Tələbə Muğdət Məmmədov Qrup: t-1104 Kurs- I fakültə-Tarix Fənn

AZƏRBAYCAN RESPUBLIKASI TƏHSIL NAZIRLIYI

BAKI DÖVLƏT UNIVERSITETI

Tələbə - Muğdət Məmmədov

Qrup: T-1104

Kurs- I

Fakültə-Tarix

Fənn-İngilis dili

Müəllim-Türkan Həsənova

Bakı - 2021

Assyria

Assyria , also called the Assyrian Empire, was a Mesopotamian kingdom and empire of the Ancient Near East that existed as a state from perhaps as early as the 25th century BCE (in the form of the Assur city-state) until its collapse between 612 BCE and 609 BCE; thereby spanning the periods of the Early to Middle Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age. This vast span of time is divided into the Early Period (2500–2025 BC), Old Assyrian Empire (2025–1378 BCE), Middle Assyrian Empire (1392–934 BCE) and Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BCE).

From the end of the 7th century BCE (when the Neo-Assyrian state fell) to the mid-7th century CE, it survived as a geopolitical entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers such as the Parthian and early Sasanian Empires between the mid-2nd century BCE and late 3rd century CE during which a number of independent Assyrian states such as Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra and Beth Garmai arose. The final part of this period saw Mesopotamia become a major centre of Syriac Christianity and the birthplace of the Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox Church. Greeks, Romans, and subsequently Arabs and Ottomans also took over control of the Assyrian lands.

A Semitic-speaking realm, Assyria was centred on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia, in modern terms, northern Iraq, northeast Syria, and southeast Turkey. The Assyrians came to rule powerful empires in several periods. Making up a substantial part of the greater Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization", which included Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, and Babylonia, Assyria reached the height of technological, scientific and cultural achievements for its time. Starting around 900 BC, the Assyrians began campaigning to expand their empire and to dominate other people. They conquered, exacted tribute, and built new fortified towns, palaces and temples. By constant warfare the Assyrians created an empire that stretched from eastern Libya and Cyprus in the East Mediterranean to Iran, and from present-day Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Transcaucasia to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt in the south.

The name "Assyria" originates with the Assyrian state's original capital, the ancient city of Aššur, which dates to c. 2600 BCE — originally one of a number of Akkadian-speaking city-states in Mesopotamia. In the 25th and 24th centuries BCE, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders. From the late 24th century BCE, the Assyrians became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian- and Sumerian-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from c. 2334 BCE to 2154 BCE.  After the Assyrian Empire fell, the greater remaining part of Assyria formed a geopolitical region and province of other empires, although between the mid-2nd century BCE and late 3rd century CE a patchwork of small independent Assyrian kingdoms arose, including Assur, Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra, Beth Garmai, and Hatra.

The region of Assyria fell under the successive control of the Median Empire of 620 to 549 BCE, the Achaemenid Empire of 550 to 330 BCE, the Macedonian Empire (late 4th century BCE), the Seleucid Empire of 312 to 63 BCE, the Parthian Empire of 247 BCE to 224 CE, the Roman Empire (from 116 to 118 CE) and the Sasanian Empire of 224 to 651 CE. The Arab Islamic conquest of the area in the mid-7th century finally dissolved Assyria (Assuristan, a region which by then also included the former Babylonia) as a single entity, after which the remnants of the Assyrian people (by now almost all Christians) gradually became an ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious minority in the Assyrian homeland, surviving there to this day as an indigenous people of the region.

The Akkadian-speaking people (the earliest historically-attested Semitic-speaking people) who would eventually found Assyria appear to have entered Mesopotamia at some point during the latter 4th millennium BCE (c. 3500–3000 BCE),  eventually intermingling with the earlier Sumerian-speaking population, who came from northern Mesopotamia, with Akkadian names appearing in written record from as early as the 29th century BCE.

During the 3rd millennium BCE, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian (a language isolate) on Akkadian, and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BCE as a sprachbund. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere after the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE (the exact dating being a matter of debate), although Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century CE, as did use of the Akkadian cuneiform.

The cities of Assur, Nineveh, Gasur and Arbela together with a number of other towns and cities, existed since at least before the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE (c. 2600 BCE), although they appear to have been Sumerian-ruled administrative centres at this time, rather than independent states.

Greco-Roman classical writers such as Julius Africanus, Marcus Velleius Paterculus and Diodorus Siculus dated the founding of Assyria to various dates between 2284 BCE and 2057 BCE, listing the earliest king as Belus or Ninus.

According to the Biblical generations of Noah, in Genesis chapter 10, the city of Aššur was allegedly founded by Ashur the son of Shem, who was deified by later generations as the city's patron god. However, the much older attested Assyrian tradition itself lists the first king of Assyria as the 25th century BCE Tudiya, and an early urbanised Assyrian king named Ushpia (c. 2050 BCE) as having dedicated the first temple to the god Ashur in the city in the mid-21st century BCE. It is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name.