1.
Book of Esther
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The Book of Esther, also known in Hebrew as the Scroll, is a book in the third section of the Jewish Tanakh and in the Christian Old Testament. It relates the story of a Hebrew woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, the story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice, once in the evening and again the following morning. Esther is the book in the Bible that does not explicitly mention God. The biblical Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Susa in the year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus. Assuming that Ahasuerus is indeed Xerxes I, the events described in Esther began around the years 483–482 BCE, and concluded in March 473 BCE. The Book of Esther consists of an introduction in chapters 1 and 2, the action in chapters 3 to 9,19. The plot is structured around banquets, a word that occurs twenty times in Esther and only 24 times in the rest of the Hebrew bible. This is appropriate given that Esther describes the origin of a Jewish feast, the feast of Purim, the books theme, rather, is the reversal of destiny through a sudden and unexpected turn of events, the Jews seem destined to be destroyed, but instead are saved. The story begins with Ahasuerus, ruler of the Persian Empire, holding a banquet, initially for his court and dignitaries and afterwards for all inhabitants of the capital city. On the seventh day, Ahasuerus orders the queen, Vashti, to come, furious, Ahasuerus has her removed from her position and makes arrangements to choose a new queen from a selection of beautiful young women from throughout the empire. One of these is the Jewish orphan, Esther, after the death of her parents, she was fostered by her cousin, Mordecai. She finds favour in the Kings eyes, and is crowned his new queen, shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two courtiers, Bigthan and Teresh, to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecais service to the King is duly recorded, Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy. Mordecai, who sits at the gates, falls into Hamans disfavour. Having discovered that Mordecai is Jewish, Haman plans to not just Mordecai. She invites him to a feast in the company of Haman, during the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening. Meanwhile, Haman is again offended by Mordecai and, at his wifes suggestion, has a built to hang him. Ahasuerus is informed that Mordecai never received any recognition for this, to his surprise and horror, the King instructs Haman to do so to Mordecai
2.
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
3.
Hamadan
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Hamadān or Hamedān is the capital city of Hamadan Province of Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 473,149, Hamadan is believed to be among the oldest Iranian cities and one of the oldest in the world. It is possible that it was occupied by the Assyrians in 1100 BCE, Hamadan has a green mountainous area in the foothills of the 3, 574-meter Alvand Mountain, in the midwest part of Iran. The city is 1,850 meters above sea level, the special nature of this old city and its historic sites attract tourists during the summer to this city, located approximately 360 kilometres southwest of Tehran. The main symbols of city are the Ganj Nameh inscription, the Avicenna monument. The majority of the population is Persian, however, there is a considerable Azerbaijani minority, according to Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Hamadan is a very old city. Hamadan was established by the Medes and was the capital of the Median Empire and it then became one of several capital cities of the Achaemenid Dynasty. Hamadan is mentioned in the book of Ezra as the place where a scroll was found giving the Jews permission from King Darius to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Its ancient name of Ecbatana is used in the Ezra text, because it was a mile above sea level, it was a good place to preserve leather documents. During the Parthian era, Ctesiphon was the capital of the country, after the Parthians, the Sassanids constructed their summer palaces in Hamadan. In the year 633 the battle of Nahavand took place and Hamadan fell into the hands of the Muslim Arabs, during the Buwayhids, the city suffered much damage. In the 11th century, the Seljuks shifted their capital from Baghdad to Hamadan, the city of Hamadan, its fortunes following the rise and fall of regional powers, was completely destroyed during the Timurid invasion. During the Safavid era, the city thrived, Hamadan stands on the Silk Road, and even in recent centuries the city enjoyed strong commerce and trade as a result of its location on the main road network in the western region of Persia and Iran. During World War I, the city was the scene of fighting between Russian and Turko-German forces. It was occupied by both armies, and finally by the British, before it was returned to control of the Iranian government at the end of the war in 1918, Hamadan province lies in a temperate mountainous region to the east of Zagros. The vast plains of the north and northeast of the province are influenced by strong winds, the various air currents of this region are, the north and north west winds of the spring and winter seasons, which are usually humid and bring rainfall. Hamadan is in the vicinity of the Alvand mountains and has a dry continental climate, in transition with a cold semi-arid climate. In fact, it is one of the coldest cities in Iran, the temperature may drop below −30 °C on the coldest days
4.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
5.
Judaism
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Judaism encompasses the religion, philosophy, culture and way of life of the Jewish people. Judaism is an ancient monotheistic Abrahamic religion, with the Torah as its text, and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the relationship that God established with the Children of Israel. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth-largest religion in the world, Judaism includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be nontheistic, today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between groups are their approaches to Jewish law, the authority of the Rabbinic tradition. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditional interpretation of Judaisms requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced Jewish law, today, these still exist. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, the history of Judaism spans more than 3,000 years. Judaism has its roots as a religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Judaism is considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions, the Hebrews and Israelites were already referred to as Jews in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title Children of Israel. Judaisms texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam, many aspects of Judaism have also directly or indirectly influenced secular Western ethics and civil law. Jews are a group and include those born Jewish and converts to Judaism. In 2015, the world Jewish population was estimated at about 14.3 million, Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism, the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of humankind. According to the Tanakh, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation, many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God, that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate Gods concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to one another, that is. These commandments are but two of a corpus of commandments and laws that constitute this covenant, which is the substance of Judaism
6.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
7.
Ahasuerus
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Ahasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and Apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three rulers, the same name is also applied uncertainly to a Babylonian official noted in the Book of Tobit. The original name was Old Persian Xšayārša and this became Babylonian Achshiyarshu, borrowed into Hebrew as אחשורוש ʼĂḥašwērôš, and thence into Latin as Ahasuerus, the form traditionally used in English Bibles. The Persian name was rendered in Ancient Greek as Ξέρξης Xérxēs. Many newer English translations and paraphrases of the Bible have used the name Xerxes, Ahasuerus is given as the name of the King of Persia in the Book of Esther. 19th century Bible commentaries generally identified him with Xerxes I of Persia, the Greek version of the Book of Esther refers to him as Artaxerxes, and the historian Josephus relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks. Similarly, the Vulgate, the Midrash of Esther Rabba, I,3, the Ethiopic text calls him Arťeksis, usually the Ethiopic equivalent of Artaxerxes. John of Ephesus and Bar-Hebraeus identified him as Artaxerxes II, a strongly supported by the 20th century scholar Jacob Hoschander. Indeed, an inscription from the time of Artaxerxes II records that he was known as Arshu understood to be a shortening of the Babylonian form Achshiyarshu derived from the Persian Khshayarsha. On his accession however Artaxerxes II lost Egypt to pharaoh Amyrtaeus after which it wasnt part of the Persian empire anymore, in his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus as Artaxerxes III who in agreement with Esther 1,1 reconcurred Egypt. Ahasuerus is also given as the name of a King of Persia in the Book of Ezra, modern commentators associate him with Xerxes I who reigned from 486 BC until 465 BC. Other identifications have been made for Cambyses II or with Bardiya who reigned for seven months between Cambyses II and Darius I, the Elephantine papyri mention the high priest Johanan as a contemporary of Darius II. The book of Ezra mentions him as a contemporary of the king who succeeded Darius, Ahasuerus is given as the name of the father of Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel. Thus this Ahasuerus is commonly identified with Astyages and he is alternatively identified, together with the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit, as Cyaxares I, said to be the father of Astyages. Views differ on how to reconcile the sources in this case, one view is that the description of Ahasuerus as the father of Darius the Mede should be understood in the broader sense of forebear or ancestor. In the book of Daniel the kings name changes from king of the Chaldeans = Babylonians to king of the Persians which also occurred between the kingships of Darius I and Xerxes. Furthermore the 120 satraps mentioned in Daniel 6,1 can be translated as 20 tribute owing satraps through who Darius I devided his kingdom, suggesting Ahasuerus refers to Darius Is father Hystaspes. A traditional Catholic view is that he is identical to the Ahasuerus of Daniel 9,1 In the Codex Sinaiticus Greek edition, other Septuagint texts have the name Achiachar
8.
Purim
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Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, who was planning to kill all the Jews. This took place in the ancient Achaemenid Persian Empire, the story is recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing, Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar, the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. Today, only Jerusalem and a few other cities celebrate Purim on the 15th of Adar. At this feast Ahasuerus gets thoroughly drunk, and at the prompting of his courtiers, orders his wife Vashti to display her beauty before the nobles and populace and her refusal prompts Ahasuerus to have her removed from her post. Ahasuerus then orders all young women to be presented to him, one of these is Esther, who was orphaned at a young age and was being fostered by her first cousin Mordecai. Some rabbinic commentators state that she was actually Mordecais wife, since the Torah permits an uncle to marry his niece and she finds favor in the kings eyes, and is made his new wife. Esther does not reveal her origins and that she is Jewish, shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two courtiers Bigthan and Teresh to kill Ahasuerus. They are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecais service to the king is recorded in the record of the court. Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy, Mordecai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into Hamans disfavor as he refuses to bow down to him. Having found out that Mordecai is Jewish, Haman plans to not just Mordecai. Obtaining Ahasuerus permission and funds to execute this plan, he casts lots to choose the date on which to do this – the thirteenth of the month of Adar. Esther discovers what has transpired, there follows an exchange of messages between her and Mordecai, with Hatach, one of the servants, as the intermediary. Mordecai requests that she intercede with the king on behalf of the embattled Jews, she replies that nobody is allowed to approach the king, under penalty of death. Esther has a change of heart, says she will fast and pray for three days and will approach the king to seek his help, despite the law against doing so. She also requests that Mordecai tell all Jews of Shushan to fast, on the third day, she seeks an audience with Ahasuerus, during which she invites him to a feast in the company of Haman. During the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening, Ahasuerus asks whether anything was done for Mordecai and is told that he received no recognition for saving the kings life. Just then, Haman appears, and King Ahasuerus asks him what should be done for the man that the wishes to honor
9.
Ishtar
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Ishtar is the Mesopotamian East Semitic goddess of fertility, love, war, sex, and power. She is the counterpart to the earlier attested Sumerian Inanna, and the cognate for the later attested Northwest Semitic Aramean goddess Astarte, and the Armenian goddess Astghik. Ishtar was an important deity in Mesopotamian religion which was extant from c.3500 BCE, Ishtar symbolizes love, including that between human and animals, its power, and its danger. Ishtar was the daughter of Anu and she was particularly worshipped in the Upper Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, particularly at the cities of Nineveh, Ashur and Arbela, and also in the south Mesopotamian city of Uruk. Besides the lions on her gate, her symbol is an eight-pointed star, in the Babylonian pantheon, she was the divine personification of the planet Venus. Ishtar had many lovers, however, as Guirand notes, Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured, the fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them. Animals, enslaved by love, lost their native vigour, they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them, thou has loved the lion, mighty in strength, says the hero Gilgamesh to Ishtar, and thou hast dug for him seven and seven pits. Thou hast loved the steed, proud in battle, and destined him for the halter, the goad, even for the gods Ishtars love was fatal. In her youth the goddess had loved Tammuz, god of the harvest and her cult may have involved sacred prostitution, though this is debatable. Guirand referred to her holy city Uruk as the town of the sacred courtesans, one of the most famous myths about Ishtar describes her descent to the underworld. I will bring up the dead to eat the living, and the dead will outnumber the living. The gatekeeper hurried to tell Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal told the gatekeeper to let Ishtar enter, but according to the ancient decree. The gatekeeper let Ishtar into the underworld, opening one gate at a time, at each gate, Ishtar had to shed one article of clothing. When she finally passed the seventh gate, she was naked, in a rage, Ishtar threw herself at Ereshkigal, but Ereshkigal ordered her servant Namtar to imprison Ishtar and unleash sixty diseases against her. After Ishtar descended to the underworld, all activity ceased on earth. The god Papsukal reported the situation to Ea, the king of the gods, Ea created an intersex being called Asu-shu-namir and sent them to Ereshkigal, telling them to invoke the name of the great gods against her and to ask for the bag containing the waters of life. Ereshkigal was enraged when she heard Asu-shu-namirs demand, but she had to them the water of life. Asu-shu-namir sprinkled Ishtar with this water, reviving her, then, Ishtar passed back through the seven gates, getting one article of clothing back at each gate, and was fully clothed as she exited the last gate
10.
Book of Daniel
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The Book of Daniel is a biblical apocalypse, combining a prophecy of history with an eschatology which is both cosmic in scope and political in its focus. In more mundane language, it is an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, in the Hebrew Bible it is found in the Ketuvim, while in Christian Bibles it is grouped with the Major Prophets. Its message is that just as the God of Israel saved Daniel and his friends from their enemies, the book divides into two parts, a set of six court tales in chapters 1–6 followed by four apocalyptic visions in chapters 7–12. The literary structure of the book of Daniel is marked by three prominent features, the most fundamental is a genre division between the court tales of chapters 1–6 and the apocalyptic visions of 7–12. The second is a division between the Hebrew of chapters 1 and 8–12, and the Aramaic of chapters 2–7. This language division is reinforced by the arrangement of the Aramaic chapters. Various suggestions have been made by scholars to explain the fact that the division does not coincide with the other two. It should also be noted that the settings of chapters 1–6 show a progression from Babylonian to Median times. Among them are Daniel and his three companions, who refuse to touch the food and wine for fear of defilement. They are allowed to continue to refrain from eating the kings food, in the second year of his reign Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. When he wakes up, he realizes that he forgot the content of the dream and he then demands that his wise men tell him its content. When the wise men protest that this is beyond the power of any man, he sentences all, including Daniel and his friends, to death. Daniel explains the dream to the king, the statue symbolized four successive kingdoms, starting with Nebuchadnezzar, all of which would be crushed by Gods kingdom, which would endure forever. Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges the supremacy of Daniels god, raises him over all his wise men, Daniels companions Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to bow to King Nebuchadnezzars golden statue and are thrown into a fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar is astonished to see a figure in the furnace with the three, one with the appearance like a son of the gods. So the king called the three to come out of the fire, and blessed the God of Israel, and decreed that any who blasphemed against him should be torn limb from limb. Nebuchadnezzar recounts a dream of a tree that is suddenly cut down at the command of a heavenly messenger. Daniel is summoned and interprets the dream, the tree is Nebuchadnezzar himself, who for seven years will lose his mind and live like a wild beast
11.
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
12.
Akkadian
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Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the writing system, which was originally used to write the unrelated Ancient Sumerian. The language was named after the city of Akkad, a centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire. The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a sprachbund, Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from around the mid 3rd-millennium BC. From the second half of the third millennium BC, texts written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the second millennium BC, two variant forms of the language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively, for centuries, Akkadian was the native language in Mesopotamian nations such as Assyria and Babylonia. However, it began to decline during the Neo-Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC, by the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD, Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages, a family native to East Africa, which then spread to West, Northwest and Northeast Africa. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup and this novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana, other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic have the prepositions bi/bə and li/lə. The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown, in contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative, ḫ. Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages, until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated. Old Akkadian is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.2500 BC and it was written using cuneiform, a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the cuneiform script could represent either Sumerian logograms, Sumerian syllables, Akkadian syllables. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum, additionally, this sign was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ, do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities, nor is there any coordination in the other direction, the syllable -ša-, for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA, but also by the sign NĪĜ. Both of these are used for the same syllable in the same text
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