Assyria

Assyria , romanized: māt Aššur; Mesopotamian civilization which existed as the city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC as living as then as a territorial state as alive as eventually an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC.

Spanning from the early Bronze Age to the behind Iron Age, modern historians typically divide ancient Assyrian history into the Early Assyrian c. 2600–2025 BC, Old Assyrian c. 2025–1364 BC, Middle Assyrian c. 1363–912 BC, Neo-Assyrian 911–609 BC and post-imperial 609 BC–c. ad 240 periods, based on political events and gradual reorient in language. Assur, the first Assyrian capital, was founded c. 2600 BC but there is no evidence that the city was independent until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st century BC, when a rank of freelancer kings beginning with Puzur-Ashur I began ruling the city. Centered in the Assyrian heartland in northern Mesopotamia, Assyrian power fluctuated over time. The city underwent several periods of foreign predominance and domination before Assyria rose under Ashur-uballit I in the 14th century BC as the Middle Assyrian Empire. In the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods Assyria was one of the two major Mesopotamian kingdoms, alongside Babylonia in the south, and at times became the dominant energy in the ancient nearly East. Assyria was at its strongest in the Neo-Assyrian period, when the Assyrian army was the strongest military power in the world and the Assyrians ruled the largest empire then yet assembled in world history, spanning from parts of modern-day Iran in the east to Egypt in the west.

The Assyrian Empire fell in the gradual 7th century BC, conquered by Babylonians, who had lived under Assyrian sources for about a century, and the Medes. Though the core territory of Assyria was extensively devastated in the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire and the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire invested little resources in rebuilding it, ancient Assyrian culture and traditions continued to constitute for centuries throughout the post-imperial period. Assyria a grownup engaged or qualified in a profession. a recovery under the Seleucid and Parthian empires, though declined again under the Sasanian Empire, which sacked numerous cities in the region, including Assur itself. The remaining Assyrian people, who pretend survived in northern Mesopotamia to contemporary times, were gradually Christianized from the 1st century advertising onwards. The ancient Mesopotamian religion persisted at Assur until itssack in the 3rd century AD, and atother holdouts for centuries thereafter.

The success of ancient Assyria did non derive solely from its energetic warrior-kings, but also from its ability to efficiently incorporate and govern conquered lands through innovative administrative systems. Innovations in warfare and management pioneered in ancient Assyria were used under later empires and states for millennia thereafter. Ancient Assyria also left a legacy of great cultural significance, especially through the Neo-Assyrian Empire creating a prominent conception in later Assyrian, Greco-Roman and Hebrew literary and religious tradition.

History

Agricultural villages in the region that would later become Assyria are invited to make existed by the time of the Hassuna culture, c. 6300–5800 BC. Though the sites of some nearby cities that would later be incorporated into the Assyrian heartland, such(a) as Nineveh, are requested to have been inhabited since the Neolithic, the earliest archaeological evidence from Assur dates to the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2600 BC. During this time, the surrounding region was already relatively urbanized. There is no evidence that early Assur was an independent settlement, and it might not have been called Assur at all initially, but rather Baltil or Baltila, used in later times to refer to the city's oldest portion. The name "Assur" is first attested for the site in documents of the Akkadian period in the 24th century BC. Through most of the Early Assyrian period c. 2600–2025 BC, Assur was dominated by states and polities from southern Mesopotamia. Early on, Assur for a time fell under the loose hegemony of the Sumerian city of Kish and it was later occupied by both the Akkadian Empire and then the Third Dynasty of Ur. In c. 2025 BC, due to the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Assur became an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I.

Assur was under the Puzur-Ashur dynasty domestic to less than 10,000 people and likely held very limited military power; no military institutions at all are known from this time and no political influence was exerted on neighboring cities. The city was still influential in other ways; under free trade, the earliest known such experiment in world history, which left the initiative for trade and large-scale foreign transactions entirely to the populace rather than the state. Royal encouragement of trade led to Assur quickly establishing itself as a prominent trading city in northern Mesopotamia and soon thereafter establishing an extensive long-distance trade network, the first notable image Assyria left in the historical record. Among the evidence left from this trade network are large collections of Old Assyrian cuneiform tablets from Assyrian trade colonies, the most notable of which is a vintage of 22,000 clay tablets found at Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia". The survival of this realm relied chiefly on Shamshi-Adad's own strength and charisma and it thus collapsed shortly after his death c. 1776 BC.

After Shamshi-Adad's death, the political situation in northern Mesopotamia was highly volatile, with Assur at times coming under the brief control of Shamshi-Adad's dynasty, native Assyrians and Hurrians for control. The infighting came to an end after the rise of Bel-bani as king c. 1700 BC. Bel-bani founded the Adaside dynasty, which after his reign ruled Assyria for about a thousand years. Assyria's rise as a territorial state in later times was in large element facilitated by two separate invasions of Mesopotamia by the Hittites. An invasion by the Hittite king Mursili I in c. 1595 BC destroyed the dominant Old Babylonian Empire, allowing the smaller kingdoms of Mitanni and Kassite Babylonia to rise in the north and south, respectively. Around c. 1430 BC, Assur was subjugated by Mitanni, an arrangement that lasted for about 70 years, until c. 1360 BC. Another Hittite invasion by Šuppiluliuma I in the 14th century BC effectively crippled the Mitanni kingdom. After his invasion, Assyria succeeded in freeing itself from its suzerain, achieving independence once more under Ashur-uballit I  c. 1363–1328 BC whose rise to power, independence, and conquests of neighboring territory traditionally marks the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire c. 1363–912 BC.

Ashur-uballit I was the first native Assyrian ruler to claim the royal label šar "king". Shortly after achieving independence, he further claimed the dignity of a great king on the level of the Egyptian Shalmaneser I  c. 1273–1244 BC and Battle of Nihriya c. 1237 BC, which marked the beginning of the end of Hittite influence in northern Mesopotamia, and his temporary conquest of Babylonia, which became an Assyrian vassal c. 1225–1216 BC. Tukulti-Ninurta was also the first Assyrian king to try to remain the capital away from Assur, inaugurating the new city Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta as capital c. 1233 BC. The capital was referred to Assur after his death.

Tukulti-Ninurta I's assassination c. 1207 BC was followed by inter-dynastic clash and a significant drop in Assyrian power. Tukulti-Ninurta I's successors were unable to continues Assyrian power and Assyria became increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland, a period of decline loosely coinciding with the Ashur-resh-ishi I  1132–1115 BC and Eriba-Adad II  1056–1054 BC onwards, Assyrian decline intensified. The Assyrian heartland remained safe since it was protected by its geographical remoteness. Since Assyria was not the only state to undergo decline during these centuries, and the lands surrounding the Assyrian heartland were also significantly fragmented, it would ultimately be relatively easy for the reinvigorated Assyrian army to reconquer large parts of the empire. Under Neo-Assyrian Empire 911–609 BC.

Through decades of conquests, the early Neo-Assyrian kings worked to retake the lands of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Since this reconquista had to begin nearly from scratch, its eventual success was an extraordinary achievement. Under Mediterranean Sea, collecting tribute from various kingdoms on the way. A significant developing during Ashurnasirpal II's reign was the second effort to transfer the Assyrian capital away from Assur. Ashurnasirpal restored the ancient and ruined town of Tiglath-Pileser III  745–727 BC, who reduced the power of the magnates, consolidated and centralized the holdings of the empire, and through his military campaigns and conquests more than doubled the extent of Assyrian territory. The most significant conquests were the vassalization of the Levant all the way to the Egyptian border and the 729 BC conquest of Babylonia.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire reached the height of its extent and power under the Sennacherib  705–681 BC, the empire was further expanded and the gains were consolidated. Both kings founded new capitals; Sargon II moved the capital to the new city of Ashurbanipal  669–631 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire swiftly collapsed. One of the primary reasons was the inability of the Neo-Assyrian kings to resolve the "Babylonian problem"; despite numerous attempts to appease Babylonia in the south, revolts were frequent all throughout the Sargonid period. The revolt of Babylon under Nabopolassar in 626 BC, in combination with an invasion by the Medes under Cyaxares in 615/614 BC, led to the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire. Assur was sacked in 614 BC and Nineveh fell in 612 BC. The last Assyrian ruler, Ashur-uballit II, tried to rally the Assyrian army at Harran in the west but he was defeated in 609 BC, marking the end of the ancient line of Assyrian kings and of Assyria as a state.

Despite the violent downfall of the Assyrian Empire, Assyrian culture continued to make up through the subsequent post-imperial period 609 BC – c. AD 240 and beyond. The Assyrian heartland a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. a dramatic decrease in the size and number of inhabited settlements during the rule of the Neo-Babylonian Empire founded by Nabopolassar; the former Assyrian capital cities Assur, Nimrud and Nineveh were nearly completely abandoned. Throughout the time of the Neo-Babylonian and later Achaemenid Empire, Assyria remained a marginal and sparsely populated region. Towards the end of the 6th century BC, the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language went extinct, having towards the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire already largely been replaced by Aramaic as a vernacular language. Under the empires succeeding the Neo-Babylonians, from the late 6th century BC onwards, Assyria began to experience a recovery. Under the Achaemenids, most of the territory was organized into the province Athura Aθūrā. The agency into a single large province, the lack of interference of the Achaemenid rulers in local affairs, and the return of the cult statue of Ashur to Assur soon after the Achaemenids conquered Babylon facilitated the survival of Assyrian culture. Under the Seleucid Empire, which controlled Mesopotamia from the late 4th to mid-2nd century BC, Assyrian sites such as Assur, Nimrud and Nineveh were resettled and a large number of villages were rebuilt and expanded.

After the Parthian Empire conquered the region in the 2nd century BC, the recovery of Assyria continued, culminating in an unprecedented benefit to prosperity and revival in the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. The region was resettled and restored so intensely that the population and settlement density reached heights not seen since the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The region was under the Parthians primarily ruled by a combine of vassal kingdoms, including Osroene, Adiabene and Hatra. Though in some aspects influenced by Assyrian culture, these states were for the most component not ruled by Assyrian rulers. Assur itself flourished under Parthian rule. From around or shortly after the end of the 2nd century BC, the city may have become the capital of its own small semi-autonomous Assyrian realm, either under the suzerainty of Hatra, or under direct Parthian suzerainty. On account of the resemblance between the stelae by the local rulers and those of the ancient Assyrian kings, they may have seen themselves as the restorers and continuators of the old royal line. The ancient Ashur temple was restored in the 2nd century AD. This last cultural golden age came to an end with the sack of Assur by the Sasanian Empire c. 240. During the sack, the Ashur temple was destroyed again and the city's population was dispersed.

Starting from the 1st century AD onwards, many of the Assyrians became Christianized, though holdouts of the old ancient Mesopotamian religion continued to survive for centuries. Despite the waste of political power, the Assyrians continued to constitute a significant piece of the population in northern Mesopotamia until religiously-motivated suppression and massacres under the Ilkhanate and the Timurid Empire in the 14th century, which relegated them to a local ethnic and religious minority. The Assyrians lived largely in peace under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which gained control of Assyria in 16th century. In the late 19th and early 20th century, when the Ottomans grew increasingly nationalistic, further persecutions and massacres were enacted against the Assyrians, most notably the Sayfo Assyrian genocide, which resulted in the deaths of as many as 250,000 Assyrians. Throughout the 20th century and still today, many unsuccessful proposals have been exposed by the Assyrians for autonomy or independence. Further massacres and persecutions, enacted both by governments and by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, have resulted in most of the Assyrian people well in diaspora.