1.
Sumerian language
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Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer and a language isolate which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia. During the 3rd millennium BC, an intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a Sprachbund, then it was forgotten until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets left by these speakers. It succeeds the proto-literate period, which spans roughly the 35th to 30th centuries, some versions of the chronology may omit the Late Sumerian phase and regard all texts written after 2000 BC as Post-Sumerian. The term Post-Sumerian is meant to refer to the time when the language was already extinct, the extinction has traditionally been dated approximately to the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the last predominantly Sumerian state in Mesopotamia, about 2000 BC. The standard variety of Sumerian is called eme-ĝir, a notable variety or sociolect is called eme-sal. Eme-sal is used exclusively by female characters in some literary texts, in addition, it is dominant in certain genres of cult songs. The special features of eme-sal are mostly phonological, but words different from the language are also used. Sumerian is a language, meaning that words could consist of a chain of more or less clearly distinguishable and separable affixes and/or morphemes. Sumerian distinguishes the grammatical genders human/non-human, but it not have separate male/female gender pronouns. The human gender includes not only humans but also gods and in cases the word for statue. Sumerian has also claimed to have two tenses, but these are currently described as completive and incompletive or perfective and imperfective aspects instead. There are a number of cases, absolutive, ergative, genitive, dative/allative, locative, comitative, equative, directive/adverbial. The naming and number of the cases varies in the scientific literature, the different homophones are marked with different numbers by convention,2 and 3 being often replaced by acute accent and grave accent diacritics respectively. For example, du = go, du3 = dù = build, Sumerian is a split ergative language. It behaves as a language in the 1st and 2nd person of present-future tense/incompletive aspect. Similar patterns are found in a number of unrelated split ergative languages
2.
Akkadian
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Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the writing system, which was originally used to write the unrelated Ancient Sumerian. The language was named after the city of Akkad, a centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire. The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a sprachbund, Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from around the mid 3rd-millennium BC. From the second half of the third millennium BC, texts written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the second millennium BC, two variant forms of the language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively, for centuries, Akkadian was the native language in Mesopotamian nations such as Assyria and Babylonia. However, it began to decline during the Neo-Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC, by the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD, Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages, a family native to East Africa, which then spread to West, Northwest and Northeast Africa. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup and this novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana, other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic have the prepositions bi/bə and li/lə. The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown, in contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative, ḫ. Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages, until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated. Old Akkadian is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.2500 BC and it was written using cuneiform, a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the cuneiform script could represent either Sumerian logograms, Sumerian syllables, Akkadian syllables. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum, additionally, this sign was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ, do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities, nor is there any coordination in the other direction, the syllable -ša-, for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA, but also by the sign NĪĜ. Both of these are used for the same syllable in the same text
3.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
4.
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
5.
Armenian language
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The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
6.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
7.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
8.
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
9.
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
10.
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
11.
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
12.
Batman River
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The Batman River is a major tributary of the Tigris, joining it near the source of Tigris called Dicle River in southeast Turkey. The historic Malabadi Bridge crosses the river near the town of Silvan, the region along the Batman River is known for its oil fields. The Batman Dam was built in 1999 in the upstream, together with the associated reservoir, the river is widest at about 100 metres right after exiting the dam, but then narrows to about 50 metres and forms numerous splits along its way to the Tigris. Its riverbed is irregular in places, promoting flooding. A tributary of Batman, the Iluh River, originates in the Raman Mountain on the south of the Batman city, despite being a small river, absent on most maps, Iluh plays an important role for the province because its spring floods affect the provincial capital. The floods of Iluh and Batman rivers occur between March and May and sometimes in October or November, major floods occurred in 1969,1972,1991,1995 and 2006. In Antiquity, the Batman River was known as Kalat and this name meant bride to the Syriac people who populated the area, it was thus translated into Greek as Nymphios and Nymphaios. Among Arabs it was known as Satidama, meaning the bloody reflecting the battles fought near it, the river served as a natural border between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia and saw major battles in 583 and 591 AD. The main citadel on the river was Martyropolis, modern Silvan, in international literature, the name Batman came into use since the 19th century, whereas in the 18th century and before it was mostly referred to as Nymphius, among other names. The origin of the name Batman is unclear, it might be a shortening of the name of the 1, 228-metre tall Bati Raman mountain located nearby or refer to the unit of weight used in the Ottoman Empire
13.
Botan River
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The Botan River is located in the Siirt Province of southeastern Turkey. The upstream of the Botan River is often called Çatak, which flows mostly in the Van Province, the uppermost part of the Çatak River, west of the town of Çatak, is sometimes called Norduz. It originates in the mountains around the Nordüz Plateau, near the border between Van and Hakkâri, and flows westwards before it turns to the northwest. The river has shaped a canyon on its way, the altitude difference between the valley and the top of the mountains reaches about 1,000 m. Running westwards by east of Aydınlar and Siirt, it reaches Bostancık locality, here, the rivers Zorava and Bitlis join the Botan. Finally at Çattepe in Siirt Province, it joins the Tigris River, after which the Tigris sharply turns southwards, at this time, it looks much bigger than the Tigris River. At the end of summer or in the fall, its depth is not less than 1 m, crossing is only possible by boat. The river runs in narrow, deep and steep valleys, lowlands are rare on its way, preventing it use for irrigation. For the purpose of building hydroelectric power plants, studies have been carried out on places at the river. Seven dams in different sizes are planned, built or under construction on the Botan River, the first dam and hydroelectric plant just below Aydınlar district has been completed. Officially named the Alkumru Dam, it is locally called the Tillo Dam due to the native name of the district. It is a dam of height 110 m having 222 MW installed capacity. The amount of energy to be generated is 812 GWh, of which 350 GWh is firm energy The mean annual discharge is 129 m³/s, downstream of the Alkumru Dam is the Kirazlık Dam to regulate its outflows and produce hydroelectric power, an installed capacity of 45 MW. The Çetin Dam, which is currently under construction, will have a 405 MW power capacity, the total investment amount for the project is expected to be approximately US$450 million. Construction on the Pervari Dam began in 2014 and the Keskin Dam is planned, greek historian Xenophon, pupil of Socrates, mentions the crossing of the river Kentrites in his Anabasis, §151
14.
Khabur (Tigris)
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The Khabur or Little Khabur is river that rises in Turkey and flows through Iraq to join the Tigris at the tripoint of Turkey, Iraq and Syria. The river originates in the Uludere District in Turkey and emerges from a number of rivers flowing off the Bolkar mountain range south-east of Hakkâri. From there, it flows south, crossing the Turkish-Iraqi border into Iraqi Kurdistan before turning west toward the Tigris. Zakho is an important town along the river, where the ancient Delal Bridge crosses the river, a few kilometres west of Zakho, the Little Khabur is joined by its main tributary the Hezil Suyu, which forms part of the border between Iraq and Turkey. From there onward the Little Khabur river forms the border for around 20 km to the Tigris and is called the Hezil Suyu
15.
Great Zab
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The Great Zab or Upper Zab is an approximately 400-kilometre long river flowing through Turkey and Iraq. It rises in Turkey near Lake Van and joins the Tigris in Iraq south of Mosul, the drainage basin of the Great Zab covers approximately 40,300 square kilometres, and during its course, the rivers collects the water from many tributaries. The river and its tributaries are fed by rainfall and snowmelt – as a result of which discharge fluctuates highly throughout the year. At least six dams have been planned on the Great Zab and its tributaries, but construction of only one, the Bekhme Dam, has commenced but was halted after the Gulf War. The Zagros Mountains have been occupied since at least the Lower Palaeolithic, historical records for the region are available from the end of the third millennium BCE onward. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the Great Zab provided water for irrigation for the lands around the city of Nimrud. The Battle of the Zab – which ended the Umayyad Caliphate – took place near a tributary of the Great Zab, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Great Zab basin saw frequent uprisings of local Kurdish tribes striving for autonomy. The Great Zab rises in Turkey in the region east of Lake Van at an elevation of approximately 3,000 metres amsl. In Turkey, the Great Zab traverses the provinces of Van and Hakkâri, whereas in Iraq it flows through Duhok Governorate and Erbil Governorate, together with the Tigris, the Great Zab forms the boundary between Erbil Governorate and Ninawa Governorate. In its upper reaches, the Great Zab flows through steep, numerous mountain streams and wadis join the Great Zab on its right and left banks. The Great Zab receives most of its waters from the left-bank tributaries, the length of the Great Zab has been variously estimated at 392 kilometres and 473 kilometres. Approximately 300 kilometres of the course are located within Iraq. The average discharge of the Great Zab is 419 cubic metres per second, the average annual discharge is 13.2 cubic kilometres. Because of its nature, Medieval Arab geographers have described the Great Zab – together with the Little Zab – as demoniacally possessed. Estimates of the basin of the Great Zab vary widely – from a low 25,810 square kilometres to a high figure of 40,300 square kilometres. Approximately 62 percent of the basin is located in Iraq, the remainder is in Turkey, to the south, the Great Zab basin borders on that of the Little Zab while on the east it adjoins the Tigris basin. The Zagros consists of limestone folds rising to elevations of over 3,000 metres amsl. The valleys – including that of the Great Zab – and the foothill zone are filled with gravel, conglomerate, and sandstone
16.
Little Zab
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The Little Zab or Lower Zab originates in Iran and joins the Tigris just south of Al Zab in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The river is approximately 400 kilometres long and drains an area of about 22,000 square kilometres, the river is fed by rainfall and snowmelt, resulting in a peak discharge in spring and low water in summer and early fall. Two dams have been built on the Little Zab, regulating the flow, providing water for irrigation. The Zagros Mountains have been occupied since at least the Lower Palaeolithic, human occupation of the Little Zab basin has been attested for every period since then. The Little Zab rises in the Zagros Mountains in Iran at an elevation of circa 3,000 metres amsl, in its upper reaches, the course of the Little Zab is determined by the alignment of the major mountain chains that make up the Zagros. Most tributaries join the Little Zab upstream from Dukan, with the largest being the Baneh River, a number of smaller streams joined the Little Zab in the Ranya Plain, which is now partly inundated by Lake Dukan. Different estimates have given for the length of the Little Zab,380 kilometres,400 kilometres and 456 kilometres. The river is fed by snowmelt and rainfall, resulting in a discharge in the period February–May. Low water levels are recorded for the period July–October, the average discharge of the Little Zab is 197.8 cubic metres per second, whereas the maximum recorded discharge is 3,420 cubic metres per second. Average annual discharge is 7.2 cubic kilometres, because of its torrential nature, Medieval Arab geographers have described the Little Zab, and the Great Zab as well, as demoniacally possessed. The drainage basin of the Little Zab covers 21, 475–22,250 square kilometres, from the location where the Dukan Dam has been constructed, the larger part of the basin is located within Iraqi borders, the remainder is in Iran. On the north, it is bordered by the Great Zab basin while on the south it is adjoined by the basins of the Adhaim, the parallel mountain ranges of the Zagros consist of limestone folds rising to elevations over 3,000 metres. Water erosion has filled the Little Zab valley and the foothill zone south-west of the Zagros with layers of gravel, conglomerate, the Ranya Plain is the largest valley in the Little Zab drainage basin, and the second-largest in the Iraqi Zagros behind the Shahrazor. The Little Zab crosses very diverse climatic and ecological zones, annual precipitation along the course of the river diminishes from over 1,000 millimetres in the Iranian Zagros to less than 200 millimetres at the confluence with the Tigris near Al Zab. Average temperatures follow a similar gradient, with the valleys generally experiencing colder winters than the foothill zone. In the high Zagros, three different ecozones can be distinguished, the tree line is at approximately 1,800 metres, above which herbs and shrubs predominate. The dominant vegetation between 1,800 and 610 metres was an oak forest, but not much of this original vegetation remains. The river valleys are characterized by water-loving plants, and marshy areas were in the past – in the absence of drainage – prone to malaria
17.
Cizre
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Cizre is a town and district of Şırnak Province in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, on the border with Syria, just to the northwest of the Turkish-Syrian-Iraqi tripoint. It is populated by a majority of Kurds in addition to Assyrian/Syriac people and it is surrounded by the Tigris on the north, east and south, this gives it its name, which means island in Arabic. Cizre has a climate with wet, mild, rarely snowy winters and dry. Daily summer temperatures of 113 °F or higher are common, as well as freezing temperatures in the winter. Cizre is historical Gazarta and Jazīrat Ibn ʿUmar, an important town during the Abbasid period, during the Early Iron Age, Cizre was in the kingdom of Kumme, north of Assyria. In classical antiquity, it was located in Corduene, bethzabde was part of the Roman province of Mesopotamia. The chronicler Msiha Zkha speaks of three bishops of Beth Zabdai in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Merza, Soubha-liso e Sabtha, in 360 Bishop Theodorus was deported by the Persians, along with the general population, and died as a result of the forced march. In the late 4th or early 5th century Beth Zabdai or Jezira became a Nestorian bishopric, on entering into communion with Rome, it became the eparchy of Gazarta of the Chaldean Catholic Church. In 639 it became the seat also of the Syriac Orthodox Church and these Christians were severely reduced in the 1915 Seyfo massacres and the structures were allowed to lapse or were incorporated into other jurisdictions. Bethzabda is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see, al-Masudi reports that the spot where the ark landed could still be seen in his time. Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century adds that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb had made the remnants of the ark into a mosque, in the 19th century, it was the site of a Kurdish rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Cizre was home to an Armenian community of about 3,000, however, in late June 1915, during the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian males, along with a few Syriac bishops, were arrested, tortured, and subsequently murdered. Many of the victims had their throat slit and were thrown into the river Tigris. The women were deported on rafts towards Mosul, a few survived through the means of adoption by local Kurds, however, most were raped and/or drowned. The remaining Armenian population, located in the parts of Cizre, was massacred on 8 August 1915. Within the Turkish Republic, Cizre was part of the Mardin Province until 1990, Cizre is located on the River Tigris, which forms the border line with Syria at this area. The state roads and that connect Mardin with Şırnak, as well as the route to Silopi run through the town, the border checkpoint in Cizre, the gate to Malikiye in Syria, was in use between 1940-1972. 17 of its citizens who fought with fellow Kurds died in Syria during the Siege of Kobanî, during the curfew the town had limited access to water and food and many of the injured were prohibited to receive professional medical treatment
18.
Diyala River
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The Diyala River, is a river and tributary of the Tigris that originates in Iran as the Sirwan River then runs mainly through Eastern Iraq. It covers a distance of 445 km. It rises near Hamadan, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran and it then descends through the mountains, where for some 32 km it forms the border between the two countries. It finally feeds into the Tigris below Baghdad, navigation of the upper reaches of the Diyala is not possible because of its narrow defiles, but the rivers valley provides an important trade route between Iran and Iraq. The river flows southwest of the Hamrin Mountains and its origin in Kurdish and Persian is called Sirwan, meaning roaring sea or shouting river, as well as being the name of an ancient city near Ilam city in Iran. In the Sassanid and early Islamic periods, the course of the river formed part of the Nahrawan Canal. The Diyala Governorate in Iraq is named after the river, the river returned to its former proportions after the channels disappeared under the sand. The Battle of Diyala River took place in 693 BC between the forces of the Assyrian empire and the Elamites of southern Iran and this area flourished already during the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods, through to the Akkadian period. During the Larsa period, Eshnunna especially became prominent, major excavations were done in the lower Diyala river basin in the 1930s. They were conducted by the University of Chicago Oriental Institute and by the University of Pennsylvania, the sites such as Tell Agrab, Tell Asmar, Ishchali, and Khafaje were excavated. In Tell Asmar, the Tell Asmar Hoard is particularly notable, twelve remarkable statues were found belonging to the Early Dynastic period. At that time, the Diyala was relatively unexplored compared to southern and northern Mesopotamia, but looting of sites was already underway. As the result, the excavations were launched. Archaeologists James Breasted and Henri Frankfort were leading these projects and these excavations provided very comprehensive data on Mesopotamian archaeology and chronology. They covered the time between the late Uruk period and the end of the Old Babylonian period, subsequently, nine detailed monographs were published, but most of the objects, numbering 12,000, remained unpublished. Launched in 1992, the Diyala Database Project has been publishing a lot of this material, other scholars who worked there were Thorkild Jacobsen as epigrapher, Seton Lloyd, and Pinhas Delougaz. More recently, the Diyala region was also explored intensively as part of the Hamrin Dam Salvage Project, the following sites were excavated from 1977 to 1981, Tell Yelkhi, Tell Hassan, Tell Abu Husaini, Tell Kesaran, Tell Harbud, Tell al-Sarah, and Tell Mahmud. A type of known as Scarlet Ware, a brightly coloured pottery with pictorial representations, was typical of sites along the Diyala River
19.
Lake Tharthar
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Lake Tharthar, and known in Iraq as Buhayrat ath-Tharthar, is an artificial lake opened in 1956, situated 100 kilometers northwest of Baghdad between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. In 1956, the part of the Tharthar depression was turned into an artificial reservoir to collect flood waters of the Tigris River. The water flows via an inlet canal, named Tharthar Canal. The canal diverts the water, by means of a regulator Samarra Barrage. It merges with the lake in its southeastern bank, the lake has an artificial outlet called Taksim Tharthar Canal, which drains to the Euphrates River directly. The canal, after 28 km from its outlet, bifurcates to another canal called Dhiraa Dijla that returns water back to the Tigris River, Lake Thartar was the site of a raid in 2005 against an insurgent training base in the region. The Tharthar depression formed During Holocene age, mainly by karstification, Tharthar covers roughly 2,050 square kilometres, flows from the central and eastern parts of Sinjar Mountains and adjacent hills, with a floor of –3 m, above the sea level. The maximum length and width of the depression are 120 and 48 km, the eastern rim of the depression is higher than the western one, the heights of both rims are 90 metres and 75 metres, respectively. Moreover, it aims in washing out the salts from the stored water, Tharthar lake and the surrounding areas are considered one of the most important grazing areas in Iraq, including the wide wheat and corn fields covering the area. The area harbors many species of animals and vegetation, Tharthar lake is considered the main wintering grounds for many threatened species of migrant birds such as saker falcon, MacQueens bustard, and sociable lapwing. 54 bird species were seen in Tharthar lake including, pallid harrier, European roller, and black-tailed godwit were recorded on passage, golden jackals have been observed regularly at the site. Striped hyenas and caracals were reported by people near the lake edge. Many species of reptiles have been observed such as Turkish gecko, Tharthar lake and the surrounding area contains about 38 species of plants. Flooded communities, periodically or occasionally flooded land dominated by Cyperus sp, rumex dentatus, Polygonum argyrocoleon, Polygonum sp. and Bacopa monnieri. Marsh vegetation, helophytic vegetation - reedbeds, characterized by Phragmites australis, terrestrial vegetation, desert shrub characterized by Tamarix sp. Alhagi maurorum, Atraplex leucoclada and Cornulaca aucheri, media related to Lake Tharthar at Wikimedia Commons
20.
Mosul
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Mosul is a major city in northern Iraq. Since October 2016 it has been the site of an operation led by the Iraqi Government, under Haider al-Abadi, in an effort to dislodge. The city has been under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant since June 2014, and no westerner has entered the city until the latest initiative. The Battle of Mosul, an offensive to retake the city begun in October 2016, is the largest deployment of Iraqi forces since the 2003 invasion by U. S. Located some 400 km north of Baghdad, Mosul stands on the west bank of the Tigris, opposite the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh on the east bank. The metropolitan area has grown to encompass substantial areas on both the Left Bank and the Right Bank, as the two banks are described by the locals compared to the direction of Tigris. Mosuls population grew rapidly around the turn of the millennium and by 2004 was estimated to be 1,846,500, an estimated half million people fled Mosul in the second half of 2014 when the IS fought with government forces for control of the city. On November 17,2014, ISIS attacked the city of Mosul, ultimately killing seven civilians, while some residents returned, more fled in 2015 as fighting and violence increased, and US bombings pounded the city. Historically, important products of the area include Mosul marble and oil, the city of Mosul is home to the University of Mosul and its renowned Medical College, which together was one of the largest educational and research centers in Iraq and the Middle East. The University has since been closed, the Islamic States leadership in Mosul has kept the Medical College open but it is reported to be barely functional. The name of the city is first mentioned by Xenophon in his expeditionary logs in Achaemenid Assyria of 401 BC, there, he notes a small Assyrian town of Mépsila on the Tigris somewhere about where modern Mosul is today. Be that as it may, the name Mepsila is doubtless the root for the modern name, in its current Arabic form and spelling, the term Mosul, or rather Mawsil, stands for the linking point – or loosely, the Junction City, in Arabic. Mosul should not be confused with the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh and this area is known today as the town of Nebi Yunus and is now populated largely by Kurds. It is the only neighborhood in Mosul. The site contains the tomb of the Biblical Jonah, as he lived and died in the capital of ancient Assyria. Today, this area has been absorbed into the Mosul metropolitan area. The indigenous Assyrians still refer to the city of Mosul as Nineveh. The ancient Nineveh was succeeded by Mepsila after the fall of Assyria between 612-599 BC at the hands of a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians and Sagartians, the Assyrians largely abandoned the city, building new smaller settlements such as Mepsila nearby
21.
Baghdad
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Baghdad is the capital of the Republic of Iraq. The population of Baghdad, as of 2016, is approximately 8,765,000 making it the largest city in Iraq, the second largest city in the Arab world, and the second largest city in Western Asia. Located along the Tigris River, the city was founded in the 8th century, within a short time of its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center for the Islamic world. This, in addition to housing several key institutions, garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the Centre of Learning. Throughout the High Middle Ages, Baghdad was considered to be the largest city in the world with a population of 1,200,000 people. The city was destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state in 1938, in contemporary times, the city has often faced severe infrastructural damage, most recently due to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent Iraq War that lasted until December 2011. In recent years, the city has been subjected to insurgency attacks. As of 2012, Baghdad was listed as one of the least hospitable places in the world to live, the site where the city of Baghdad developed has been populated for millennia. By the 8th century AD, several villages had developed there, including a Persian hamlet called Baghdad, the name is of Indo-European origin and a Middle Persian compound of Bagh god and dād given by, translating to Bestowed by God or Gods gift. In Old Persian the first element can be traced to boghu and is related to Slavic bog god, a similar term in Middle Persian is the name Mithradāt, known in English by its Hellenistic form Mithridates, meaning gift of Mithra. There are a number of locations in the wider region whose names are compounds of the word bagh, including Baghlan. The name of the town Baghdati in Georgia shares the same etymological origins, when the Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, founded a completely new city for his capital, he chose the name Madinat al-Salaam or City of Peace. This was the name on coins, weights, and other official usage. By the 11th century, Baghdad became almost the exclusive name for the world-renowned metropolis, after the fall of the Umayyads, the first Muslim dynasty, the victorious Abbasid rulers wanted their own capital whence they could rule. They chose a site north of the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, on 30 July 762, the caliph Al-Mansur commissioned the construction of the city, mansur believed that Baghdad was the perfect city to be the capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasids. Mansur loved the site so much he is quoted saying, This is indeed the city that I am to found, where I am to live, and where my descendants will reign afterward. The citys growth was helped by its excellent location, based on at least two factors, it had control over strategic and trading routes along the Tigris, the abundance of water in a dry climate
22.
Shatt al-Arab
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The southern end of the river constitutes the border between Iraq and Iran down to the mouth of the river as it discharges into the Persian Gulf. The river is significant because it forms a natural border between Iran and the Arab world. It varies in width from about 232 metres at Basra to 800 metres at its mouth and it is thought that the waterway formed relatively recently in geologic time, with the Tigris and Euphrates originally emptying into the Persian Gulf via a channel further to the west. The Karun river, a tributary joins the waterway from the Iranian side, deposits large amounts of silt into the river. The area is judged to hold the largest date palm forest in the world, in the mid-1970s, the region included 17 to 18 million date palms, an estimated one-fifth of the worlds 90 million palm trees. But by 2002, war, salt, and pests had wiped out more than 14 million of the palms, many of the remaining 3 to 4 million trees are in poor condition. In Middle Persian literature and the Shahnama, the name اروند Arvand is used for the Tigris, Iranians also used this name specifically to designate the Shatt al-Arab during the later Pahlavi period, and continue to do so after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Iranian cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr and the Iraqi city, the tribes on both sides of the lower waterway, however, are Marsh Arabs, and the Ottoman Empire claimed to represent them. Tensions between the empires that extended across a wide range of religious, cultural and political conflicts. The Second Treaty of Erzurum was signed by the two parties in 1847 after protracted negotiations, which included British and Russian delegates. A protocol between the Ottomans and the Persians was signed in Istanbul in 1913, which declared that the Ottoman-Persian frontier run along the thalweg, in 1937, Iran and Iraq signed a treaty that settled the dispute over control of the Shatt al-Arab. By the late 1960s, the build-up of Iranian power under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in April 1969, Iran abrogated the 1937 treaty over the Shatt al-Arab, and as such, Iran ceased paying tolls to Iraq when its ships used the Shatt al-Arab. Iraq threatened war over the Iranian move, but when on 24 April 1969 an Iranian tanker escorted by Iranian warships sailed down the Shatt al-Arab, Iraq being the militarily weaker state did nothing. The Iranian abrogation of the 1937 treaty marked the beginning of a period of acute Iraqi-Iranian tension that was to last until the Algiers Accords of 1975, all United Nations attempts to intervene as mediators were rebuffed. Under Saddam Hussein, Baathist Iraq claimed the entire waterway up to the Iranian shore as its territory, in response, Iran in the early 1970s became the main patron of Iraqi Kurdish groups fighting for independence from Iraq. In 1980, Hussein released a statement claiming to abrogate the treaty that he signed, international law, however, holds that in all cases no bilateral or multilateral treaty can be abrogated by one party only. The main thrust of the movement on the ground was across the waterway which was the stage for most of the military battles between the two armies. The waterway was Iraqs only outlet to the Persian Gulf, and thus, its shipping lanes were greatly affected by continuous Iranian attacks
23.
Al-Qurnah
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Al-Qurnah is a small town in southern Iraq about 74 km northwest of Basra, within the town of Nahairat. Qurna is located at the point of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join to form the Shatt al-Arab. Local folklore holds Qurna to have been the site of the Garden of Eden, an ancient jujube tree is locally celebrated and shown to the tourists as the actual Tree of Knowledge of the Bible. The town experienced the Battle of Qurna during the Mesopotamian Campaign of World War I, the small Qurna Tourist Hotel was built during the Baathist period to encourage tourism for the region. However it is most likely not in use now, as of the start of the 2003 Iraq War, conditions at the site were reportedly woeful. Cracked pavement and bullet holes along with the condition of the tree itself made future tourism seem out of the question. However, the natural beauty and Western presence make it viable for development for tourism
24.
Basra Governorate
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Basra Governorate is a governorate in southern Iraq, bordering Kuwait to the south and Iran to the east. The capital is the city of Basra, other districts of Basra include Al-Qurnah, Az Zubayr, Al Midaina, Shatt Al Arab, Abu Al Khaseeb and Al Faw located on the Persian Gulf. The mandate was succeeded by the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932, the Shiite population suffered long and hard under Saddams rule. It was started in Basra by angry soldiers, according to legend after they fired at a giant public portrait of Saddam Hussein. Mass support on the streets followed, shouting slogans, executing Baath party members, leaders and secret police, the participants had expected support from American troops. But the Allied army at the time was occupied despite the 24th Infantry Division stationed only several miles from the city. The city of Basra didnt completely succumb to the rebels, a counterattack by some 6,000 loyalists from the Republican Guard held out against 5,000 defectors of the Iraqi army. From 2003 the governorate was one of the centres of warfare during the invasion of the British, the Battle of Basra took place between March 23 and April 7 between the British 1st Armoured Division forces under Major General Robin Brims, and Iraqi forces under General Ali Hassan al-Majid. Much of the heaviest combat in the war took place in the province in subsequent weeks, following the example of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Iraq, Basra has proposed uniting with the other provinces of Dhi Qar and Maysan as an autonomous region. On October 15,2005,691,024 people, some 96. 02%, voted for the new constitution
25.
Euphrates
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The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia, originating in eastern Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The Ancient Greek form Euphrátēs was borrowed from Old Persian Ufrātu, the Elamite name is ultimately derived from the Sumerian Buranuna, possibly through the Akkadian name. In Akkadian the river was similarly called Purattu, which has been perpetuated in Semitic languages, the Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. The earliest references to the Euphrates come from texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna, the name could also be written KIB. NUN. or dKIB. NUN, with the prefix d indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also a written UD. KIB. NUN, the Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates, the same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates, both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres and 3,520 metres amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres amsl, from Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres over a distance of less than 600 kilometres. The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s, data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres per second, the seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres per second, the minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres per second afterward. In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates, the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur and these rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries, emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a spring near Ayn al-Arus. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three and its main karstic springs are located around Ras al-Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah
26.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
27.
River
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A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water, small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the term river as applied to geographic features. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location, examples are run in parts of the United States, burn in Scotland and northeast England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always, Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Potamology is the study of rivers while limnology is the study of inland waters in general. Extraterrestrial rivers of liquid hydrocarbons have recently found on Titan. Channels may indicate past rivers on other planets, specifically outflow channels on Mars and rivers are theorised to exist on planets, a river begins at a source, follows a path called a course, and ends at a mouth or mouths. The water in a river is confined to a channel. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Floodplains may be wide in relation to the size of the river channel. This distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred, especially in areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become greatly developed by housing. Rivers can flow down mountains, through valleys or along plains, the term upriver refers to the direction towards the source of the river, i. e. against the direction of flow. Likewise, the term describes the direction towards the mouth of the river. The term left bank refers to the bank in the direction of flow. The river channel typically contains a stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water. Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide and they also occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are similar to braided rivers and are quite rare
28.
Mesopotamia
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In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The Sumerians and Akkadians dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of history to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthian Empire. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD226, eastern part of it fell to the Sassanid Persians, division of Mesopotamia between Roman and Sassanid Empires lasted until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and Muslim conquest of the Levant from Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene, and Hatra, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The regional toponym Mesopotamia comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος middle and ποταμός river and it is used throughout the Greek Septuagint to translate the Hebrew equivalent Naharaim. In the Anabasis, Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria, the Aramaic term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept. The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazira, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad, Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran. In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation and it is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests, with names like Syria, Jazirah, and Iraq being used to describe the region after that date. It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th-century Western encroachments, Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the Armenian Highlands. Both rivers are fed by tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000 square kilometres region of marshes, lagoons, mud flats, in the extreme south, the Euphrates and the Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times, periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and these trends have continued to the present day in Iraq
29.
Persian Gulf
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The Persian Gulf is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz, the Shatt al-Arab river delta forms the northwest shoreline. The Persian Gulf was a battlefield of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War and it is the namesake of the 1991 Gulf War, the largely air- and land-based conflict that followed Iraqs invasion of Kuwait. The gulf has many fishing grounds, extensive coral reefs, and abundant pearl oysters, the body of water is historically and internationally known as the Persian Gulf. Some Arab governments refer to it as the Arabian Gulf or The Gulf, the name Gulf of Iran is used by the International Hydrographic Organization. The Persian Gulf is geologically young, having been formed around 15,000 years ago. Its length is 989 kilometres, with Iran covering most of the northern coast, the Persian Gulf is about 56 km wide at its narrowest, in the Strait of Hormuz. The waters are very shallow, with a maximum depth of 90 metres. Various small islands lie within the Persian Gulf, some of which are the subject of territorial disputes between the states of the region. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the Persian Gulfs southern limit as The Northwestern limit of Gulf of Oman and this limit is defined as A line joining Ràs Limah on the coast of Arabia and Ràs al Kuh on the coast of Iran. The Persian Gulf and its areas are the worlds largest single source of crude oil. Safaniya Oil Field, the worlds largest offshore oilfield, is located in the Persian Gulf, large gas finds have also been made, with Qatar and Iran sharing a giant field across the territorial median line. Using this gas, Qatar has built up a substantial liquefied natural gas, the oil-rich countries that have a coastline on the Persian Gulf are referred to as the Persian Gulf States. In 550 BC, the Achaemenid Empire established the first ancient empire in Persis, consequently, in the Greek sources, the body of water that bordered this province came to be known as the Persian Gulf. In the travel account of Pythagoras, several chapters are related to description of his travels accompanied by the Achaemenid king Darius the Great, to Susa and Persepolis, and the area is described. This water channel separates the Iran Plateau from the Arabia Plate, has enjoyed an Iranian Identity since at least 2200 years ago. Before being given its present name, the Persian Gulf was called many different names, the classical Greek writers, like Herodotus, called it the Red Sea. In Babylonian texts, it was known as the sea above Akkad, the name of the gulf, historically and internationally known as the Persian Gulf after the land of Persia, has been disputed by some Arab countries since the 1960s
30.
Taurus Mountains
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The Taurus Mountains are a mountain complex in southern Turkey, dividing the Mediterranean coastal region of southern Turkey from the central Anatolian Plateau. The system extends along a curve from Lake Eğirdir in the west to the reaches of the Euphrates. It is a part of the Alpide belt in Eurasia, the mountains are a place of many ancient storm-god temples. The Hurrians, probably originators of the various storm-gods of the ancient Near East, were a people whom modern scholars place in the Taurus Mountains at their probable earliest origins, a Bronze Age archaeological site, where early evidence of tin mining was found, is at Kestel. The pass known in antiquity as the Cilician Gates crosses the north of Tarsus. The Amanus range in southern Turkey is where the Taurus Mountains are pushed up as three tectonic plates come together, the Amanus is a natural frontier, west is Cilicia, east is Syria. There are several passes, like the Amanian Gate, which are of great strategical importance, in 333 BCE at the Battle of Issus, Alexander the Great defeated Darius III Codomannus on the foothills along the coast between these two passes. During World War I, the German and Turkish railway system through the Taurus Mountains proved to be a strategic objective of the Allies. This region was mentioned as a strategically controlled objective slated for surrender to the Allies in the Armistice. In the Aladaglar and Bolkar mountains, limestone has eroded to form karstic landscapes of waterfalls, underground rivers, the Manavgat River originates on the southern slopes of the Beydaglari range. The Varda Viaduct, situated on the railway lines Konya-Adana at Hacıkırı village in Adana Province, is a 98 m high railway bridge constructed in the 1910s by Germans, west Taurus and Taurus Mountains form an arc around the Gulf of Antalya. The East Taşeli Plateau and Goksu River divide it from the Central Taurus Mountains and it has many peaks rising above 3, 000–3,700 m. They are also the source of the Euphrates River and Tigris River, map of Eurasia showing Taurus Mountain ranges
31.
Nasiriyah
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Nasiriyah is a city in Iraq. It is situated along the banks of the Euphrates River, about 225 miles southeast of Baghdad and it is the capital of the Dhi Qar Governorate. Its population 2003 was about 560,000, making it the fourth largest city in Iraq and it had a religiously diverse population of Muslims, Mandaeans and Jews in the early 20th century, but today its inhabitants are predominantly Shia Muslims. Nasiriyah was founded by the Muntafiq tribe in the late 19th century during the Ottoman era and it has since become a major hub for transportation. Nasiriyah is the center of a date-growing area, the citys cottage industries include boat-building, carpentry and silver working. The city museum has a collection of Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian. The ruins of the ancient cities of Ur and Larsa are located nearby, Nasiriyah was founded in 1872 by Nasir al-Saadun Pasha, the sheikh of the Muntafiq tribal confederation, after whom the city was named. During that same year, it became the center of the Muntafiq sanjak. Nasir Pasha was the head of the Sunni Muslim al-Saadun clan, at the time of Nasiriyahs founding, Muntafiq power in the Basra Vilayet had increasingly given way to Ottoman centralization. However, Nasir Pasha was appointed by the Ottomans as the head of the vilayet, in the early 20th century, Nasiriyah had a population of roughly 10,000. It was a center of trade in Ottoman Iraq and imported foreign goods via commerce with Baghdad. The chief commodities Nasiriyah produced included leather, grain and ghee, the town contained about 600 well-built stone houses, but most buildings and homes were constructed from mud brick. There were about 350 shops in Nasiriyah as well as five khans, the area surrounding the town was abundant in date palms and grain fields. The town was not protected by a wall like other major administrative centers, during World War I, the British conquered the city, controlled at the time by the Ottoman Empire, in July 1915. Some 400 British and Indian and up to 2,000 Turkish soldiers were killed in the battle for Nasiriyah on 24 July 1915, in 1920, Nasiriyah had 6,523 inhabitants. The Iraqi Communist Partys first cell was founded in Nasiriyah by Yusuf Salman Yusuf in the 1930s and it was also the birthplace of Fuad al-Rikabi, who founded the Iraqi Baath Party in the 1950s. At the time, the Iraqi Baath consisted mostly of people from Nasiriyah, in March 1991, following the American withdrawal at the wars end, the Shia population of Nasiriyah took part in the revolt against the rule of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The revolt was subdued by the Iraqi military with heavy loss of life
32.
Central Marshes
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The Central or Qurna Marshes were a large complex of wetlands in Iraq that were part of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along with the Hawizeh and Hammar Marshes. Formerly covering an area of around 3000 square kilometres, they were almost completely drained following the 1991 uprisings in Iraq and have in recent years been reflooded, the Central Marshes stretched between Nasiriyah, Al-Uzair and Al-Qurnah and were mainly fed by the Tigris and its distributaries. They were drained by the Prosperity Canal, and by the Glory River and it is feared that the Bunns short-tailed bandicoot rat, which had only been described from specimens obtained in the Central Marshes, is extinct. The area was populated by the Marsh Arabs or Madan. By the early 1980s, it was evident that irrigation projects were already affecting water levels in the marshes, a further canal, the Prosperity Canal, was constructed to prevent any overflow into the marsh from the main channel of the Tigris as it ran southwards from Qalat Saleh. By the late 1990s, the Central Marsh had become completely desiccated, by 2000, United Nations Environment Programme estimated that 90% of the marshlands had disappeared. Following the 2003 U. S. invasion of Iraq, embankments and drainage works were open. Bunns short-tailed bandicoot rat is suspected to have become extinct
33.
Hawizeh Marshes
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The Hawizeh Marshes are a complex of marshes that straddle the Iraq and Iran border. The marshes are fed by two branches of the Tigris River in Iraq and Karkheh River in Iran, the Hawizeh Marshes are drained by the Al-Kassarah. This river plays a role in maintaining the marshes as a flow-through system. The Hawizeh Marshes have been populated for more than 5,000 years, the Hawizeh Marshes are by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present day Iraq and the Karkhen River in present day Iran. The Marsh Arabs live in Iraq and Hawizeh people live in Iran, from the time of the Sumerians and Babylonians the people used the marshes as a place to live. In the south west of Iran and the south east of Iraq and these cities in the marshes are part of both countries with no border that separates them. So the people can move between Iraq marshes and Iran by the small boats, the city of Marshes were built on water. The people who live there have very simple lives and they make their houses of the reeds of the water without, electricity or cars and they don’t have an education they have just simple lives. They fish, hunt, cultivate and breed buffalo, the people use small boats called Al-Mshhove to move. The area where the fresh waters gets to the marshes is far away from the cities, the marshes make a safe home for thousands of migrant animals and birds like “wild squirrels, white eagle, hawks, brown dukes and squirrels every year. So it is a home to a lot different kinds of migrant animals who come to raise their young there. The marshes started a time ago. Around 5,000 years ago, the started by the great rivers Tigris. These rivers flooded the land to create the marshes and started a new ecosystem with new animals, birds, fish and that made a great change in that time to original Sumerians and Babylonians who lived there. They lived off the marshes by fishing, hunting and planting, the people came to live in the marshes also, but time changed some of the people’s ideas and beliefs. With the break between the Shia and Mandaean forms of religion, the Shia Muslims came to dominate in the marshes, some ideas of the original people changed because of this religion and the other ideas remained from the Sumerians. These ideas include fantastic stories about ghosts, curses and extraterrestrials, in 1990-1992 when the Iraq government decided to dry the marshes because they thought an armed group lived there, the population left. After the government decided to dry the water, some of them moved to the cities, after the war in 2003 the Iraqi government open the water the marcher people returned to the marshes
34.
Pliny the Elder
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In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions. Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncles now missing work on the History of the German Wars. The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption would not allow his ship to leave the shore, and Pliny probably died during this event. Plinys dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 and a statement of his nephew that he died in his 56th year, Pliny was the son of an equestrian, Gaius Plinius Celer, and his wife, Marcella. Neither the younger nor the elder Pliny mention the names and their ultimate source is a fragmentary inscription found in a field in Verona and recorded by the 16th century Augustinian monk Onofrio Panvinio at Verona. The reading of the inscription depends on the reconstruction, but in all cases the names come through, whether he was an augur and whether she was named Grania Marcella are less certain. Jean Hardouin presents a statement from a source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona. Hardouin also cites the conterraneity of Catullus, additional efforts to connect Celer and Marcella with other gentes are highly speculative. Hardouin is the scholar to use his unknown source. He kept statues of his ancestors there, a statue of Pliny on the facade of the Duomo of Como celebrates him as a native son. He had a sister, Plinia, who married into the Caecilii and was the mother of his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whose letters describe his work and study regimen in detail. In one of his letters to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger details how his uncles breakfasts would be light and simple following the customs of our forefathers. This shows that Pliny the Younger wanted it to be conveyed that Pliny the Elder was a good Roman and this statement would have pleased Tacitus. Two inscriptions identifying the hometown of Pliny the Younger as Como take precedence over the Verona theory, one commemorates the youngers career as imperial magistrate and details his considerable charitable and municipal expenses on behalf of the people of Como. Another identifies his father Lucius village as Fecchio near Como and it is likely therefore that Plinia was a local girl and Pliny the Elder, her brother, was from Como. Gaius was a member of the Plinii gens and he did not take his fathers cognomen, Celer, but assumed his own, Secundus. As his adopted son took the same cognomen, Pliny founded a branch, no earlier instances of the Plinii are known. In 59 BC, only about 82 years before Plinys birth, Julius Caesar founded Novum Comum as a colonia to secure the region against the Alpine tribes, whom he had been unable to defeat
35.
Basra
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Basra, also al-Baṣrah, is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab between Kuwait and Iran. It had an population of 1.5 million in 2012. Basra is also Iraqs main port, although it not have deep water access. The city is part of the location of Sumer, one of the ports from which Sinbad the Sailor journeyed. It played an important role in early Islamic history and was built in 636, Basra is consistently one of the hottest cities in Iraq, with summer temperatures regularly exceeding 50 °C. The city was called by many throughout its history, Basrah being the most common. In Arabic the word means the overwatcher, which might have been an allusion to the citys origin as an Arab military base against the Sassanids. Some sources claim that the name is derived from the Persian word Bas-rah, others have argued that the name is derived from the Aramaic word basratha, meaning place of huts, settlement. During the pre-Islamic era, the area was known to the Arabs as al-Khariba due to the existence of an ancient city called al-Kharba. After the present city was built, it was called by names, including the mother of Iraq, the reservoir of Arabs, the prosperous city. The name Al-Basrah, which in Arabic means the over watching or the seeing everything, was given to it because of its role as a base against the Sassanid Empire. However, other sources claim the name originates from the Persian word Bas-rāh or Bassorāh meaning where many ways come together, in 639 Umar established this encampment as a city with five districts, and appointed Abu Musa al-Ashari as its first governor. Abu Musa led the conquest of Khuzestan from 639 to 642 and was ordered by Umar to aid Uthman ibn Abu al-ʿAs, then fighting Iran from a new, more easterly miṣr at Tawwaj. In 650, the Rashidun Caliph Uthman reorganised the Persian frontier, installed ʿAbdullah ibn Amir as Basras governor, Ibn Amir led his forces to their final victory over Yazdegerd III, the Sassanid King of Kings. In 656, Uthman was murdered and Ali was appointed Caliph, Ali first installed Uthman ibn Hanif as Basras governor, who was followed by ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbbas. These men held the city for Ali until the death in 661. The Sufyanids held Basra until Yazid Is death in 683, the Sufyanids first governor was Umayyad ʿAbdullah, a renowned military leader, commanding fealty and financial demands from Karballah, but poor governor. In 664, Muʿawiyah I replaced him with Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan, often called ibn Abihi, on Ziyads death in 673, his son ʿUbaydullah ibn Ziyad became governor
36.
Sumer
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Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Proto-writing in the dates back to c.3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and date back to 3300 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later, there are none in Sumer of any kind that have dated before Enmebaragesi. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, todays Persian Gulf region, Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund, Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur approximately 2100-2000 BC, the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ gi ga/, literally meaning the black-headed people, the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, in the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, the Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c.1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian population, 2500–2334 BC Akkadian Empire period, c. 2218–2047 BC Ur III period, c, 2047–1940 BC The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and it is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture
37.
Nineveh
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Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. It is on the bank of the Tigris River, and was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It is also a name for the half of Mosul which lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the modern day. Its ruins are across the river from the major city of Mosul. The two main tells, or mound-ruins, within the walls are Kouyunjik, the Northern Palace, large amounts of Assyrian sculpture and other artifacts have been excavated and are now located in museums around the world. Site remains suffered in the 2010s from the occupation of the area by ISIS, Iraqi forces recaptured the area in January 2017. The English placename Nineveh comes from Latin Ninive and Septuagint Greek Nineuḗ under influence of the Biblical Hebrew Nīnewēh, the original meaning of the name is unclear but may have referred to a patron goddess. The cuneiform for Ninâ is a fish within a house and this may have simply intended Place of Fish or may have indicated a goddess associated with fish or the Tigris, possibly originally of Hurrian origin. The city was said to be devoted to the Ishtar of Nineveh. The city was known as Ninii or Ni in Ancient Egyptian, Ninuwa in Mari, Ninawa in Aramaic, ܢܸܢܘܵܐ in Syriac. Nabī Yūnus is the Arabic for Prophet Jonah, Kouyunjik was, according to Layard, a Turkish name, and it was known as Armousheeah by the Arabs, and is thought to have some connection with the Kara Koyunlu dynasty. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul, Nineveh was one of the oldest and greatest cities in antiquity. The area was settled as early as 6000 BC and, by 3000 BC, had become an important religious center for the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, the early city was constructed on a fault line and, consequently, suffered damage from a number of earthquakes. One such event destroyed the first temple of Ishtar, which was rebuilt in 2260 BC by the Akkadian king Manishtushu. Texts from the Hellenistic period later offered an eponymous Ninus as the founder of Nineveh, the regional influence of Nineveh became particularly pronounced during the archaeological period known as Ninevite 5, or Ninevite V. This period is defined primarily by the pottery that is found widely throughout northern Mesopotamia. Also, for the northern Mesopotamian region, the Early Jezirah chronology has been developed by archaeologists, according to this regional chronology, Ninevite 5 is equivalent to the Early Jezirah I–II period. Ninevite 5 was preceded by the Late Uruk period, Ninevite 5 pottery is roughly contemporary to the Early Transcaucasian culture ware, and the Jemdet Nasr ware
38.
Ctesiphon
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Ctesiphon was an ancient city located on the eastern bank of Tigris, and about 35 kilometres southeast of present day Baghdad. It became the capital of the Parthian Empire in about 58 BC, Ctesiphon developed into a rich commercial metropolis, merging with the surrounding cities along both shores of the river, including the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Ctesiphon and its environs were therefore referred to as the cities. In the late sixth and early seventh century, it was one of the largest cities in the world, during the Roman–Persian Wars, Ctesiphon fell four times to the Romans, and later once during Sasanian rule. It was also the site of the Battle of Ctesiphon, in which Emperor Julian was killed in action, after the Muslim invasion the city fell into decay and was depopulated by the end of the 8th century. The most conspicuous structure remaining today is the archway of Ctesiphon. In Iranian-language texts of the Sasanian era, it is spelled as tyspwn, the New Persian form is Tisfun. Texts from the Assyrian Church of the Easts synods referred to the city as Qṭēspōn or some times Māḥôzē when referring to the metropolis of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, in modern Arabic, the name is usually Ṭaysafūn or Qaṭaysfūn or as al-Madain. According to Yāqūt, quoting Ḥamza, the form was Ṭūsfūn or Tūsfūn. The Armenian name of the city was Tizbon, Ctesiphon is first mentioned in the Book of Ezra of the Old Testament as Kasfia/Casphia. Ctesiphon is located approximately at Al-Madain,32 km southeast of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. Ctesiphon measured 30 square kilometers, more than twice the surface of 13. 7-square-kilometer fourth-century Imperial Rome, the archway of Chosroes was once a part of the royal palace in Ctesiphon and is estimated to date between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD. It is located in what is now the Iraqi town of Salman Pak, Ctesiphon was founded in the late 120s BC. It was built on the site of a camp established across from Seleucia by Mithridates I of Parthia. The reign of Gotarzes I saw Ctesiphon reach a peak as a political and commercial center, the city became the Empires capital circa 58 BC during the reign of Orodes II. Gradually, the city merged with the old Hellenistic capital of Seleucia, the reason for this westward relocation of the capital could have been in part due to the proximity of the previous capitals to the Scythian incursions. Nearby is situated a village called Ctesiphon, a large village, because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in their eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome five times in its history – three times in the 2nd century alone, the emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon in 117 as part of a peace settlement
39.
Lagash
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Lagash/ˈleɪɡæʃ/ is an ancient city located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about 22 kilometres east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash was one of the oldest cities of the Ancient Near East, the ancient site of Nina is around 10 km away and marks the southern limit of the state. Nearby Girsu, about 25 km northwest of Lagash, was the center of the Lagash state. Lagashs main temple was the E-Ninnu, dedicated to the god Ningirsu, from inscriptions found at Girsu such as the Gudea cylinders, it appears that Lagash was an important Sumerian city in the late 3rd millennium BC. It was at that time ruled by independent kings, Ur-Nanshe and his successors, who were engaged in contests with the Elamites on the east and the kings of Kienĝir and Kish on the north. After the collapse of Sargons state, Lagash again thrived under its independent kings, Ur-Bau and Gudea and his was especially the era of artistic development. We even have a good idea of what Gudea looked like. At the time of Gudea, the capital of Lagash was actually in Girsu, the kingdom covered an area of approximately 1,600 square kilometres. It contained 17 larger cities, eight district capitals, and numerous villages, according to one estimate, Lagash was the largest city in the world from ca.2075 to 2030 BC. Soon after the time of Gudea, Lagash was absorbed into the Ur III state as one of its prime provinces, there is some information about the area during the Old Babylonian period. In ca.2450 BC, Lagash and the city of Umma fell out with each other after a border dispute. As described in Stele of the Vultures the current king of Lagash, Eannatum, inspired by the god of his city, Ningirsu. Initial details of the battle are unclear, but the Stele is able to portray a few details about the event. According to the Steles engravings, when the two met each other in the field, Eannatum dismounted from his chariot and proceeded to lead his men on foot. After lowing their spears, the Lagash army advanced upon the army from Umma in a dense Phalanx, after a brief clash, Eannatum and his army had gained victory over the army of Umma. Despite having been struck in the eye by an arrow, the king of Lagash lived on to enjoy his armys victory and this battle is one of the earliest organised battles known to scholars and historians. These dynasties are not found on the Sumerian King List, although one extremely fragmentary supplement has been found in Sumerian, at the end of the list is the statement Written in the school, suggesting this was a scribal school production. A few of the names from the Lagash rulers listed below may be out, including Ur-Nanshe, Ane-tum, En-entar-zid, Ur-Ningirsu, Ur-Bau
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Francis Rawdon Chesney
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Francis Rawdon Chesney was a British general and explorer. F. R. Chesney was born there, on 16 March 1789, lord Rawdon gave the boy a cadetship at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and he was gazetted to the Royal Artillery in 1805. In 1830, after taking command of 7th Company, 4th Battalion Royal Artillery in Malta, in 1868 he published a further volume of narrative on his Euphrates expedition. Reports on the Navigation of the Euphrates, submitted to Government by Captain Chesney, of the Royal Artillery. Taylor, printer,7, Little James Street, Grays Inn, the Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Carried on by order of the British Government in the years 1835,1836,1837, with Fourteen Maps and Charts, and embellished with Ninety-seven Plates, besides numerous Woodcuts. Colonel in Asia, Commander of the Expedition, london, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans,1850. On the Reorganization of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, by Colonel Chesney, D. C. L. and F. R. S. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans,1851, observations on the Past and Present State of Firearms, and on the Probable Effects in War of the New Musket. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans,1852, the Russo-Turkish Campaigns of 1828 and 1829. With a View of the Present State of Affairs in the East, author of The Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris. With an Appendix containing the Diplomatic Correspondence between the Four Powers, and the Secret Correspondence between the Russian and English Governments,1854, and Redfield, New York,1854. Carried on by Order of the British Government during the years 1835,1836, Colonel Commandant 14th Brigade Royal Artillery, D. C. L. London, Longman, Green, and Co.1868, minutes of Evidence of the Select Committee on Steam Navigation to India. 14 July 1834, p.52, and Letter, pp. 88–91, Evidence on Steam Communication with India. Papers Ordered to be Printed by the House of Lords, report from the Select Committee on Euphrates Valley Railway. With the Proceedings of the Committee, Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed,22 July 1872. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Chesney
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Ur
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Ur was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in south Iraqs Dhi Qar Governorate. The city dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in history as a City State from the 26th century BC. The site is marked by the restored ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur. The temple was built in the 21st century BC, during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus, the Assyrian born last king of Babylon. The ruins cover an area of 1,200 metres northwest to southeast by 800 metres northeast to southwest, archaeologists have discovered the evidence of an early occupation at Ur during the Ubaid period. These early levels were sealed off with a deposit of soil that was interpreted by excavators of the 1920s as evidence for the Great Flood of the Book of Genesis. The further occupation of Ur only becomes clear during its emergence in the third millennium BC, the third millennium BC is generally described as the Early Bronze Age of Mesopotamia, which ends approximately after the demise of the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st century BC. There are two sources which inform scholars about the importance of Ur during the Early Bronze Age. The first is a body of cuneiform documents, mostly from the empire of the so-called Third Dynasty of Ur. This was the most centralized bureaucratic state the world had yet known, concerning the earlier centuries, the Sumerian King List provides a tentative political history of ancient Sumer. The second source of information is archaeological work in modern Iraq, although the early centuries are still poorly understood, the archaeological discoveries have shown unequivocally that Ur was a major urban center on the Mesopotamian plain. Especially the discovery of the Royal Tombs have confirmed its splendour and this wealth, unparalleled up to then, is a testimony of Urs economic importance during the Early Bronze Age. Archaeological research of the region has contributed greatly to our understanding of the landscape. Imports to Ur came from parts of the world. The imported objects include precious metals such as gold and silver and we know that Ur was the most important port on the Persian Gulf, which extended much further inland than it does today. All the wealth came to Mesopotamia by sea had to pass through Ur. So far evidence for the earliest periods of the Early Bronze Age in Mesopotamia is very limited, Mesh-Ane-pada is the first king mentioned in the Sumerian King List, and appears to have lived in the 26th century BC. That Ur was an important urban centre already then seems to be indicated by a type of cylinder seal called the City Seals and these seals contain a set of proto-cuneiform signs which appear to be writings or symbols of the name of city-states in ancient Sumer
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World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
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