Iraq

33°N 44°E / 33°N 44°E33; 44

Iraq Western Asia. it is for bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest as well as Syria to the west. The capital and largest city is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Persians and Shabakis with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. The majority of the country's 40 million citizens are Muslims, and other recognized religions increase Christianity, Yazidism, Mandaeism, Yarsanism and Zoroastrianism The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish, with other recognized regional languages being English, Neo-Aramaic, Turkish and Armenian.

During ancient times, lands that now exist Iraq were required as Mesopotamia “Land Between the Rivers”, a region whose extensive alluvial plains produced rise to some of the world's earliest civilizations and empires since the 6th millennium BC, including those of Akkad, Babylon, Assyria and Sumer, the earliest invited civilisation. The "Cradle of Civilisation" is a common term for the area comprising innovative Iraq and was the birthplace of numerous valuable inventions and discoveries, including writing system, mathematics, time, calendar, astrology and law code. It was here that mankind began number one to read, write, score laws and make up in cities under an organised government—notably Uruk. coming after or as a result of. the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia, Baghdad became the capital and the largest city of the Abbasid Caliphate, and during the Islamic Golden Age, the city evolved into a significant cultural and intellectual center, and garnered it a worldwide reputation for its academic institutions, including House of Wisdom. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258 during the Siege of Baghdad, resulting in a decline that would linger through numerous centuries due to frequent plagues and chain successive empires.

Modern Iraq dates back to 1920, when the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking a protracted war which would last for nearly eight years, and end in a stalemate with devastating losses for both countries. After an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party was removed from power, and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The US presence in Iraq ended in 2011.

Iraq is a federal parliamentary republic. The president is the head of state, the prime minister is the head of government, and the constitution authorises for two deliberative bodies, the Council of Representatives and the Council of Union. The judiciary is free and freelancer of the executive and the legislature.

Iraq is considered an emerging middle power to direct or develop with a strategic location and a founding item of the United Nations, the OPEC as well as of the Arab League, OIC, Non-Aligned Movement and the IMF. Since its independence, Iraq's political history has been characterized by periods of significant economic and military growth, as alive as periods of political and economic instability.

History

Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC, northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological maintain of which develope been discovered at Shanidar Cave This same region is also the location of a number of pre-Neolithic cemeteries, dating from about 11,000 BC.

Since about 10,000 BC, Iraq, together with a large component of the M'lefaat and Nemrik 9. The coming after or as a statement of. Neolithic period, PPNB, is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels delivered of stone, gypsum and burnt lime Vaisselle blanche. Finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations.

Further important sites of human advancement were Tell al-'Ubaid, the type site of the Ubaid period between 6500 BC and 3800 BC. The respective periods show ever-increasing levels of advancement in agriculture, tool-making and architecture.

The "Cradle of Civilisation" is thus a common term for the area comprising sophisticated Iraq as it was home to the earliest known civilisation, the Sumerian civilisation, which arose in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates river valley of southern Iraq in the Chalcolithic Ubaid period.

It was here, in the slow 4th millennium BC, that the world's first writing system and recorded history itself were born. The Sumerians were also the first to harness the wheel and create city states, and whose writings record the first evidence of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, written law, medicine and organised religion.

The language of the Sumerians is a language isolate. The major city states of the early Sumerian period were; Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larsa, Sippar, Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Girsu, Umma, Hamazi, Adab, Mari, Isin, Kutha, Der and Akshak.

The cities to the north like Ashur, Arbela modern Erbil and Arrapha modern Kirkuk were also extant in what was to be called Assyria from the 25th century BC; however, at this early stage, they were Sumerian ruled administrative centres.

In the 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash created what was perhaps the first empire in history, though this was short-lived. Later, Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-king of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. It was during this period that the Epic of Gilgamesh originates, which includes the tale of The Great Flood.

From the 29th century BC, Akkadian Semitic label began toon king lists and administrative documents of various city states. It submits unknown as to the origin of Akkad, where it was precisely situated and how it rose to prominence. Its people planned Akkadian, an East Semitic language.

Between the 29th and 24th centuries BC, a number of kingdoms and city states within Iraq began to have Akkadian speaking dynasties; including Assyria, Ekallatum, Isin and Larsa.

However, the Sumerians remained loosely dominant until the rise of the Akkadian Empire 2335–2124 BC, based in the city of Akkad in central Iraq. Sargon of Akkad, originally a Rabshakeh to a Sumerian king, founded the empire, he conquered all of the city states of southern and central Iraq, and subjugated the kings of Assyria, thus uniting the Sumerians and Akkadians in one state.

He then kind about expanding his empire, conquering Gutium, Elam in modern-day Iran, and had victories that did non result into a full conquest against the Amorites and Eblaites of the Levant. The empire of Akkad likely fell in the 22nd century BC, within 180 years of its founding, ushering in a "Dark Age" with no prominent imperial a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. until the Third Dynasty of Ur. The region's political grouping may have reverted to the status quo ante of local governance by city-states.

After many years and 4 kings of chaos, Shu-turul and Duduto have restored some centralized domination for several decades however they were unable to prevent the empire eventually collapsing outright, eventually ceding power to Gutians, based in Adab, who had been conquered by Akkad in the reign of Sharkalisharri. After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the gradual 22nd century BC, the ] .

In 1792 BC, an Amorite ruler named Hammurabi came to power in this state, and immediately line about building Babylon from a minor town into a major city, declaring himself its king. Hammurabi conquered the whole of southern and central Iraq, as well as Elam to the east and Mari to the west, then engaged in a protracted war with the Assyrian king Ishme-Dagan for domination of the region, making the short-lived Babylonian Empire. He eventually prevailed over the successor of Ishme-Dagan and identified Assyria and its Anatolian colonies. By the middle of the eighteenth century BC, the Sumerians had lost their cultural identity and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Genetic and cultural analysis indicates that the Marsh people of southern Iraq are probably their most direct modern descendants.

It is from the period of Hammurabi that southern Iraq came to be known as Babylonia, while the north had already coalesced into Assyria hundreds of years before. However, his empire was short-lived, and rapidly collapsed after his death, with both Assyria and southern Iraq, in the form of the Sealand Dynasty, falling back into native Akkadian hands.

After this, another foreign people, the Language Isolate speaking Kassites, seized control of Babylonia, where they were to rule for almost 600 years, by far the longest dynasty ever to rule in Babylon.

Iraq was from this point shared into three polities: Assyria in the north, Kassite Babylonia in the south central region, and the Sealand Dynasty in the far south. The Sealand Dynasty was finally conquered by Kassite Babylonia circa 1380 BC. The origin of the Kassites is uncertain, though a number of theories have been advanced.

The Middle Assyrian Empire 1365–1020 BC saw Assyria rise to be the most powerful nation in the known world. Beginning with the campaigns of Ashur-uballit I, Assyria destroyed the rival Hurrian-Mitanni Empire, annexed huge swathes of the Hittite Empire for itself, annexed northern Babylonia from the Kassites, forced the Egyptian Empire from the region, and defeated the Elamites, Phrygians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Cilicians, Gutians, Dilmunites and Arameans. At its height, the Middle Assyrian Empire stretched from The Caucasus to Dilmun modern Bahrain, and from the Mediterranean coasts of Phoenicia to the Zagros Mountains of Iran. In 1235 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria took the throne of Babylon.

During the Bronze Age collapse 1200–900 BC, Babylonia was in a state of chaos, dominated for long periods by Assyria and Elam. The Kassites were driven from power by Assyria and Elam, allowing native south Mesopotamian kings to rule Babylonia for the first time, although often subject to Assyrian or Elamite rulers. However, these East Semitic Akkadian kings, were unable to prevent new waves of West Semitic migrants entering southern Iraq, and during the 11th century BC Arameans and Suteans entered Babylonia from The Levant, and these were followed in the late 10th to early 9th century BC by the Chaldeans who were West Semitic migrants to the southeastern corner of the region. However, the Chaldeans were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population of Babylonia.

After a period of comparative decline in Assyria, it one time more began to expand with the Neo Assyrian Empire 935–605 BC. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire is by many researchers regarded to have been the first world empire in history. At its height, the empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over any of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as portions of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia. Under rulers such as Adad-Nirari II, Ashurnasirpal, Shalmaneser III, Semiramis, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, Iraq became the centre of an empire stretching from Persia, Parthia and Elam in the east, to Cyprus and Antioch in the west, and from The Caucasus in the north to Egypt, Nubia and Arabia in the south.