1.
Rojava
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On 17 March 2016, its de facto administration self-declared the establishment of a federal system of government as the Federation of Northern Syria–Rojava. While entertaining some foreign relations, the NSR is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state or organization. The protagonists of the NSR consider its constitution a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, the updated December 2016 constitution of the polity uses the name Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria. Also known as Western Kurdistan or Syrian Kurdistan, Rojava is regarded by Kurdish nationalists as one of the four parts of Kurdistan. However, Rojava is polyethnic and home to sizable ethnic Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Turkmen populations and this diversity is mirrored in its constitution, society and politics. Rojava lies to the west of the Tigris along the Turkish border and it is composed of three cantons, Jazira, Kobanî, Afrin Canton, as well as the proposed Shahba region. Jazira Canton borders Iraqi Kurdistan to the southeast, other borders are fluid in the Syrian Civil War. All cantons are at latitude approximately 36 and a half degrees north and they are relatively flat except for the Kurd Mountains in Afrin Canton. In terms of governorates of Syria, Rojava is formed from most of al-Hasakah Governorate and the parts of Raqqa Governorate. Rojava is part of the Fertile Crescent, and includes archaeological sites dating to the Neolithic, in antiquity, the area was part of the Mitanni kingdom, its centre being the Khabur river valley in modern-day Jazira Canton. It was then part of Assyria for a long time, the last surviving Assyrian imperial records, from between 604 BC and 599 BC, were found in and around the Assyrian city of Dūr-Katlimmu in what is now Jazira Canton. Later it was ruled by the Achaemenids, Hellenes, Artaxiads, Romans, Parthians, Sasanians, Byzantines, Kurdish settlement in Syria goes back to before the Crusades of the 11th century. A number of Kurdish military and feudal settlements from before this period have been found in Syria, such settlements have been found in the Alawite and north Lebanese mountains and around Hama and its surroundings. The Crusade fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, which is known in Arabic as Hisn al-Akrad, was originally a Kurdish military settlement before it was enlarged by the French Crusaders, similarly, the Kurd-Dagh has been inhabited by Kurds for more than a millennium. The Kurdish regiments that accompanied Saladin established self-ruled areas in and around Damascus and these settlements evolved into the Kurdish sections of Damascus of Hayy al-Akrad and the Salhiyya districts located in the north-east of Damasacus on Mount Qasioun. The Kurdish community’s role in the continued under the Ottomans. Kurdish soldiers and policeman from city were tasked with maintaining order and protecting the pilgrims’ route toward Mecca. Many Kurds from Syria’s rural hinterland joined the local Janissary corp in Damascus, later, Kurdish migrants from diverse areas, such as Diyarbakir, Mosul and Kirkuk, also joined these military units which caused an expansion of the Kurdish community in the city
2.
Ibrahim Hananu
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Ibrahim Hananu or Ibrahim Hanano was an Ottoman municipal official and later a leader of a revolt against the French presence in northern Syria. He was an Constantinople-educated member of a landholding family of Kurdish origin in northern Syria. Hananu was born in Kafr Takharim, he was born to a family of Kurdish ancestry. There was, however, some dispute in his birth date, one source says that he born in 1879, and another source says that he born in 1869. He studied at the Imperial High School in Aleppo and continued his studies at the Ottoman Law Academy of the prestigious Mülkiye school in Constantinople. As a student he joined the Committee of Union and Progress, upon graduation, Hananu briefly taught at the military academy. Later, he joined the bureaucracy of the Ottoman Empire, only to retire, supposedly, he also joined the secret nationalist society al-Fatat, though there is no corroborating evidence for this. Along with many of the prominent merchants in Aleppo, Hananu became associated with the League of National Defense and the Arab Club of Aleppo. Hananu was responsible for the disarmament of many French troops, the destruction of railroads and telegraph lines, the sabotage of tanks, and the foiling of French attacks on Aleppo. He received aid from the Turkish nationalist movement of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Hananu was a smart leader, he called out some people from his village that he trust to make the first fighting group in the north, and they called it The National Defense Association. The association has made an impact, so Hananu decided to add more people. After that the number of militant in kafr Takharem reached 50 men, in July 23,1920, when the French army attacked Aleppo, Hananu forced to retreat back to his village kafr takharem. As a consequence he began to reorganize the movement with Najeb Awad. The rebels decided to make civilian government based in Armanaz, furthermore, the government entrusted to organize the financial and economic issues for the revolution. Hananu traveled to turkey after making the government in order to ask for help against the French colonialism. In 1922 Ibrahim Hananu was arrested and presented to the French military criminal court on charges of criminal acts, one of the best lawyers at that time, Fathallah Saqqal defended Hananu, advocated for Hananus innocence, and argued that Hananu was a political opponent not a criminal. When the head of the council asked Hananu, the Syrian people didnt ask you for a revolution. Saadallah al-Jabiri stood up and said We asked him to fight you, after signing the treaty, Hananu was forced to be under house arrest, and his movements were monitored by the French intelligence
3.
Husni al-Za'im
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Husni al-Zaim was a Syrian military man and politician. Husni al-Zaim, whose family is of mixed Turkish and Kurdish ancestry, had been an officer in the Ottoman Army, after France instituted its colonial mandate over Syria after the First World War, he became an officer in the French Army. After Syrias independence in 1946 he was made Chief of Staff, the defeat of the Arab league forces in that war shook Syria and undermined confidence in the countrys chaotic parliamentary democracy. On 30 March 1949, al-Zaim seized power in a bloodless coup détat, there are highly controversial allegations that the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency engineered the coup, most of the evidence currently available suggests that the decision to initiate a coup was Zaims alone, but Zaim benefited from some degree of American assistance in planning the operation. Syrias President, Shukri al-Kuwatli, was imprisoned, but then released into exile in Egypt. Al-Zaim also imprisoned many political leaders, such as Munir al-Ajlani, the coup was carried out with discreet backing of the American embassy, and possibly assisted by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, although al-Zaim himself is not known to have been a member. Among the officers that assisted al-Zaims takeover was Adib al-Shishakli and Sami al-Hinnawi, two more would follow in August and December 1949. He made an overture to Israel offering to settle 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria, in exchange for border modifications along the cease fire line. Settling the refugees was made conditional on sufficient outside assistance for the Syrian economy, the overture was answered very slowly by Jerusalem and not treated seriously. Lacking popular support, al-Zaim was overthrown after just four and a half months by his colleagues, al-Shishakli, as al-Hinnawi took power as leader of a military junta, Husni al-Zaim was swiftly spirited away to Mezze prison in Damascus, and executed along with Prime Minister Muhsin al-Barazi. Al-Zaim worked hard to abolish wearing the fez, claiming that it was outdated headwear taken from the days of the Ottoman Empire and he is credited for giving support to womens the right to vote and run for public office in Syria. The law had been debated at the Syrian Parliament since 1920 and no leader dared to support it, once, senior Muslim clerics demanded an audience with the president, objecting to the increasingly liberal lifestyle being promoted by Syrian women. One issue of concern was the mixing of men and women at the Grand Hotel in Bludan. Zaim said yes, granting them an audience at the same hotel. When the clerics walked in that evening, he had them seated around a table, then snapped at one of the waiters, Please prepare dinner, bring the whiskey. Zaim looked back at his guests, who were horrified at his attitude, during the 137 days of his rule in Syria, however, Husni al-Zaim never executed anybody. He did have creative ways of punishing those who disobeyed him, when the quality of bread dropped to unacceptable levels, Zaim ordered all bakers to walk on the gravel, barefoot, until blood flowed from their feet
4.
Ata Bey al-Ayyubi
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Ata Bey al-Ayyubi was an Ottoman civil servant. Born to a prominent political family in Damascus, Syria, he studied public administration in Istanbul, in 1908, he became Governor of Latakia, a city on the Syrian coast. He took no part in the Ottoman-Arab conflict during the years 1916–1918, in July 1920, Prime Minister Ala al-Din Droubi appointed him Minister of the interior. This was during the rule of King Feisal I of Syria, Ayyubi held office in the wake of the French occupation of Syria. He established links with local nationalists and smuggled arms and funds to Saleh al-Ali, leader of the revolt in the Syrian coast, and Ibrahim Hananu, leader of the Aleppo Revolt. In Latakia, he turned an eye to the activities of Omar al-Bitar, refusing, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior, to arrest the rebels. He was also minister during the famous Battle of Maysalun where the Syrian army was defeated by the French army of General Henri Gouraud, ayyubis colleague General Yusuf al-Azmah, the Minister of War, was killed in combat. In August 1920, a group of armed men tried to kill Ayyubi in the province of Hawran in southern Syria and they accused him of treason for accepting office under the French Mandate. In 1928, Ayyubi allied himself with the National Bloc, the leading anti-French movement in Syria, the Bloc called for the liberation of Syria through diplomatic means rather than armed resistance. Meanwhile, Ayyubi remained on cordial relations with French authorities, during the 1930s, he served as an intermediary between both sides. In March 1934, he became Minister of Justice in the cabinet of Prime Minister Taj al-Din al-Hasani. Relations between the Bloc and the French deteriorated sharply in 1936, and Bloc leaders called on the nation to go on strike, the strike crippled commercial life, while hundreds of Syrians were arrested or beaten by the French Army. The ordeal, which lasted for sixty days, embarrassed France before the international community, the new prime minister managed to form a coalition cabinet that included elements from the National Bloc and the pro-French movement. When the Bloc returned from France in September 1936, Ayyubi resigned from office and this agreemend was ratified by the Syrians but later refused by the French, who feared losing an important colony in the Arab world if World War II broke out in Europe. In March 1943, during World War II, the French General Charles de Gaulle led an Allied offensive into Syria to defeat the Vichy forces stationed in Damascus, Ayyubi became prime minister for another transition period and also appointed himself Minister of Foreign Affairs, Defense and Interior. He supervised presidential elections and left office in August 1943 when President Shukri al-Quwatli came to power and he resigned from political life but was honored by the National Bloc when independence was achieved in April 1946. He was hailed as a moderate and a dedicated nationalist and he is most remembered in Damascus today because of his great palace in the Afif neighborhood and a street named in his honor. Syria and the French Mandate Moubayed, Sami
5.
Muhsin al-Barazi
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Muhsin al-Barazi was a Syrian lawyer, academic and politician. He served a term as a Prime Minister of Syria in 1949 and was executed after a coup détat overthrew his government. Al-Barazi was born into a prominent Syrian land-owning family from Hama, educated in France, he obtained a law degree from the University of Paris in 1930 and later became a professor of law at Damascus University. In 1933 he founded, along with a number of influential Arab thinkers, other founding members included the historian and professor Constantin Zureiq, the philosopher Zaki al-Arsuzi and the politician Sabri al-Assali. The League was very successful in Syria and Lebanon, and called for the abolition of the French and British mandates, between April and September 1941, al-Barazi served as minister of education in the first cabinet of Khalid al-Azm. President Shukri al-Quwatli appointed him as his assistant in 1943 and by 1946. He served as legal consultant, speechwriter, confidant and personal envoy to other countries. In March 1949, the government was overthrown by a military coup led by military Chief of Staff Husni al-Zaim. Al-Barazi was the one of al-Quwatlis associates who retained his position. In July 1949, al-Zaim appointed al-Barazi as the new prime minister, al-Barazi used his extensive connections with Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon to garner support for the al-Zaim regime. The talks reached advanced levels and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett contacted al-Barazi on 6 August 1949 to discuss a date for formal peace talks. In return, Lebanon gave vocal support to the al-Zaim regime, the execution of Saadeh, and al-Zaims role in handing him over, antagonized the group of SSNP officers who later brought about al-Zaims downfall. Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, along several other SSNP officers, led a coup détat that overthrew the al-Zaim regime on 14 August 1949. Al-Zaim and al-Barazi were both rounded up in the hours of the dawn and executed by a firing squad at the Military Barracks. His granddaughter, Arwa Damon is CNN Senior International Correspondent
6.
Fawzi Selu
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Fawzi Selu was a Syrian military leader, politician and head of state. He studied at the Homs Military Academy and joined the French-sponsored Troupe Speciales that was created when France imposed its League of Nations mandate on Syria in July 1920. He had a military career, and when Syria became fully independent in 1946. He was given a command in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War where he became close to chief of staff Husni al-Zaim, however Zaim was overthrown and killed, and civilian rule was restored with the administration of the nationalist Hashim al-Atassi. Atassi upheld the agreement, but refused to consider peace with Israel. Selu then allied himself with military strongman general Adib al-Shishakli, who contrived to have Selu appointed minister of defense in three cabinets under president Atassi. Shishakli finally launched a coup in November 1951, but could not persuade the popular Atassi to stay on as president, who resigned in protest. As a result, Shishakli appointed Selu as president, prime minister and chief of staff, the two men ran a police state and suppressed virtually all opposition. Under the direction of Shishakli, Selu improved relations with Jordan, opening the first Syrian embassy in Amman and he also sought better relations with Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. On July 11,1953 Shishakli finally dispensed with Selu and appointed himself as president, Selu fled to Saudi Arabi and became an advisor to King Saud and then his brother King Faisal. When Shishakli was overthrown in February 1954, a court in Damascus charged Selu with corruption, misuse of office. He was sentenced to death in absentia, sami Moubayed Steel & Silk, Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000
7.
Muna Wassef
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Muna Wassef is a Syrian stage, film and television actress. She was born on 1 February 1942, as Muna Mustafa Wassef Jelmran and she is also a United Nations Goodwill ambassador. Wassef is an icon in the Arab world and the Middle East, Wassef had become the highest-paid actress in the Arab World since the end of the 1970s until the year 2000, now she is one of the highest-paid actresses. Wassef is the first Syrian woman to receive the Syrian Order of Merit-Excellent Degree in 2009, Muna Wassef was born in 1942 in Damascus. Her mother was Christian and her father was a kurd When she was 15 she worked as a cotton candy seller in the streets of Damascus, although Wassef did not finish high school, she educated herself and learned to present the majority of her works in Standard Arabic. She studied masterpieces of literature, Quranic Tajwid and Tartil. She traveled to East Germany in 1973 where she took acting courses at the Brecht theater, working with the Syrian Military Theater allowed her to develop her acting skills further. In 1960, Wassef submitted herself for a contest in which they chose actresses for the Military theater and she worked and learned there for about 2 years. In 1963 she married the Army General Muhammad Shahin, who was a director as well. She worked in the symposium of Art and Thought which was sponsored by Dr. in presenting Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice in 1963, in 1964 she joined the Group for Dramatic Arts and starred in stage productions of the National Theater, productions such as Molières Don Juan. This signaled the beginning of an important stage in her career. In theater, Muna Wassef, has starred in more than 25 plays by Arab and her first play was Al Etr Al Akhdar wics. After that, she performed plays in the Military Theatre inside the military units including. Every year Wassef stars in at least two or three TV series, the television series also stars Syrian actors Taim Hasan, Sabah Mubarak, Hasan Awaytti and Basil Khayat and is directed by Hatem Ali and written by Hany El-Saady. The series is a major TV production and it was produced by Dubai Media Incorporated. Its estimated cost is over $6 million, so far it is the most expensive Arabic TV production ever, and it was released in September 2008. In Ramadan 2009 Muna Wassef takes over the Arab television and she stars in 4 huge productions. The main one is the most watched TV show in the Arab World ever and she plays the role of a Christian woman who leads the female revolution in Damascus
8.
Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti
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Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti was a notable Sunni Muslim scholar who was also known as Shaykh of the Levant. He was killed on 21 March 2013, during the Syrian civil war, reportedly in a bomb explosion, other than his religious works, he also has worked in literature. For instance, he translated Mam and Zin, the famous Kurdish story, Al-Bouti was born on the Boutan Island in 1929 in the village of Ayn Dewar in Syria near Turkey, when his cleric father Mulla Ramadan fled Kemalist repression and sought refuge in Damascus. Al-Bouti came from a Kurdish tribe that resided in many regions across Syria, Iraq, the family immigrated to Damascus when Al-Bouti was four years old. Al-Bouti was soon enrolled in education in Damascus. At the age of eleven, Bouti studied the Quran and Muhammads biography with Shaykh Hasan Habannakah, later when the mosque was transformed into the Institute of Islamic Orientation, he studied Quran exegesis, logic, rhetoric and the fundamental principles of Islamic law until 1953. In 1954 he traveled to Cairo to complete his studies at Al-Azhar. Al-Bouti started his teaching at a secondary school in Homs between 1958 and 1961. He was appointed lecturer at the Faculty of Sharia at the University of Damascus in 1960 and he went to Al Azhar University for a doctorate in Shariah and received his doctorate in 1965. He returned as an instructor at the University of Damascus in 1965 eventually becoming the dean of the Faculty of Sharia at the university from 1977 to 1983. He subsequently became a lecturer in law and religious studies at Damascus University. Al-Bouti was professor of law, and worked as lecturer on Islamic Creed. He was also a professor at many Arab and Islamic universities and supervised the masters and doctoral degrees in the Sharia College at Damascus University. Al-Bouti was chosen for the Dubai International Holy Quran Award in its session in 2004 to be the personality of the Muslim world. In 2008, Al-Bouti was appointed preacher of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, on February 2011, Rüdiger Nehberg and Tarafa Baghajati met Ramadan al-Bouti and obtained a fatwa against female genital mutilation. Due to his profession, al-Buti regards Islamic law as the core of the Islamic religion, whenever he speaks of Islam he means the principles, injunctions and practical implications of the Sharia. In his preaching and writings, Al Bouti worked to refute not only secularism, in addition he criticized the proponents of what some viewed as Islamic reform, from modernist Muhammad Abduh to Salafi literalist Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani. He devoted one book to criticizing dialectical materialism, Al-Bouti was not, however, opposed to operations carried out by the Palestinians in the occupied territories against the state of Israel
9.
Salih Muslim Muhammad
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Salih Muslim Muhammad is the current co-chairman of the Democratic Union Party, the driving power behind the de facto autonomous Kurdish-controlled region of Rojava in Northern Syria. As the deputy coordinator of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, in 2003, Muslim joined the newly formed Democratic Union Party, becoming a member of its executive council, and was elected as party head in 2010. Unter Muslims chairmanship the PYD in the years became the leading political party. Muslim is a citizen of Syria was born in Seyran village close to Kobani in 1951, after an education in Syria, he studied at the Chemical Engineering faculty of Istanbul Technical University from 1970 until graduating in 1977. After a brief stint in London, he worked in Saudi Arabia between 1978 and 1990, and opened an office in 1993 in Aleppo. On 9 October 2013, Salih Muslims son Shervan, a fighter in the Peoples Protection Units, was killed west of Tell Abyad during clashes with al-Qaedas al-Nusra Front and he was buried in the familys hometown of Kobanê in a public funeral which thousands of people attended. Muslim is a frequent guest and speaker at European political institutions and events, addressing thousands during the Newroz celebration in Frankfurt, Germany, on 18 March 2017, Muslim said that there is a huge resistance despite all the attacks. Nobody should doubt that the success and victory will be ours and our resistance is for Europe, for the West and for all humanity. During an interview with BBC News reporter Orla Guerin in August 2012, Turkey has received Salih Muslim for talks in 2013 and in 2014, even entertaining the idea of opening a Rojava representation office in Ankara if its suitable with Ankaras policies. However, later the Turkish government allegedly sought to assassinate Muslim, in late 2016, Turkey issued an arrest warrant for Salih Muslim in a move considered putting Ankara on a collision course with its Western allies. Video | Salih Muslim Muhammad | Full Q&A | Oxford Union | January 2017
10.
Qamishli
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Qamishli or Qamishlo, is a city in northeastern Syria on the border with Turkey, adjoining the Turkish city of Nusaybin, and close to Iraq. According to the 2004 census, Qamishli had a population of 184,231, Qamishli is 680 kilometres northeast of Damascus. In the course of the Rojava conflict, Qamishli became the de facto capital of the Federation of Northern Syria – Rojava, the city was initially a small village inhabited by Assyrians/Syriacs called Syriac, ܒܝܬ ܙܠܝ̈ܢ, translit. Bēṯ Zālīn meaning House of Reeds, the current name is a Turkified form of it, where Kamış means reed in Turkish. With a population of 184,231, Qamishli is among the 10 largest cities in Syria by population, Qamishli is an ethnically mixed city, inhabited predominantly by Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds and Armenians, with Assyrians and Armenians making up a significant minority. The city is considered to be a Christian center in Syria and it was founded by Assyrian/Syriac refugees fleeing the Assyrian genocide in Anatolia. Today, Kurds, Assyrians, Arabs and Armenians live in the city, the pre-war Christian population of Qamishli was about 40,000, of whom 25,000 belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church, the biggest church in the city. Today it is believed that half of all Christians have left the town, Qamishli was also home to a significant Jewish community. The origin of the Jews of Qamishli, unlike the Jews of Damascus and Aleppo who are a mixture of Sephardi Jews, in the 1930s the Jewish population of Qamishli numbered 3,000. After the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1947, the situation of the Jews of Qamishli deteriorated, the exodus of Jews from Syria peaked due to violence, such as the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo. By 1963, the community had dwindled to 800, and after the Six-Day War it went down further to 150, Qamishli is situated at the base of the Taurus Mountains, located near the area of ancient Hurrian city of Urkesh which was founded during the fourth millennium BC. One of the most important funders of the development projects in the city was Masoud Asfar. Masoud, along with stepbrother, whose last name was Najjar, established the Asfar & Najjar Corporation, throughout the 1920s-1940s, the Asfar & Najjar Corporation funded hospitals, Assyrian schools, and churches throughout the city. At this same time, many Kurds, fleeing persecution from Iraq and Turkey, the city itself was officially founded as Qamishli in 1926 as a railway station on the Taurus railway. Qamishli, the second largest city in al-Hasakah Governorate, is considered a center for both the Kurdish and the Assyrian ethnic groups in Syria. It is renowned for throwing a large Christmas parade every year in December, in March 2004, during a chaotic soccer match, a 2004 Qamishli riots began when some people started praising Saddam Hussein, turning the match into political conflict against the Kurds. The riot expanded out of the stadium and weapons were used against people of Kurdish background, in the aftermath, at least 30 Kurds were killed as the Syrian security services took over the city. The event became known the Qamishli massacre, in June 2005, thousands of Kurds demonstrated in Qamishli to protest the assassination of Sheikh Khaznawi, a Kurdish cleric in Syria, resulting in the death of one policeman and injury to four Kurds
11.
Tell Tamer
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Tell Tamer also known as Tal Tamr or Tal Tamir, is a small town in western al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria. It is administrative center of the Tell Tamer Nahiya consisting of 13 municipalities, originally inhabited by Assyrians, the town is now predominantly populated by Kurds and recently settled Arab Bedouin, with the Assyrians remaining a substantial minority of about 20%. At the 2004 census, Tell Tamer had a population of 7,285, located by the Khabur River at an intersection between the M4 Highway and the major road between al-Hasakah and Diyarbakır, the town is a transport hub of major importance. The name of the town, Tell Tamer, is derived from the Arabic and Aramaic words tell/tella, the name of the town therefore means Hill of Dates. In the Upper Khabur Valley of Jazira in northeastern Syria, Tell Tamer is situated on the bank of Khabur River. About 3 kilometres to the east, the landscape ascends to the basalt plateau Ard al-Shaykh. Tell Tamer lies on a line between the city of Ras al-Ayn some 35 kilometres to the northwest and the provincial capital al-Hasakah some 40 kilometres to the southeast. The intersection with the M4 highway and the river crossing make Tell Tamer an essential transport hub. Settled in the 1930s by Iraqi Assyrian refugees fleeing the Simele massacre in Iraq, an Assyrian exodus from the town began in November 2012, when Free Syrian Army soldiers threatened to invade the town. The exodus further continued when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria took control of nearby roads just outside the town, in October 2013, four Assyrians were stopped while driving in a car and kidnapped by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorists. Since ISIL militants captured the city of Raqqa, some Assyrians from there, however, more than 500 Assyrian families have also fled the town. Many Assyrians from the town emigrated mainly to the United States, Europe, in February 2015 the town was taken by the Islamic State militia, resulting in the abduction of about 90 residents. Several thousand residents fled the city, mostly to the city of al-Hasakah, on 23 February 2015, ISIL kidnapped around 220 Assyrians from villages surrounding Tell Tamer, and by 26 February, that number had increased to 350. On 1 March, ISIL released 19 of the kidnapped Assyrians, on 24 March 5 more Assyrian hostages were released, raising the number of released Assyrian hostages to 24. Its original inhabitants are Assyrians from the Upper Tyari tribe, who came to the area from Hakkari region in Turkey via Iraq, as late as the 1960s, they still comprised virtually the entire population of the town. The majority of the modern population is composed of by Arabs and Kurds. Historical population estimates are as follows,1,244,1,250,2,994,5,030,5,216,5,405. The Assyrian Church of Our Lady, located in the Old Town, at a prominent place near the actual Tell, in the early 1980s the original church built of mud-brick in the 1930s was broken down and replaced by a new Italianate-style building
12.
Afrin, Syria
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Afrin is a district as well as a city in northern Syria. As a district of the Syrian Arab Republic, it is part of the Aleppo Governorate, however, since 2012, the Syrian government has lost control of the district, and as the capital of Afrin Canton it is now part of the de facto autonomous region of Rojava. The total population of the district as of 2005 was recorded at 172,095 people, the town and district are named for the Afrin River. The town of Afrin is located next to a bridge of the Aleppo road, the city is split into two distinct halves by the river. About 8 km south of the town of Afrin, there are the remains of a Neo-Hittite settlement known as Tell Ain Dara, the Afrin valley was part of Roman Syria until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 637. The Afrin river was known as Oinoparas in the Seleucid era, in the Roman era the name became Ufrenus, whence the Arab vernacular ʿAfrīn, ʿIfrīn, adopted as Kurdish Efrîn. The area was conquered by the Principality of Antioch. In the Ottoman period, the area was part of the Kilis Province, the town of Afrin originated in the 19th-century foundation as a market. In 1929, the number of permanent residents was merely 800, the town was developed by France under the French mandate of Syria. There was an outbreak of civil unrest on 21 March 1986, in 1999, the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan triggered renewed clashes between Kurdish protesters and the Syrian police. During the Syrian Civil War, Syrian government forces withdrew from the city during the summer of 2012, the Popular Protection Units took control of the city soon afterward. Afrin Canton as a de facto part of Syrian Kurdistan was declared on 29 January 2014. The administrative center of Afrîn Canton is the town of Afrîn, the Prime minister of Afrin Canton is Hevi Ibrahim. The local government feels threatened by Nusra Front in the Syrian Civil War, according to the Constitution of Rojava, the Afrîn Cantons Legislative Assembly on its 29 January 2014 session declared autonomy. The assembly elected Hêvî Îbrahîm Mustefa prime minister, who appointed Remzi Şêxmus, olive tree is symbol of Afrin. Afrin is a production center for olives. Olive oil pressing and textiles are some of the local industries. Afrin has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate with influences of a continental climate during winter with hot dry summers and cool wet, the average high temperature in January is 9 and the average high temperature in July is 34
13.
Kurdish languages
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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
14.
Kirmanji
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Northern Kurdish, also called Kurmanji, is a group of Kurdish dialects predominantly spoken in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq and northern Syria. It is the most widespread group of the Kurdish languages. Northern Kurdish is written using the Latin script in Turkey, where most of its speakers live, northern Kurdish is the most widely spoken Kurdish language, being spoken by 80% of all Kurds. The earliest textual record of a Kurdish language dates to the 16th century, Kurmanji is also the ceremonial language of Yazidism. The sacred book Mishefa Reş and all prayers are written and spoken in Kurmanji, northern Kurdish forms a dialect continuum of great variability. Loosely, five dialect areas can be distinguished, Northwestern Kurmanji, spoken in the Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, southwestern Kurmanji, spoken in the Adıyaman, Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa provinces of Turkey and the Aleppo Governorate of Syria. Northern Kurmanji or Serhed, spoken mainly in the Ağrı, Erzurum and Muş provinces of Turkey, Southern Kurmanji, spoken in the Al-Hasakah Governorate in Syria, the Sinjar distinct in Iraq, and in several adjacent parts of Turkey centering on the Mardin and Batman provinces. Southeastern Kurmanji or Badînî, spoken in the Hakkâri province of Turkey, Anatolian Kurmanji is spoken in central Anatolia, especially in Konya, Ankara, Aksaray, by Anatolian Kurds The most distinctive of these is Badînî. Kurdish alphabets Central Kurdish dialects Southern Kurdish dialects Kurmancî, a Kurdish linguistic magazine Kurdish Institute Kurdish language, history, books, ELAR archive of Documenting a religious minority, the Dari dialect of Kerman, Iran
15.
Arabic language
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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
16.
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
17.
Sunni Islam
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Sunni Islam is the largest group of Islam. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the behavior of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Sunni tradition, Muhammad did not clearly designate a successor and this contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad intended his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib to succeed him. Political tensions between Sunnis and Shias continued with varying intensity throughout Islamic history and they have been exacerbated in recent times by ethnic conflicts, as of 2009, Sunni Muslims constituted 87–90% of the worlds Muslim population. Sunni Islam is the worlds largest religious denomination, followed by Catholicism and its adherents are referred to in Arabic as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah or ahl as-sunnah for short. In English, its doctrines and practices are sometimes called Sunnism, while adherents are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis, Sunnites, Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as orthodox Islam. The Quran, together with hadith and binding juristic consensus form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, sunnī, also commonly referred to as Sunnīism, is a term derived from sunnah meaning habit, usual practice, custom, tradition. The Muslim use of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of the prophet Muhammad, in Arabic, this branch of Islam is referred to as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah, the people of the sunnah and the community, which is commonly shortened to ahl as-sunnah. One common mistake is to assume that Sunni Islam represents a normative Islam that emerged during the period after Muhammads death, and that Sufism and Shiism developed out of Sunni Islam. This perception is due to the reliance on highly ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works. Both Sunnism and Shiaism are the end products of centuries of competition between ideologies. Both sects used each other to further cement their own identities and doctrines, the first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun or Rightly-Guided Ones. Sunni recognition includes the aforementioned Abu Bakr as the first, Umar who established the Islamic calendar as the second, Uthman as the third, Sunnis believe that the companions of Muhammad were the best of Muslims. Support for this view is found in the Quran, according to Sunnis. Sunnis also believe that the companions were true believers since it was the companions who were given the task of compiling the Quran, furthermore, narrations that were narrated by the companions are considered by Sunnis to be a second source of knowledge of the Muslim faith. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 and released January 2011 found that there are 1.62 billion Muslims around the world, Islam does not have a formal hierarchy or clergy. Leaders are informal, and gain influence through study to become a scholar of Islamic law, according to the Islamic Center of Columbia, South Carolina, anyone with the intelligence and the will can become an Islamic scholar. During Midday Mosque services on Fridays, the congregation will choose a person to lead the service
18.
Shia Islam
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Shia is a branch of Islam which holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor. Shia Islam primarily contrasts with Sunni Islam, whose adherents believe that Muhammad did not appoint a successor, instead they consider Abu Bakr to be the correct Caliph. Adherents of Shia Islam are called Shias of Ali, Shias or the Shia as a collective or Shii individually, Shia Islam is the second-largest branch of Islam, in 2009, Shia Muslims constituted 10–13% of the worlds Muslim population. Twelver Shia is the largest branch of Shia Islam, in 2012 it was estimated that perhaps 85 percent of Shias were Twelvers. Shia Islam is based on the Quran and the message of Muhammad attested in hadith, Shia consider Ali to have been divinely appointed as the successor to Muhammad, and as the first Imam. The word Shia means follower and is the form of the historic phrase shīʻatu ʻAlī, meaning followers of Ali, faction of Ali. Shia and Shiism are forms used in English, while Shiite or Shiite, as well as Shia, the term for the first time was used at the time of Muhammad. At present, the word refers to the Muslims who believe that the leadership of the community after Muhammad belongs to Ali, nawbakhti states that the term Shia refers to a group of Muslims that at the time of Muhammad and after him regarded Ali as the Imam and Caliph. Al-Shahrastani expresses that the term Shia refers to those who believe that Ali is designated as the Heir, Imam and caliph by Muhammad, for the Shia, this conviction is implicit in the Quran and history of Islam. And Allah is Hearing and Knowing, Shia search for the true meaning of the revelation to get the purpose of the life blood and the human destiny. Shia Muslims believe that just as a prophet is appointed by God alone and they believe God chose Ali to be Muhammads successor, infallible, the first caliph of Islam. The Shias believe that Muhammad designated Ali as his successor by Gods command, Ali was Muhammads first cousin and closest living male relative as well as his son-in-law, having married Muhammads daughter Fatimah. Ali would eventually become the fourth Muslim caliph, after the Farewell Pilgrimage, Muhammad ordered the gathering of Muslims at the pond of Khumm and it was there that Shia Muslims believe Muhammad nominated Ali to be his successor. The hadith of the pond of Khumm was narrated on 18th of Dhu al-Hijjah of 10 AH in the Islamic calendar at a place called Ghadir Khumm, located near the city of al-Juhfah, Saudi Arabia. Muhammad there stated, Shia Muslims believe this to be Muhammads appointment of Ali as his successor, when Muhammad died in 632 CE, Ali and Muhammads closest relatives made the funeral arrangements. While they were preparing his body, Abu Bakr, Umar, Ali and his family accepted the appointment for the sake of unity in the early Muslim community. Alis rule over the early Muslim community was often contested, as a result, he had to struggle to maintain his power against the groups who betrayed him after giving allegiance to his succession, or those who wished to take his position. This dispute eventually led to the First Fitna, which was the first major civil war within the Islamic Caliphate, the Fitna began as a series of revolts fought against Ali ibn Abi Talib, caused by the assassination of his political predecessor, Uthman ibn Affan
19.
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 to 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
20.
Syria
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Syrias capital and largest city is Damascus. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, Sunni Arabs make up the largest religious group in Syria. Its capital Damascus and largest city Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, in the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a number of military coups. In 1958, Syria entered a union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, in the past, others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon. However, the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The area designated by the word has changed over time, since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period is represented by houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic, archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only those of Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Eblas contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is an agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.2300 BC. The Northwest Semitic language of the Amorites is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages, Mari reemerged during this period, and saw renewed prosperity until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia, Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages, and developed the Ugaritic alphabet. The Ugarites kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC, Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi of Babylon. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, the army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as Dēr on the border of Elam
21.
Kurdish people
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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 to 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
22.
CIA
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As one of the principal members of the U. S. Intelligence Community, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is focused on providing intelligence for the President. Though it is not the only U. S. government agency specializing in HUMINT and it exerts foreign political influence through its tactical divisions, such as the Special Activities Division. Despite transferring some of its powers to the DNI, the CIA has grown in size as a result of the September 11 attacks. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in fiscal year 2010, the CIA has increasingly expanded its roles, including covert paramilitary operations. One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Center, has shifted focus from counter-terrorism to offensive cyber-operations, when the CIA was created, its purpose was to create a clearinghouse for foreign policy intelligence and analysis. Today its primary purpose is to collect, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence, warning/informing American leaders of important overseas events, with Pakistan described as an intractable target. Counterintelligence, with China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, the Executive Office also supports the U. S. military by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from military intelligence organizations, and cooperates on field activities. The Executive Director is in charge of the day to day operation of the CIA, each branch of the military service has its own Director. The Directorate has four regional groups, six groups for transnational issues. There is a dedicated to Iraq, regional analytical offices covering the Near East and South Asia, Russia and Europe, and the Asian Pacific, Latin American. The Directorate of Operations is responsible for collecting intelligence. The name reflects its role as the coordinator of intelligence activities between other elements of the wider U. S. intelligence community with their own HUMINT operations. This Directorate was created in an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence, philosophy, in spite of this, the Department of Defense recently organized its own global clandestine intelligence service, the Defense Clandestine Service, under the Defense Intelligence Agency. This Directorate is known to be organized by regions and issues. The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services. For example, the development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was done in cooperation with the United States Air Force, the U-2s original mission was clandestine imagery intelligence over denied areas such as the Soviet Union. It was subsequently provided with signals intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence capabilities, subsequently, NPIC was transferred to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
23.
Syrian Kurdistan
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On 17 March 2016, its de facto administration self-declared the establishment of a federal system of government as the Federation of Northern Syria–Rojava. While entertaining some foreign relations, the NSR is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state or organization. The protagonists of the NSR consider its constitution a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, the updated December 2016 constitution of the polity uses the name Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria. Also known as Western Kurdistan or Syrian Kurdistan, Rojava is regarded by Kurdish nationalists as one of the four parts of Kurdistan. However, Rojava is polyethnic and home to sizable ethnic Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Turkmen populations and this diversity is mirrored in its constitution, society and politics. Rojava lies to the west of the Tigris along the Turkish border and it is composed of three cantons, Jazira, Kobanî, Afrin Canton, as well as the proposed Shahba region. Jazira Canton borders Iraqi Kurdistan to the southeast, other borders are fluid in the Syrian Civil War. All cantons are at latitude approximately 36 and a half degrees north and they are relatively flat except for the Kurd Mountains in Afrin Canton. In terms of governorates of Syria, Rojava is formed from most of al-Hasakah Governorate and the parts of Raqqa Governorate. Rojava is part of the Fertile Crescent, and includes archaeological sites dating to the Neolithic, in antiquity, the area was part of the Mitanni kingdom, its centre being the Khabur river valley in modern-day Jazira Canton. It was then part of Assyria for a long time, the last surviving Assyrian imperial records, from between 604 BC and 599 BC, were found in and around the Assyrian city of Dūr-Katlimmu in what is now Jazira Canton. Later it was ruled by the Achaemenids, Hellenes, Artaxiads, Romans, Parthians, Sasanians, Byzantines, Kurdish settlement in Syria goes back to before the Crusades of the 11th century. A number of Kurdish military and feudal settlements from before this period have been found in Syria, such settlements have been found in the Alawite and north Lebanese mountains and around Hama and its surroundings. The Crusade fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, which is known in Arabic as Hisn al-Akrad, was originally a Kurdish military settlement before it was enlarged by the French Crusaders, similarly, the Kurd-Dagh has been inhabited by Kurds for more than a millennium. The Kurdish regiments that accompanied Saladin established self-ruled areas in and around Damascus and these settlements evolved into the Kurdish sections of Damascus of Hayy al-Akrad and the Salhiyya districts located in the north-east of Damasacus on Mount Qasioun. The Kurdish community’s role in the continued under the Ottomans. Kurdish soldiers and policeman from city were tasked with maintaining order and protecting the pilgrims’ route toward Mecca. Many Kurds from Syria’s rural hinterland joined the local Janissary corp in Damascus, later, Kurdish migrants from diverse areas, such as Diyarbakir, Mosul and Kirkuk, also joined these military units which caused an expansion of the Kurdish community in the city
24.
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
25.
Hasakah Governorate
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Al-Hasakah Governorate is a governorate in the far north-east corner of Syria. It is distinguished by its fertile lands, plentiful water, picturesque nature and it was formerly known as Al-Jazira province. Prior to the Syrian Civil War nearly half of Syrias oil was extracted from the region, three soldiers were killed by armed militants in Al-Hasakah in an ambush during the Syrian Civil War on 24 March 2012. About a year later, Kurdish forces launched the 2013 Al-Hasakah offensive, after the battle of al-Hasakah in August 2016 between Kurds and the Bashar al-Assad regime, the area was mostly in Kurdish control. The population of the governorate, according to the official census, was 1,275,118, and was estimated to be 1,377,000 in 2007. Among the Sunni Muslims, mostly Kurds and Arabs, there were about 1,500 Circassians in 1938, in 1949, there were officially 155,643 inhabitants. The French geographers Fevret and Gibert estimated that there were about 50,000 Arabs,60,000 Kurds, a few thousands Jews and Yezidis and this list includes all cities, towns and villages with more than 5,000 inhabitants. The population figures are according to the 2004 official census. Tell Brak, Situated halfway between al-Hasakah city and the town of Qamishli. Excavations in the tell have revealed the Uyun Temple and King Naram-Sins palace-stronghold, Tell el Fakhariya Tell Hittin,15 layers of occupation have been identified
26.
Ayn al-Arab
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Kobanî, officially Ayn al-Arab, is a city in the Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria, lying immediately south of the border with Turkey. As a consequence of the Syrian Civil War, the city has been control of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units militia since 2012. In 2014, it was declared to be the center of the Kobanî Canton of the de facto autonomous Federation of Northern Syria – Rojava. From September 2014 to January 2015, the city was under siege by Islamic State of Iraq, most of the city was destroyed and most of the population fled to Turkey. In 2015, many returned and reconstruction began, prior to the Syrian Civil War, Kobanî was recorded as having a population of close to 45,000. The majority of inhabitants were Kurds, with Arab, Turkmen, the Ottoman name of a village east of Kobanîs location was Arab Pinar Spring of the Arabs. The Arabic name, ʿAyn al-ʿArab is a translation of this, the word Spring came from the creek that used to flow east of the village. The location was called Spring of the Arabs because in summer Arab nomads used to bring their herds to the location, Kobanî was built between the village of Arap Pinar in the east and the village of Mürşitpinar in the west. This village was located south of a lake that dried up in the 1960s. The name Mürşitpinar is still used as the name for the village, both the above-mentioned villages are parts of todays Kobanî. The name ʿAyn al-ʿArab was introduced officially by the Syrian government as part of a broader Arabization effort in the 1980s, the origin of the name Kobanî is the word company, referring to the German railway company who built that section of the Konya-Baghdad Railway from 1911. Prior to World War I, the area was populated by semi-nomadic Kurdish tribes, many. These tribes had migrated in from the north during the 19th century. As of 1892, there were three homesteads situated in the area, the area was apparently also known for its swarms of biting sand-flies. The newly-built town began to form south of a train station built in 1912 along the railway by workers from the nearby town of Suruç. The train station was part of the Baghdad Railway project launched by the Ottoman government to connect Baghdad with Berlin, refugees fleeing the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire settled in the newly built town around 1915, and were soon joined by more Kurds from nearby areas. Many of the Kurds who settled in Kobani were originally from Turkish Kurdistan, Some fled prosecution following the Kurdish-led Sheikh Said rebellion in that country in 1925. After demarcation of the border with Turkey along the line in 1921
27.
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
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Kurdistan
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Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges. Contemporary use of the term refers to four parts of Kurdistan, which include southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran. Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, there is a province by the name Kurdistan in Iran, it is not self-ruled. Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to control of large sections of northern Syria as government forces, loyal to Bashar al-Assad. Having established their own government, they called for autonomy in a federal Syria after the war, various groups, among them the Guti, Hurrians, Mannai, and Armenians, lived in this region in antiquity. The original Mannaean homeland was situated east and south of the Lake Urmia, the region came under Persian rule during the reign of Cyrus the Great and Darius I. At its zenith, the Roman Empire ruled large Kurdish-inhabited areas, corduene became a vassal state of the Roman Republic in 66 BC and remained allied with the Romans until AD384. After 66 BC, it passed another 5 times between Rome and Persia, corduene was situated to the east of Tigranocerta, that is, to the east and south of present-day Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey. When the Sasanian Marzban asked Mar Abdisho about his place of origin, he replied that according to his parents, they were originally from Hazza, a village in Assyria. However they were driven out of Hazza by pagans, and settled in Tamanon. Tamanon lies just north of the modern Iraq-Turkey border, while Hazza is 12 km southwest of modern Erbil, in another passage in the same document, the region of the Khabur River is also identified as land of the Kurds. According to Al-Muqaddasi and Yaqut al-Hamawi, Tamanon was located on the south-western or southern slopes of Mount Judi, Kurdistan in the Middle Ages was a collection of semi-independent and independent states called emirates. It was nominally under indirect political or religious influence of Khalifs or Shahs, a comprehensive history of these states and their relationship with their neighbors is given in the text of Sharafnama, written by Prince Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in 1597. The emirates included Baban, Soran, Badinan and Garmiyan in the south, Bakran, Bohtan and Badlis in the north, the earliest medieval attestation of the toponym Kurdistan is found in a 12th-century Armenian historical text by Matteos Urhayeci. He described a battle near Amid and Siverek in 1062 as to have taken place in Kurdistan, the second record occurs in the prayer from the colophon of an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels, written in 1200. A later use of the term Kurdistan is found in Empire of Trebizond documents in 1336 and in Nuzhat-al-Qulub, written by Hamdollah Mostowfi in 1340. According to Sharafkhan Bitlisi in his Sharafnama, the boundaries of the Kurdish land begin at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and stretch on a line to the end of Malatya. In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid and Ottoman empires, a major division of Kurdistan occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and was formalized in the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab
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Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
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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
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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
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Kurmanji
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Northern Kurdish, also called Kurmanji, is a group of Kurdish dialects predominantly spoken in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq and northern Syria. It is the most widespread group of the Kurdish languages. Northern Kurdish is written using the Latin script in Turkey, where most of its speakers live, northern Kurdish is the most widely spoken Kurdish language, being spoken by 80% of all Kurds. The earliest textual record of a Kurdish language dates to the 16th century, Kurmanji is also the ceremonial language of Yazidism. The sacred book Mishefa Reş and all prayers are written and spoken in Kurmanji, northern Kurdish forms a dialect continuum of great variability. Loosely, five dialect areas can be distinguished, Northwestern Kurmanji, spoken in the Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, southwestern Kurmanji, spoken in the Adıyaman, Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa provinces of Turkey and the Aleppo Governorate of Syria. Northern Kurmanji or Serhed, spoken mainly in the Ağrı, Erzurum and Muş provinces of Turkey, Southern Kurmanji, spoken in the Al-Hasakah Governorate in Syria, the Sinjar distinct in Iraq, and in several adjacent parts of Turkey centering on the Mardin and Batman provinces. Southeastern Kurmanji or Badînî, spoken in the Hakkâri province of Turkey, Anatolian Kurmanji is spoken in central Anatolia, especially in Konya, Ankara, Aksaray, by Anatolian Kurds The most distinctive of these is Badînî. Kurdish alphabets Central Kurdish dialects Southern Kurdish dialects Kurmancî, a Kurdish linguistic magazine Kurdish Institute Kurdish language, history, books, ELAR archive of Documenting a religious minority, the Dari dialect of Kerman, Iran
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Damascus
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Damascus is the capital and likely the largest city of Syria, following the decline in population of Aleppo due to the ongoing battle for the city. It is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed as the City of Jasmine, in addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious centre of the Levant. The city has an population of 1,711,000 as of 2009. Located in south-western Syria, Damascus is the centre of a metropolitan area of 2.6 million people. The Barada River flows through Damascus, first settled in the second millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad, Damascus saw a political decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Today, it is the seat of the government and all of the government ministries. The name of Damascus first appeared in the geographical list of Thutmose III as T-m-ś-q in the 15th century BC, the etymology of the ancient name T-m-ś-q is uncertain, but it is suspected to be pre-Semitic. It is attested as Dimašqa in Akkadian, T-ms-ḳw in Egyptian, Dammaśq in Old Aramaic, the Akkadian spelling is found in the Amarna letters, from the 14th century BC. Later Aramaic spellings of the name include a intrusive resh, perhaps influenced by the root dr. Thus, the English and Latin name of the city is Damascus which was imported from originated from the Qumranic Darmeśeq, and Darmsûq in Syriac, meaning a well-watered land. In Arabic, the city is called Dimašqu š-Šāmi, although this is shortened to either Dimašq or aš-Šām by the citizens of Damascus, of Syria and other Arab neighbours. Aš-Šām is an Arabic term for Levant and for Syria, the latter, the Anti-Lebanon mountains mark the border between Syria and Lebanon. The range has peaks of over 10,000 ft. and blocks precipitation from the Mediterranean sea, however, in ancient times this was mitigated by the Barada River, which originates from mountain streams fed by melting snow. Damascus is surrounded by the Ghouta, irrigated farmland where many vegetables, cereals, maps of Roman Syria indicate that the Barada river emptied into a lake of some size east of Damascus. Today it is called Bahira Atayba, the hesitant lake, because in years of severe drought it does not even exist, the modern city has an area of 105 km2, out of which 77 km2 is urban, while Jabal Qasioun occupies the rest. The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, to the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages, Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These neighbourhoods originally arose on roads leading out of the city and these new neighbourhoods were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule
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Al-Jazira province
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Al-Jazira Province was an administrative division in the State of Aleppo, the State of Syria and the first decades of the Syrian Republic, during the French Mandate of Syria and the Lebanon. It encompassed more or less the present-day Al-Hasakah Governorate and part of the former Ottoman Zor Sanjak, among the Sunni Muslims, mostly Kurds and Arabs, there were about 1,500 Circassians in 1938. In 1949, there were officially 155,643 inhabitants, the French geographers Fevret and Gibert estimated that there were about 50,000 Arabs,60,000 Kurds, a few thousands Jews and Yezidis, the rest being Christians of various denominations. Some ‘mazbata’ have circulated by means of the same authorities among the minority populations and they are asking the Mandatary Power for separation from Syria in order to create their own administration with their center in Deir ez-Zor. The French interest in the ‘Bec de Canard’ has increased after the railway prolongation of Baghdad, in 1936-1937 there was some autonomist agitation in the province among Assyrians and Kurds, supported by some Arab Bedouins
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Single-party period of the Republic of Turkey
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The single-party period of the Republic of Turkey began with the formal establishment of the country in 1923. The Republican Peoples Party was the party between 1923 and 1945, when the National Development Party was established. After winning the first multiparty elections in 1946 by a landslide, the Progressive Republican Party had also been established in 1924 by Kazım Karabekir, but was banned after its members involvement in the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion. Despite Atatürks efforts in establishing a self-propagating multi-party system during his presidency, with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, efforts to modernize the country began. The institutions and constitutions of Western states such as France, Sweden, Italy, highlighting the publics lack of knowledge regarding the intentions of President Mustafa Kemal, the public cheered, We are returning to the days of the first caliphs. In order to establish his reforms, Mustafa Kemal placed Fevzi Çakmak, Kazım Özalp, in doing so, he transformed Turkish society from perceiving itself as Muslim subjects of a vast Empire into citizens of a modern, democratic, and secular nation-state. The Liberal Republican Party was dissolved on 17 November 1930 and no attempt at a multiparty democracy was made until 1945. In 1924, while the Issue of Mosul was on the table, Sheikh Said was a wealthy Kurdish hereditary chieftain of a local Naqshbandi order. Piran stirred up his followers against the policies of the government, in an effort to restore Islamic law, Pirans forces moved through the countryside, seized government offices and marched on the important cities of Elazığ and Diyarbakır. Members of the government saw the Sheikh Said Rebellion as an attempt at a counter-revolution and they urged immediate military action to prevent its spread. The Law for the Maintenance of Public Order was passed to deal with the rebellion on 4 March 1925 and it gave the government exceptional powers and included the authority to shut down subversive groups. There were also parliamentarians in the GNA who were not happy with these changes and he decided not to purge this group. After a censure motion gave the chance to have a group, Kazım Karabekir, along with his friends. The censure became a vote at the CHP for Mustafa Kemal. On 8 November the motion was rejected by 148 votes to 18, CHP held all but one seat in the parliament. After the majority of the CHP chose him Mustafa Kemal said, on 17 November 1924, the breakaway group officially established the Progressive Republican Party with 29 deputies and the first multi-party system began. The PRPs economic program suggested liberalism, in contrast to the socialism of CHP. Leaders of the party supported the Kemalist revolution in principle, but had different opinions on the cultural revolution
36.
Armenian people
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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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Aramean people
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The Arameans, or Aramaeans, were an ancient Northwest Semitic Aramaic-speaking tribal confederacy who emerged from Syria in the Late Bronze Age the region known as Aram from the 11th-8th centuries BC. They established a patchwork of independent Aramaic kingdoms in the Levant, in the New Babylonian, or Chaldean, empire, Chaldeans, Aramaeans, Suteans and indigenous Babylonians became largely indistinguishable. This empire stretched from Cyprus and the East Mediterranean in the west to Persia and Elam in the east, and from Armenia, the Achaemenid Empire greatly spread Imperial Aramaic, north to the Coast of the Black Sea and westward to the Indus Valley. This Akkadian and later Old Persian influenced version of Aramaic later developed into the Syriac dialect of Edessa, one of the annals of Naram-Sin of Akkad mentions that he captured Dubul, the ensí of A-ra-me, in the course of a campaign against Simurrum in the northern mountains. Other early references to a place or people of Aram have appeared at the archives of Mari, urban settlements in The Levant diminished in size, until eventually fully nomadic pastoralist lifestyles came to dominate much of the region. These highly mobile, competitive tribesmen with their sudden raids continually threatened long-distance trade and interfered with the collection of taxes, however, they seem to have been displaced or wholly absorbed by the appearance of a people called the Ahlamu by the 13th century BC, disappearing from history. The presence of the Ahlamû is attested during the Middle Assyrian Empire, Shalmaneser I is recorded as having defeated Shattuara, King of the Mitanni and his Hittite and Ahlamû mercenaries. The Arameans would appear to be one part of the larger generic Ahlamû group rather than synonymous with the Ahlamu, the first certain reference to the Arameans appears in an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I, which refers to subjugating the Ahlamû-Aramaeans. Shortly after, the Ahlamû rapidly disappear from Assyrian annals, to be replaced by the Aramaeans and this indicates that the Arameans had risen to dominance amongst the nomads, however, it is possible that the two peoples had nothing in common, but operated in the same area. By the late 12th century BC, the Arameans were firmly established in Syria, however, they were conquered by the Middle Assyrian Empire, as had been the Amorites and it is from this point that the region was called Aramea. Further north, the Arameans gained possession of Neo-Hittite Hamath on the Orontes and were soon to become strong enough to dissociate with the Indo-European speaking Neo-Hittite states. North of Samal was the Aramean state of Bit-Gabari, which was sandwiched between the Syro-Hittite states of Carchemish, Gurgum, Khattina, Unqi and the Georgian state of Tabal. At the same time, Arameans moved to the east of the Euphrates, where settled in such numbers that, for a time. Eastern Aramaean tribes spread into Babylonia and an Aramaean usurper was crowned king of Babylon under the name of Adad-apal-iddin, one of their earliest semi-independent kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia was Bît-Bahiâni (Tell Halaf. Assyrian annals from the end of the Middle Assyrian Empire c.1050 BC, the Assyrians would launch repeated raids into Aramea, Babylonia, Ancient Iran, Elam, Asia Minor, and even as far as the Mediterranean, in order to keep its trade routes open. This process was continued by Ashurnasirpal II, and his son Shalmaneser III, in 732 BC Aram-Damascus fell and was conquered by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III. The Assyrians named their Aramean colonies Eber Nari, whilst still using the term Aramean to describe many of its peoples, the Assyrians conducted forced deportations of hundreds of thousands Arameans into both Assyria and Babylonia. These Arameans were absorbed into the indigenous populations of Assyria and Babylonia, the Neo Assyrian Empire descended into a bitter series of brutal internal civil wars from 626 BC, weakening it greatly
38.
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
39.
Hasakah
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Al-Hasakah, also known as Al-Hasakeh, Al-Kasaka or simply Hasakah, is the capital city of the Al-Hasakah Governorate and it is located in the far northeastern corner of Syria. With a population of 188,160 residents in 2004, Al-Hasakah is among the ten largest cities in Syria and it is the administrative center of a nahiyah consisting of 108 localities with a combined population of 251,570 in 2004. Al-Hasakah has a diverse population of Kurds, Arabs and Assyrians. The Khabur River runs through Al-Hasakah and the rest of the governorate, as a preliminary result of the ongoing Syrian Civil War, Al-Hasakah today is situated in Jazira Canton within the autonomous Federation of Northern Syria – Rojava framework. Al-Hasakah is 80 kilometres south of the Turkish border-city of Qamishli, the Khabur River, a tributary of the Euphrates River flows through the city, downriver from Ras al-Ayn, another border town. The Jaghjagh River flows into the Khabur River at Al-Hasakah, in the city centre, an ancient tell is identified by Dominique Charpin as the location of the city of Qirdahat. Another possibility is that it was the site of the ancient Aramean city of Magarisu, the etymology of Magarisu is Aramaic and means pasture land. The city was the capital of the Aramean state of Bit-Yahiri invaded by Assyrian kings Tukulti-Ninurta II, excavations in the tell discovered materials dating to the Middle-Assyrian, Byzantine and Islamic eras. The last level of occupation ended in the fifteenth century, a period of 1500 years separated between the Middle-Assyrian level and the Byzantine level. In Ottoman times the town was insignificant, todays settlement was established in April 1922 by a French military post. After the expulsion and genocide of the Armenians in the then Ottoman Empire many refugees fled to the city, during the French mandate period, Assyrians, fleeing ethnic cleansings in Iraq during the Simele massacre, established numerous villages along the Khabur River during the 1930s. French troops were stationed on the Citadel Hill during that time, in 1942 there were 7,835 inhabitants in al-Hasakah, several schools, two churches and a gas station. The new city grew from the 1950s to the center of the region. The economic boom of the cities of Qamishli and al-Hasakah was a result of the projects started in the 1960s which transformed Northeast Syria into the main cotton-growing area. The 1970s brought oil production from the oil fields of Qara Shuk, according to eyewitnesses, the action was a protest against the Syrian government. In 2012, Al-Hasakah which has a large Kurdish population, began witnessing protests of several people against the Syrian government. From 2013, the associated with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party. There were also clashes in the city between an Arab insurgent group and the YPG, on 1 August 2016 the Syrian Democratic Council opened a public office in Al-Hasakah
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Aleppo Governorate
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Aleppo Governorate is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria. It is the most populous governorate in Syria with a population of more than 4,868,000, the governorate is the fifth in area with an area of 18,482 km², about 10% of the total area of Syria. The capital is the city of Aleppo, the governorate is represented by 52 deputies in the parliament, of whom 20 come from the city of Aleppo. Together, with the Governorate of Idlib, the Governorate of Aleppo make up the Northern Region of Syria, historically, the Northern Region was the most fertile and the most densely populated in Syria. This explains why the Governorate of Aleppo has by far the largest number of towns, villages and it also explains why the Northern Region has a much larger number of archaeological sites and remains than elsewhere in Syria. The governorate has a 221 kilometres long northern boundary with the Kilis, Gaziantep, to the west lie the Sanjak of Alexandretta and the Idlib Governorate. To the south lie the Ḥamā Governorate River Euphrates forms most of the half of the eastern boundary with the Raqqa Governorate. The governorate lies on a known as the Aleppo plateau. The southeastern end of the governorate is continuous with the steppe of the northern Syrian Desert. To the south lie the plains of Hama, and to the southwest lie the northern plains of Idlib. The average elevation of the terrain is 379 metres, the surface gradually slopes down in north-south and west-east directions. The surface undulates gently with an amplitude of 10–30 m for each wave, the lowlands are covered with combined Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments that average 4–5 km in thickness over the whole surface. Starting from the valley of the Euphrates, the terrain rises forming the Manbij plain, the Dhahab drains the highlands north of Bāb and runs in a north-south direction for about 50 km until it drains into Lake Jabboul. West of the Dhahab valley the terrain rises again forming Mount ʻAqīl west of Bāb, the terrain sinks again forming the valley of River Quwēq. The endpoint of Quwēq, the Maṭkh swamp, is the lowest point in Aleppo Governorate, west of the Quwēq is Mount Simeon. South of Mount Simeon are the plains of Idlib, River ʻAfrīn runs west of Mount Simeon. To the west of River ʻAfrīn the land rises again forming Mount Kurd, the highest point in the governorate, Mount Bulbul, is located in the northern part of Mount Kurd. River ʻIfrīn runs from north to south between Mount Simeon and Mount Kurd and then turns west to the Orontes valley, thus separating Mount Kurd from Mount Ḥārim to the south
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