lakes Urmia and Van. Adiabene was a district in Mesopotamia between upper and lower Zab and was a part of the Neo Assyrian Empire and inhabited by Assyrians even after the fall of Nineveh and it was an integral part of Achaemenid Assyria and Sassanid Assyria. The region was made a part of the Roman province of Assyria after the invasion by Trajan in 116. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus states that the inhabitants of Adiabene were Assyrians, in ancient times Adiabene was an integral part of Assyria. Under the Achaemenid Persian kings, Adiabene seems for a time to have been a state of the Persian Empire. At times the throne of Adiabene was held by a member of the Achaemenid house, Ardashir III, the Ten Thousand, an army of Greek mercenaries, retreated through Adiabene on their march to the Black Sea after the Battle of Cunaxa. According to Jewish tradition, Hellena, the Queen of Adiabne converted to Judaism from paganism in the 1st century, Queen Helenas sarcophagus was discovered in 1863. According to Josephus the queen converted to Judaism together with her son Monobaz II, another tradition has it that she met a Jewish jewelry merchant in Adiabene by the name of Hanania or Eliezer, who told her about the people of Israel and persuaded her to join them
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Arabs
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Arabs are an ethnic group inhabiting the Arab world. They primarily live in the Arab states in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabs are first mentioned in the mid-ninth century BCE as a tribal people dwelling in the central Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, tradition holds that Arabs descend from Ishmael, the son of Abraham. The Arabian Desert is the birthplace of Arab, there are other Arab groups as well that spread in the land and existed for millennia. Before the expansion of the Caliphate, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic people from the northern to the central Arabian Peninsula and Syrian Desert. Presently, Arab refers to a number of people whose native regions form the Arab world due to spread of Arabs throughout the region during the early Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. The Arabs forged the Rashidun, Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphates, whose borders reached southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and this was one of the largest land empires in history. The Great Arab Revolt has had as big an impact on the modern Middle East as the World War I, the war signaled the end of the Ottoman Empire. They are modern states and became significant as distinct political entities after the fall and defeat, following adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the sovereignty of its member states. Beyond the boundaries of the League of Arab States, Arabs can also be found in the global diaspora, the ties that bind Arabs are ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical, identical, nationalist, geographical and political. The Arabs have their own customs, language, architecture, art, literature, music, dance, media, cuisine, dress, society, sports, the total number of Arabs are an estimated 450 million. This makes them the second largest ethnic group after the Han Chinese. Arabs are a group in terms of religious affiliations and practices. In the pre-Islamic era, most Arabs followed polytheistic religions, some tribes had adopted Christianity or Judaism, and a few individuals, the hanifs, apparently observed monotheism. Today, Arabs are mainly adherents of Islam, with sizable Christian minorities, Arab Muslims primarily belong to the Sunni, Shiite, Ibadi, Alawite, Druze and Ismaili denominations. Arab Christians generally follow one of the Eastern Christian Churches, such as the Maronite, Coptic Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, or Chaldean churches. Listed among the booty captured by the army of king Shalmaneser III of Assyria in the Battle of Qarqar are 1000 camels of Gi-in-di-buu the ar-ba-a-a or Gindibu belonging to the Arab
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Muslim conquest of Persia
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The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran, led to the end of the Sasanian Empire in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran. The rise of Muslims coincided with a significant political, social, economic, once a major world power, the Sasanian Empire had exhausted its human and material resources after decades of warfare against the Byzantine Empire. The internal political situation quickly deteriorated after the execution of King Khosrau II on February 28,628, subsequently, ten new claimants were enthroned within the next four years, highlighting the political instability of the Sassanians prior to the Muslim invasion. Arab Muslims first attacked the Sassanid territory in 633, when general Khalid ibn Walid invaded Mesopotamia, following the transfer of Khalid to the Byzantine front in the Levant, the Muslims eventually lost their holdings to Sassanian counterattacks. The second invasion began in 636 under Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, the Zagros mountains then became a natural barrier and border between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Sassanid Empire. Due to continuous raids by Persians into the area, Caliph Umar ordered an invasion of the Sasanian empire in 642. By 651, most of the centers in Iranian lands, with the notable exception of the Caspian provinces. Many localities fought against the invaders, ultimately, none were successful, in fact, although Arabs had established hegemony over most of the country, many cities rose in rebellion by killing the Arab governor or attacking their garrisons. Eventually, military reinforcements quashed the insurgency and imposed Islamic control, however, the Persians began to reassert themselves by maintaining Persian language and culture. Regardless, Islam was adopted by many for a multitude of reasons including by threat and extortion, for political and economic reasons, Islam would become the dominant religion late in the medieval ages. The most significant work was probably that of Arthur Christensen, and his L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published in Copenhagen, however recent scholarship, both Iranian and Western, has begun to question the traditional narrative. Another important theme of Pourshariatis study is a re-evaluation of the traditional timeline, since the 1st century BC, the border between the Roman and Parthian empires had been the Euphrates River. Most battles, and thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the regions of the north. The only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen, both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids, the Persian clients were the Lakhmids, the Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly, which kept them occupied, but that did not greatly affect the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many centuries, the Byzantine clients, the Arab Ghassanids, converted to the Monophysite form of Christianity, which was regarded as heretical by the established Byzantine Orthodox Church. The Byzantines attempted to suppress the heresy, alienating the Ghassanids, the Lakhmids also revolted against the Persian king Khusrau II. Numan III, the first Christian Lakhmid king, was deposed and killed by Khusrau II in 602, after Khusraus assassination, the Persian Empire fractured and the Lakhmids were effectively semi-independent
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Geopolitics
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Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography on international politics and international relations. Geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain and these include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated. Geopolitics focuses on power in relation to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history, academically, geopolitics analyses history and social science with reference to geography in relation to politics. Outside of academia, a variety of groups offer a geopolitical prognosis, including non-profit groups, critical geopolitics deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political/ideological functions for great powers during and after the age of imperialism. Mahan distinguished a key region of the world in the Eurasian context, namely, in this zone independent countries still survived – Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, China, and Japan. Mahan regarded those countries, located between Britain and Russia, as if between Scylla and Charybdis, of the two monsters – Britain and Russia – it was the later that Mahan considered more threatening to the fate of Central Asia. Mahan was impressed by Russias transcontinental size and strategically favorable position for southward expansion, therefore, he found it necessary for the Anglo-Saxon sea power to resist Russia. The Austro-Hungarian historian Emil Reich is considered to be the first having coined the acceptance in English as early as 1902, lea believed that while Japan moved against Far East and Russia against India, the Germans would strike at England, the center of the British Empire. He thought the Anglo-Saxons faced certain disaster from their militant opponents, sir Halford Mackinders Heartland Theory initially received little attention outside geography, but some thinkers would claim that it subsequently influenced the foreign policies of world powers. His formulation of the Heartland Theory was set out in his article entitled The Geographical Pivot of History, Mackinders doctrine of geopolitics involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies in world conflict. He saw navy as a basis of Colombian era empire, the Heartland theory hypothesized a huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland—which wouldnt need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to remain coherent. Mackinder posited that the centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy one of them in turn. Mackinder called this region the Heartland and it essentially comprised Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Western Russia, and Mitteleuropa. The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and many natural resources. Mackinders notion of geopolitics was summed up when he said, Who rules Central, who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the World, nicholas J. Spykman is both a follower and critic of geostrategists Alfred Mahan, and Halford Mackinder
34.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
35.
Seljuk Empire
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The Seljuk Empire or Great Seljuk Empire was a medieval Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire, originating from the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks. The Seljuk Empire controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia, from their homelands near the Aral sea, the Seljuks advanced first into Khorasan and then into mainland Persia before eventually conquering eastern Anatolia. The Seljuk empire was founded by Tughril Beg in 1037, Tughril was raised by his grandfather, Seljuk-Beg, who was in a high position in the Oghuz Yabgu State. Seljuk gave his name to both the Seljuk empire and the Seljuk dynasty, the Seljuks united the fractured political scene of the eastern Islamic world and played a key role in the first and second crusades. Highly Persianized in culture and language, the Seljuks also played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition, the Seljuqs were allied with the Persian Samanid shahs against the Qarakhanids. The Samanid fell to the Qarakhanids in Transoxania, however, whereafter the Ghaznavids arose, the Seljuqs became involved in this power struggle in the region before establishing their own independent base. Tughril was the grandson of Seljuq and brother of Chaghri, under whom the Seljuks wrested an empire from the Ghaznavids, initially the Seljuqs were repulsed by Mahmud and retired to Khwarezm, but Tughril and Chaghri led them to capture Merv and Nishapur. Later they repeatedly raided and traded territory with his successors across Khorasan and Balkh, in 1040 at the Battle of Dandanaqan, they decisively defeated Masud I of the Ghaznavids, forcing him to abandon most of his western territories to the Seljuqs. In 1055, Tughril captured Baghdad from the Shia Buyids under a commission from the Abbasids, arslans decisive victory at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 effectively neutralized the Byzantine resistance to the Turkish invasion of Anatolia. He authorized his Turkmen generals to carve their own out of formerly Byzantine Anatolia. Malikshāh moved the capital from Rey to Isfahan and it was during his reign that the Great Seljuk Empire reached its zenith. The Iqta military system and the Nizāmīyyah University at Baghdad were established by Nizām al-Mulk, the Abbasid Caliph titled him The Sultan of the East and West in 1087. The Seljuq power was at its zenith under Malikshāh I, the Seljuq dominion was established over the ancient Sasanian domains, in Iran and Iraq, and included Anatolia as well as parts of Central Asia and modern Afghanistan. The Seljuk rule was modelled after the organization common in Turkic and Mongol nomads. Under this organization, the member of the paramount family assigned family members portions of his domains as autonomous appanages. When Malikshāh I died in 1092, the split as his brother. Malikshāh I was succeeded in Anatolia by Kilij Arslan I, who founded the Sultanate of Rum, and in Syria by his brother Tutush I. In Persia he was succeeded by his son Mahmud I, whose reign was contested by his three brothers Barkiyaruq in Iraq, Muhammad I in Baghdad, and Ahmad Sanjar in Khorasan
36.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
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Turkish people
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Turkish people, or the Turks, also known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the speakers of Turkic languages, ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, the ethnonym Turk may be first discerned in Herodotus reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians, furthermore, during the first century AD. Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century, in these sources, Turk appears as Tujue, which referred to the Göktürks. Although Turk refers to Turkish people, it may sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples. In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers, the Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks. In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a more positive connotation. The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish Arab followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered Turks, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a Turk as anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship. Anatolia was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Paleolithic era, most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengriism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were also adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids, the Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian, under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, as the Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century the Seljuk Turks who were admirers of the Persian civilization grew in number and were able to occupy the province of the Abbasid Empire. By 1055, the Seljuk Empire captured Baghdad and began to make their first incursions into the edges of Anatolia, when the Seljuk Turks won the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in 1071, it opened the gates of Anatolia to them. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became the purveyors of the Persian culture rather than the Turkish culture, in dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade. Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, by the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region Turchia or Turkey, meaning the land of the Turks
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Ancient Near East
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The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of Near Eastern archaeology and ancient history. The ancient Near East is considered one of the cradles of civilization and it also saw the creation of the first writing system and law codes, early advances that laid the foundations of astronomy and mathematics, and the invention of the wheel. During the period, states became increasingly large, until by the end the region was controlled by military empires who had conquered a number of different cultures. The phrase ancient Near East utilizes the 19th-century distinction between Near East and Far East as global regions of interest to the British Empire, the distinction began during the Crimean War. The two theatres were described by the statesmen and advisors of the British Empire as the Near East, shortly, they were to share the stage with Middle East, which came to prevail in the 20th century and continues in modern times. Meanwhile, ancient Near East had become distinct, the Near East ruled by the Ottoman Empire ranged from Vienna to the north to the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the south, from Egypt in the west to the borders of Iraq in the east. The 19th-century archaeologists added Iran to their definition, which was never under the Ottomans, but they excluded all of Europe and, generally, Egypt, which had parts in the empire. Ancient Near East periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks, or eras, the result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on Near East periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia. It was followed by the Sumerian civilization, the late Uruk period saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age. Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, is the earliest known civilization in the world, the Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon the Great, lasted from the 24th to the 21st century BC, and was regarded by many as the worlds first Empire. The Akkadians eventually fragmented into Assyria and Babylonia, Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province. In the Old Elamite period, c.3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered on Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered on Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in the 9th to 7th centuries BC, however, the Proto-Elamite civilization existed from c.3200 BC to 2700 BC, when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms, this corresponds to the late Banesh period and this civilization is recognized as the oldest in Iran and was largely contemporary with its neighbour, the Sumerian civilization. The Proto-Elamite script is an Early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use for the ancient Elamite language before the introduction of Elamite Cuneiform, the Amorites were a nomadic Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites is associated with the West, including Syria and Canaan and they ultimately settled in Mesopotamia, ruling Isin, Larsa, and later Babylon. Assyria, after enduring a period of Mitanni domination, emerged as a great power from the accession of Ashur-uballit I in 1365 BC to the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC
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Art of Mesopotamia
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The art of Mesopotamia has survived in the archaeological record from early hunter-gatherer societies on to the Bronze Age cultures of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. These empires were later replaced in the Iron Age by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia brought significant cultural developments, including the oldest examples of writing. Cylinder seals have survived in numbers, many including complex. It saw the emergence of life in Mesopotamia, and the beginnings of Sumerian civilization. Slightly earlier, the city of Tell Brak, today in Syria, also saw urbanization. This is called the Eye Temple after the many eye idols, in fact votive offerings, found there, the stone Tell Brak Head,7 inches high, shows a simplified face, similar heads are in gypsum. These were evidently fitted to bodies that have not survived, probably of wood, like temples further south, the Eye Temple was decorated with cone mosaics made up of clay cylinders some four inches long, differently coloured to create simple patterns. Significant works from the cities in Sumer proper are the Warka Vase and Uruk Trough, with complex multi-figured scenes of humans and animals. The Guennol Lioness is an exceptionally powerful small figurine of a lion-headed monster, there are a number of stone or alabaster vessels carved in deep relief, and stone friezes of animals, both designed for temples, where the vessels held offerings. Cylinder seals are already complex and very finely executed and, as later, animals shown are often representations of the gods, another continuing feature of Mesopotamian art. The end of the period, despite being a time of economic expansion, saw a decline in the quality of art. The Early Dynastic Period is generally dated to 2900–2350 BC, while continuing many earlier trends, its art is marked by an emphasis on figures of worshippers and priests making offerings, and social scenes of worship, war and court life. Copper becomes a significant medium for sculpture, probably despite most works having later being recycled for their metal, few if any copper sculptures are as large as the Tell al-Ubaid Lintel, which is 2.59 metres wide and 1.07 metres high. Many masterpieces have also found at the Royal Cemetery at Ur. The so-called Standard of Ur, actually an inlaid box or set of panels of uncertain function, is inlaid with partly figurative designs. A group of 12 temple statues known as the Tell Asmar Hoard, now split up, show gods, priests and donor worshippers at different sizes, but all in the same highly simplified style. All have greatly enlarged inlaid eyes, but the tallest figure, the Akkadian Empire was the first to control not only all Mesopotamia, but other territories in the Levant, from about 2271 to 2154 BC. The Akkadians were not Sumerian, and spoke a Semitic language, in art there was a great emphasis on the kings of the dynasty, alongside much that continued earlier Sumerian art
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World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
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UNESCO
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. It is the heir of the League of Nations International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, UNESCO has 195 member states and nine associate members. Most of its offices are cluster offices covering three or more countries, national and regional offices also exist. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs, education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and it is also a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, on 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the work of predecessor organizations was largely interrupted by the onset of World War II. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944, a prominent figure in the initiative for UNESCO was Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCOs Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place between 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General and this change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the CICI, in how member states would work together in the organizations fields of competence. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO claiming that some of the organizations publications amounted to interference in the racial problems. South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, UNESCOs early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by missions to other countries, including, for example. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory, in 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, UNESCOs early activities in culture included, for example, the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after construction of the Aswan Dam, during the 20-year campaign,22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro, Fes, Kathmandu, Borobudur, the organizations work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978, since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 and 2005
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Armenians
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Armenians are an ethnic group native to the Armenian Highlands. Armenians constitute the population of Armenia and the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. There is a diaspora of around 5 million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry living outside of modern Armenia. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Germany, Ukraine, Lebanon, Brazil and Syria. With the exceptions of Iran and the former Soviet states, the present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian Genocide, most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian church, which is also the worlds oldest national church. Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew, in the early 4th century, the Kingdom of Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as a state religion. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, historically, the name Armenian has come to internationally designate this group of people. It was first used by neighbouring countries of ancient Armenia, the earliest attestations of the exonym Armenia date around the 6th century BC. In his trilingual Behistun Inscription dated to 517 BC, Darius I the Great of Persia refers to Urashtu as Armina (in Old Persian, Armina and Harminuya. In Greek, Αρμένιοι Armenians is attested from about the same time, xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BC. He relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians and it is also further postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. Movses Khorenatsi, the important early medieval Armenian historian, wrote that the word Armenian originated from the name Armenak or Aram, the Armenian Highland lies in the highlands surrounding Mount Ararat, the highest peak of the region. In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire, Mitanni, soon after Hayasa-Azzi were Arme-Shupria, the Nairi and the Kingdom of Urartu, who successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highland. Each of the nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people. Under Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian empire reached the Caucasus Mountains, yerevan, the modern capital of Armenia, was founded in 782 BC by king Argishti I. T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov proposed the Indo-European homeland around the Armenian Highland, eric P. Hamp in his 2012 Indo-European family tree, groups the Armenian language along with Greek and Ancient Macedonian in the Pontic Indo-European subgroup. In Hamps view the homeland of this subgroup is the northeast coast of the Black Sea and he assumes that they migrated from there southeast through the Caucasus with the Armenians remaining after Batumi while the pre-Greeks proceeded westwards along the southern coast of the Black Sea. However, fresh genetics studies explain Armenian diversity by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between ~3,000 and ~2,000 b. c
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Iraqi Turkmens
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The Iraqi Turkmens, Iraqi Turks, or Turks of Iraq are a Turkic ethnic group who mostly adhere to a Turkish heritage and identity. They form the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, after Arabs, Iraqi Turkmen mainly reside in northern Iraq and share close cultural ties with Turkey, particularly the Anatolian region. The term Turkmen seems to be a political terminology because it was first used by the British to isolate the Iraqi Turks from Turkey during the Mosul Question during the 1930s. The Iraqi Turkmens are the descendants of various waves of Turkic migration to Mesopotamia beginning from the 7th century until Ottoman rule. With the conquest of Iraq by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1534, followed by Sultan Murad IVs capture of Baghdad in 1638, a large influx of Turks settled down in the region. Most of todays Iraqi Turkmen are the descendants of the Ottoman soldiers, traders, following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Iraqi Turkmen wanted Turkey to annex the Mosul Vilayet and for them to become part of an expanded Turkish state. Although they were recognized as an entity of Iraq in the constitution of 1925. Claims of their population have ranged between 500,000 and 3 million, Iraqi Turkmens are considered to be the third largest ethnic group in Iraq. According to data from the Iraqi Ministry of Planning there was 3 million Iraqi Turkmen living in the country in 2013, the Iraqi Turkmens predominantly live in the north of Iraq, especially in Tal Afar, Mosul, Arbil, Altunkupri, Kirkuk, and Baghdad. Turkmen primarily inhabit a region stretching from northwestern Iraq to the Iraq–Iran border on the southeast, which is rich in resources. The presence of Turkic peoples in what is today Iraq first began in the 7th century when approximately 2 and they arrived in 674 with the Umayyud conquest of Basra. More Turkic troops settled during the 8th century, from Bukhara to Basra, however, it was the wider migration of the Oghuz Turks towards Anatolia which took place at the end of the ninth century that established a substantial Iraqi Turkmen presence. Successive waves of immigration continued under the rule of the Seljuk Turks who assumed positions of military, the second wave of Turkmen to descend on Iraq were the Turks of the Great Seljuq Empire. Large scale migration of the Turkmen in Iraq occurred in 1055 with the invasion of Sultan Tuğrul Bey, the ruler of the Seljuk dynasty. The third wave, and largest, arose during the Ottoman Empire, by the first half of the sixteenth century the Ottomans had begun their expansion into Iraq, waging wars against their arch rival, the Persian Safavids. The Ottomans encouraged migration from Anatolia and the settlement of immigrant Turkmen along northern Iraq, with loyal Turkmen inhabiting the area, the Ottomans were able to maintain a safe route through to the southern provinces of Mesopotamia. Once the new governor was appointed, the town was to be composed of 1,000 foot soldiers, however, war broke out after 89 years of peace and the city was besieged and finally conquered by Abbas the Great in 1624. The Persians ruled the city until 1638 when a massive Ottoman force, led by Sultan Murad IV, in 1639, the Treaty of Zuhab was signed that gave the Ottomans control over Iraq and ended the military conflict between the two empires
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Yazidis
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The Yazidis are an ethnically Kurdish religious community or an ethno-religious group indigenous to northern Mesopotamia who are strictly endogamous. Their religion, Yazidism is linked to ancient Mesopotamian religions and combines aspects of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, Yazidis who marry non-Yazidis are automatically considered to be converted to the religion of their spouse and therefore are not permitted to call themselves Yazidis. They live primarily in the Nineveh Province of Iraq, additional communities in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, and Syria have been in decline since the 1990s as a result of significant migration to Europe, especially to Germany. The Yazidis cultural practices are observably Kurdish, and almost all speak Kurmanji. The Yazidis are monotheists, believing in God as creator of the world, which he has placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. This belief has been linked by some people to Sufi mystical reflections on Iblis, persecution of Yazidis has continued in their home communities within the borders of modern Iraq, under fundamentalist Sunni Muslim revolutionaries. On 7 April 2007 a crowd of up to 2000 Yazidi stoned 17-year-old Iraqi of the Yazidi faith Dua Khalil Aswad to death, rumors that the stoning was connected to her alleged conversion to Islam prompted reprisals against Yazidis by Sunnis, including the 2007 Mosul massacre. Beginning in August 2014, the Yazidis were targeted by the Islamic State of Iraq, historically, the Yazidis lived primarily in communities in locales that are in present-day Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, and also had significant numbers in Armenia, Georgia and Iran. However, events since the 20th century have resulted in considerable demographic shift in these areas as well as mass emigration, as a result, population estimates are unclear in many regions, and estimates of the size of the total population vary. The bulk of the Yazidi population lives in Iraq, where make up an important minority community. Estimates of the size of these vary significantly, between 70,000 and 500,000. They are particularly concentrated in northern Iraq in the Nineveh Province, the two biggest communities are in Shekhan, northeast of Mosul, and in Sinjar, at the Syrian border 80 kilometres west of Mosul. In Shekhan is the shrine of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir at Lalish, during the 20th century, the Shekhan community struggled for dominance with the more conservative Sinjar community. The demographic profile has changed considerably since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. Yazidis in Syria live primarily in two communities, one in the Al-Jazira area and the other in the Kurd-Dagh, population numbers for the Syrian Yazidi community are unclear. In 1963, the community was estimated at about 10,000, according to the national census, there may be between about 12,000 and 15,000 Yazidis in Syria today, though more than half of the community may have emigrated from Syria since the 1980s. Estimates are further complicated by the arrival of as many as 50,000 Yazidi refugees from Iraq during the Iraq War, the Kurdish Yazidi community of Turkey declined precipitously during the 20th century. By 1982, the community had decreased to about 30,000, most of them have immigrated to Europe, particularly Germany, those who remain reside primarily in their former heartland of Tur Abdin
Iraq
Iraqi Kurdistan
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