History of Iraq
, a country located in West Asia, largely coincides with the ancient region of Mesopotamia, often referred to as the cradle of civilization. The history of Mesopotamia extends back to the Lower Paleolithic period, with significant developments continuing through the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, after which the region became known as Iraq. Within its borders lies the ancient land of Sumer, which emerged between 6000 and 5000 BC during the Neolithic Ubaid period. Sumer is recognized as the world's earliest civilization, marking the beginning of urban development, written language, and monumental architecture. Iraq's territory also includes the heartlands of the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian, Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Neo-Babylonian empires, which dominated Mesopotamia and much of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Iraq was a center of innovation in antiquity, producing early written languages, literary works, and significant advancements in astronomy, mathematics, law, and philosophy. This era of indigenous rule ended in 539 BC when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, who declared himself the "King of Babylon." The city of Babylon, the ancient seat of Babylonian power, became one of the key capitals of the Achaemenid Empire.
In the following centuries, the regions constituting modern Iraq came under the control of several empires, including the Greeks, Parthians, and Romans, establishing new centers like Seleucia and Ctesiphon. By the 3rd century AD, the region fell under Persian control through the Sasanian Empire, during which time Arab tribes from South Arabia migrated into Lower Mesopotamia, leading to the formation of the Sassanid-aligned Lakhmid kingdom. The Arabic name al-ʿIrāq likely originated during this period. The Sasanian Empire was eventually conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, bringing Iraq under Islamic rule after the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636. The city of Kufa, founded shortly thereafter, became a central hub for the Rashidun dynasty until their overthrow by the Umayyads in 661.
With the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate in the mid-8th century, Iraq became the center of Islamic rule, with Baghdad, founded in 762, serving as the capital. Baghdad flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, becoming a global center for culture, science, and intellectualism. However, the city's prosperity declined following the Buwayhid and Seljuq invasions in the 10th century and suffered further with the Mongol invasion of 1258. Iraq came under Ottoman rule in the 16th century and, apart from a Safavid occupation from 1623 to 1638, remained part of the empire until the end of World War I, after which Mandatory Iraq was established by the British Empire. Initially united under the province of Baghdad, Ottoman Iraq was by the 17th century divided into the provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and Shahrizor, which Ottoman officials collectively referred to as Hıtta-i Irakiyye. Iraq gained independence in 1932 as the Kingdom of Iraq, which became a republic in 1958. The modern era has seen Iraq facing challenges, including the rule of Saddam Hussein, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and subsequent efforts to rebuild the country amidst sectarian violence and the rise of the Islamic State. Despite these difficulties, Iraq plays a vital role in the geopolitics of the Middle East.
Prehistory
Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC, northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological remains of which have been discovered at Shanidar Cave. During 1957–1961, Shanidar Cave was excavated by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University, uncovering nine skeletons of Neanderthal man of varying ages and states of preservation. A tenth individual was later discovered by M. Zeder during examination of a faunal assemblage from the site at the Smithsonian Institution. The remains seemed to suggest that Neanderthals had funeral ceremonies, burying their dead with flowers, and that they took care of injured and elderly individuals.This region is also the location of a number of pre-Neolithic burials, dating from approximately 11,000 BC. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq, together with a large part of the Fertile Crescent, was a center of a Neolithic culture known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time. In Iraq, this period has been excavated at sites like M'lefaat and Nemrik 9. The following Neolithic period, PPNB, is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum, and burnt lime. Finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidence of early trade relations. Further important sites of human advancement were Jarmo, a number of sites belonging to the Halaf culture, and Tell al-'Ubaid, the type site of the Ubaid period.
Ancient Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, and the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture."The "Cradle of Civilisation" is a common term for the area comprising modern 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. It was there, in the late 4th millennium BC, that the world's first known writing system emerged. The Sumerians were also the first known to harness the wheel and create city-states; their writings record the first known evidence of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, written law, medicine, and organised religion. The Sumerian language is a language isolate. The major city-states of the early Sumerian period included 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, and Arrapha, were also extant in what was to be called Assyria from the 25th century BC; however, at this stage, they were Sumerian-ruled administrative centers.
Bronze Age
emerged as the civilization of Lower Mesopotamia out of the prehistoric Ubaid period in the Early Bronze Age. Classical Sumer ended with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC. Following the Gutian period, the Ur III kingdom was once again able to unite large parts of southern and central Mesopotamia under a single ruler in the 21st century. It may have eventually disintegrated due to Amorite incursions. The Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c. 1600 BC, when southern Mesopotamia was united under Kassite Babylonian rule.File:Sargon of Akkad.jpg|thumb|Bronze head of an Akkadian ruler from Nineveh, presumably depicting either Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon's grandson Naram-Sin. The Akkadian Empire was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer.
During the Bronze Age, in the 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash created a short-lived empire. 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 originated, which includes the tale of The Great Flood. The origin and location of Akkad remain unclear. Its people spoke 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 generally dominant until the rise of the Akkadian Empire, based in the city of Akkad in central Iraq. Sargon of Akkad founded the empire, conquered all the city-states of southern and central Iraq, and subjugated the kings of Assyria, thus uniting the Sumerians and Akkadians in one state. The Akkadian Empire was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer.
He then set about expanding his empire, conquering Gutium, Elam in modern-day Iran, and had victories that did not result in 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 authority until the Third Dynasty of Ur. The region's political structure may have reverted to the status quo ante of local governance by city-states.
After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the late 22nd century BC, the Gutians occupied the south for a few decades, while Assyria reasserted its independence in the north. Most of southern Mesopotamia was again united under one ruler during the Ur III period, most notably during the rule of the prolific king Shulgi. His accomplishments include the completion of construction of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, begun by his father Ur-Nammu. In 1792 BC, an Amorite ruler named Hammurabi came to power and immediately set about building Babylon into a major city, declaring himself its king. Hammurabi conquered 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, creating the short-lived Babylonian Empire. He eventually prevailed over the successor of Ishme-Dagan and subjected 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.
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. Iraq was from this point divided 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.
The Middle Assyrian Empire 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, 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, 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 Akkadian kings were unable to prevent new waves of West Semitic migrants from entering southern Iraq, and during the 11th century BC, Arameans and Suteans entered Babylonia from The Levant, followed in the late 10th to early 9th century BC by the Chaldeans. However, the Chaldeans were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population of Babylonia.
Assyria was an Akkadian kingdom in Upper Mesopotamia, that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur.
Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is positively known. In the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. He was a contemporary of Ibrium of Ebla, who appears to have lived in the late 25th or early 24th century BC, according to the king list. The foundation of the first true urbanised Assyrian monarchy was traditionally ascribed to Ushpia, a contemporary of Ishbi-Erra of Isin and Naplanum of Larsa. c. 2030 BC.
Assyria had a period of empire from the 19th to 18th centuries BC. From the 14th to 11th centuries BC, Assyria once more became a major power with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire.