The Old Assyrian period was the second stage of Assyrian history, covering the history of the city of Assur from its rise as an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I c. 2025 BC to the foundation of a larger Assyrian territorial state after the accession of Ashur-uballit I c. 1363 BC, which marks the beginning of the succeeding Middle Assyrian period . The Old Assyrian period is marked by the earliest known evidence of the development of a distinct Assyrian culture, separate from that of southern Mesopotamia and was a geopolitically turbulent time when Assur several times fell under the control or suzerainty of foreign kingdoms and empires. The period is also marked with the emergence of a distinct Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language , a native Assyrian calendar and Assur for a time becoming a prominent site for international trade.
225-507: Kirkuk ( Arabic : كركوك ; Kurdish : کەرکووک , romanized : Kerkûk ; Syriac : ܟܪܟܘܟ , romanized : Kerkouk ; Turkish : Kerkük ) is a city in Iraq , serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate , located 238 kilometres (148 miles) north of Baghdad . The city is home to a diverse population of Kurds , Iraqi Turkmens and Arabs . Kirkuk sits on the ruins of
450-451: A Semitic language (i.e. related to modern Hebrew and Arabic ) closely related to Babylonian , spoken in southern Mesopotamia. Both Assyrian and Babylonian are generally regarded by modern scholars to be distinct dialects of the Akkadian language. This is a modern convention as contemporary ancient authors considered Assyrian and Babylonian to be two separate languages; only Babylonian
675-672: A child after being married for two or three years. This woman remained a slave, however, and was never seen as a second wife. Old Assyrian families sometimes hired wet nurses ( mušēniqtum ), who were paid for their work. If a mother died, young children were entrusted to the care of other family members, such as her or her husband's grandparents or aunts and uncles. Male and female children were raised differently. Girls typically lived with their mother, being taught to spin and weave and helping with daily tasks, whereas boys were taught by masters to read and write and then often followed their fathers to Anatolia to learn how to trade. The eldest daughter
900-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
1125-543: A convention was held on 24 May 2003 to select the first City Council in the history of this oil-rich, ethnically divided city. Each of the city's four major ethnic groups was invited to send a 39-member delegation from which they would be allowed to select six to sit on the City Council. Another six council members were selected from among 144 delegates to represent independents social groups such as teachers, lawyers, religious leaders and artists. Kirkuk's 30 members council
1350-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
1575-589: A decisive battle between Alexander the Great and Darius III on the plains between the Upper Zab and Diyala river . It was one of a number of independent Neo-Assyrian states which flourished during the Parthian empire (150 BC–226 AD). It is also thought that region was known during the Parthian and Sassanid periods as Garmakan , which means the 'Land of Warmth' or the 'Hot Land'. In Persian "Garm" means warm; After
1800-606: A decrease in trade in general. From the 19th century BC until the end of the Old Assyrian period, the Assur city-state frequently came under the control of larger foreign states and empires. The portion of the Old Assyrian period that is best historically attested, chiefly through extensive records found in the ruins of the city of Mari , is the time of Shamshi-Adad I ( c. 1808–1776 BC) and his sons Ishme-Dagan I and Yasmah-Adad . Shamshi-Adad ( Samsi-Addu in his own Amorite language)
2025-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
2250-677: A disputed territory for around eighty years. The KRG wanted Kirkuk to become part of the Kurdistan Region , which is opposed by the region's Arab and Turkmen populations. There has been a long planned referendum to resolve Kirkuk's status under Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution . Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
2475-406: A foreign conqueror in the eyes of the locals and he placed his capital elsewhere. The reason for making Shubat-Enlil his capital rather than Assur might have been that Assur was seen as formally ruled by the god Ashur, and had a powerful local city assembly, and was thus unattractive as a seat of power. In the 18th century BC, Shamshi-Adad's kingdom became surrounded by competing large kingdoms. In
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#17328447226082700-603: A great empire-builder. The early kings of the Adaside dynasty also several times assumed names from the rulers of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, including Erishum and Puzur-Ashur itself. Though it is not seen as reliable for the decades immediately following Shamshi-Adad's death, the Assyrian King List' s account of the sequence of Assyrian kings and their reigns from Bel-bani onwards, when the rulers were securely based in Assur under
2925-491: A journey, crossing a river, and when arranging meetings with important officials. It is also clear that guards and toll officials were paid not only in money, but were also regularly offered gifts such as beer. Wine appears to have been consumed in some ritualistic contexts, such as when swearing an oath to a deity. The language used to inscribe the Assyrian tablets found in central Anatolia is generally referred to as Old Assyrian,
3150-590: A large rectangular cult room which worshipper entered from the side. The Old Assyrian palace at Assur, dubbed the Urplan Palace by archaeologists, was an enormous structure, measuring 98 by 112 meters (321.5 by 367.5 meters), and included a large central court surrounded by several smaller courts, though it appears to never have been completed. The construction does not seem to have progressed beyond cutting foundation trenches, though some scant evidence suggests that some of these foundation trenches were later reused for
3375-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
3600-559: A local governor under Rimush. In his inscription, Puzur-Sin prides himself on removing the ruler of "foreign seed" and demolishing their palace, erecting a religious sanctuary in its place. For these construction projects to have taken place, Puzur-Sin must have been able to maintain control over Assur for at least a few years. Perhaps Puzur-Sin was omitted from the king list by mistake, or perhaps his omission reflects changing attitudes towards Shamshi-Adad and his dynasty by later Assyrians. Ashur-dugul, who ruled at some point after Puzur-Sin,
3825-432: A man had died with unpaid debts, his sons became responsible for paying them before receiving their inheritance. Daughters held no responsibility for unpaid debts. Both sons and daughters, though primarily the sons, were responsible for caring for their elderly parents and after they died, were also responsible for organizing and paying for their funerals. After the funeral ceremony, there was an extended period of mourning. It
4050-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
4275-404: A period of ten days). In Assyria, the months were named Ab sharrāni , Khubur , Ṣippum , Qarrātum , Tanmarta , Ti'inātum (or Sîn ), Kuzallu , Allanātum , Bēlti-ekallim , Narmak Ashur sha sarrātim , Narmak Ashur sha kinātim and Makhur ilī . Several of the names demonstrate the astronomical origin of the calendar. For instance, Tanmarta was also used to refer to the heliacal rising of
4500-563: A poorly known construction project during the reign of Shamshi-Adad I. Little evidence survives on non-monumental buildings in Assur. Not a single house has been excavated, nor have any private archives of its citizens been discovered. Over seventy graves are however known from the site, dated to between 2500 and 1500 BC. The graves differ in design and in how many bodies were buried, and include bodies placed in pits, large ceramic vessels and tombs with vaulted roofs built with stone or mudbrick . The vaulted tombs are of particular significance as
4725-515: A prominent trading city in northern Mesopotamia. Erishum earned some money himself through imposing tolls , which was put into expanding Assur itself: the temple of Ashur was rebuilt and expanded and a new temple, dedicated to the god Adad , was also constructed. Erishum's son and successor Ikunum ( c. 1934–1921 BC) rebuilt the fortification wall around Assur, an event which required financial contributions of silver not only from Assur itself but also from its widespread trading colonies. Whether
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#17328447226084950-487: A prosperous one during which Assyrian trade reached its peak, the reigns of his son Puzur-Ashur II ( c. 1880–1873 BC) and grandson Naram-Sin ( c. 1872–1829/1819 BC) saw Assur being threatened by foreign enemies, first by Ipiq-Adad II of Eshnunna and then by the more successful and dangerous Shamshi-Adad I of Ekallatum , a city located near Assur. Though evidence from Assur is scant, there are surviving rich textual records of Assyrian society and activity from
5175-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
5400-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
5625-470: A secret direct voting process, with the participation of the widest communities in the province and despite all the political legal security complexities of this process in the country generally and in Kirkuk in particular, Kirkuk witnessed the birth of its first elected Provincial Council. The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq IECI approved the elections and announced the outcome of this process, which filled
5850-409: A sequence of states and empires from southern Mesopotamia . Assur is generally thought to have become an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I , who ruled c. 2025 BC. Little is otherwise known of Puzur-Ashur, and it is unclear how exactly he came to power, though his descendants, Assyria's first royal dynasty, wrote that he had restored the walls around the city. Assur's independence
6075-811: A series of bombings and shootings across Iraq, including in Kirkuk. On 12 June 2014, following the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive of the Islamic State , during which it secured control of Tikrit and nearby areas in Syria, the Iraqi army retreated from their positions in Kirkuk and the Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government then took the city. On 21 October 2016, the Islamic State launched multiple attacks in Kirkuk to divert Iraqi military resources during
6300-501: A significant site of copper-mining. According to his inscriptions, Ilu-shuma also constructed wells in Assur, used both as a source of water and to make bricks for the city wall. Ilu-shuma was succeeded by his even more successful son, Erishum I ( c. 1974–1934 BC), the earliest king whose length of reign is recorded in the Assyrian King List , a later document recording the kings of Assyria and their reigns. Erishum initiated
6525-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
6750-488: A stable dynastic line, is thought to be reliable due to presumably being based on preserved chronological records. The precise relationships between the rulers might however not be fully reliable, as there is evidence to suggest that the genealogy of the early Adaside dynasty was at least partially reconstructed by later scribes. In large parts, the invasion or raid of Mesopotamia by the Hittite king Mursili I in c. 1595 BC
6975-520: A trade colony, or karum , out of which two levels (Ib, c. 1833–1719 BC, and II, c. 1950–1836 BC) have been archaeologically investigated. Level II is particularly significant since it preserves about 22,000 cuneiform clay tablets that attest to a long-distance and extensive Assyrian trade network. The trade colony at Kültepe was a pivotal node in this network, which was centered in Assur and had extensive lesser trade posts throughout central Anatolia and likely Mesopotamia as well. This trade network
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7200-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
7425-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
7650-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
7875-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
8100-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
8325-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
8550-536: Is accorded a reign of six years by the Assyrian King List , which also states that his rule was challenged by six usurpers: Ashur-apla-idi , Nasir-Sin , Sin-namir , Ipqi-Ishtar , Adad-salulu and Adasi . It is unclear if these figures were actually historical and actually claimed to be kings in opposition to Ashur-dugul. Their names are suspiciously similar to the eponyms (i.e. limmu officials) of Ashur-dugul's reign and they might thus in reality have been his generals and officials, misattributed as rival kings by
8775-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , 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. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
9000-464: Is clear the Assur experienced a period of prosperity from the late 16th to the early 15th century, as can be gathered from the royal inscriptions of Puzur-Ashur III, his two immediate predecessors Shamshi-Adad III ( c. 1563–1548 BC) and Ashur-nirari I ( c. 1547–1522 BC), and his successor Enlil-nasir I ( c. 1497–1485 BC), the first rulers with known royal inscriptions since Puzur-Sin's time. The inscriptions by these kings demonstrate that many of
9225-531: Is clearly incomplete and does not fully reflect the politically uncertain time that followed, when Shamshi-Adad's Amorite descendants, native Assyrians, and Hurrians appear to have fought one another for control of Assur. According to the standard version of the list, Ishme-Dagan ruled for 40 years and was succeeded at Assur by the native Assyrian usurper Ashur-dugul . Records at Mari establish that Ishme-Dagan only ruled for 11 years after his father's death, dying c. 1765 BC. The king list also does not mention
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9450-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
9675-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
9900-433: Is described to have convened either in a "sacred precinct" ( ḫamrum ) in the "Step Gate" ( mušlālum ) behind the temple of Ashur. In this sacred place, where oaths were also sworn, there were seven statues of divine judges. At other times, the assembly may have convened in a structure referred to in texts as the "city hall" ( bēt ālim ). The city hall was run by the limmu official and was an important institution that managed
10125-463: Is distinctive when compared to the other seals is that there are no "filler figures" between the four primary figures depicted, making the space between them appear larger and the figures themselves stand out more. In terms of the artwork and the layout, the Puzur-Ashur dynasty seals are reminiscent of the seals of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, though noticeable differences do exist, such as
10350-437: Is evident that at least some women learned to read and write. Due to the limited number of signs used, Old Assyrian is relatively easier to decipher for modern researchers than later forms of the language, though the limited number of signs also means that there are in cases several possible alternative phonetic values and readings. This means that while it is easy to decipher the signs, many researchers remain uncomfortable with
10575-652: Is in his seal more similar to the rulers of the Old Babylonian Empire than the preceding rulers of Assur. The middle portion of his seal is not known due to the fragmentary nature of all known surviving impressions, which means that it is impossible to determine whether a seated figure was depicted there or not. The distinct burial practices in Old Assyrian Assur suggests that a distinct Assyrian identity formed already in this period. Cultural practices such as burials, dress codes and foods are typically critical to
10800-729: Is known is that Puzur-Ashur and his successors after independence did not actually claim the dignity of being kings ( šar ), as the Akkadian and Sumerian suzerains had done, but instead continued to style themselves as governors ( Išši'ak ), asserting that the Assyrian national god Ashur was king and that the Assyrian rulers therefore were only his representatives on Earth. Assur was during the time of Puzur-Ashur's dynasty home to only about 5,000 to 8,000 people, which means its military power must have been very limited, and there are no sources that indicate any military institutions whatsoever. No surrounding cities were subjected to Assur and there are not even any known records of political interactions with
11025-514: Is made up of five blocs of six members each. Four of those blocs are formed along ethnic lines— Kurds , Arabs , Assyrian and Turkmen —and the fifth is made up of independents which meant 10 more council seats given to two main Kurdish Parties by Paul Bremer as token of appreciation for cooperation with American Forces. Turkmen and Arabs complained that the Kurds allegedly hold five of the seats in
11250-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
11475-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
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#173284472260811700-494: Is possible that the Adaside dynasty originated as outsiders and that the family did not originally hail from Assur. The name of Bel-bani's grandson Shu-Ninua ( c. 1615–1602 BC) might mean "man from Nineveh " and the repetition of the names Shamshi-Adad and Ishme-Dagan among the kings of the dynasty could suggest at least partial descent from Shamshi-Adad's dynasty. The repetition of the names could alternatively be explained by Shamshi-Adad being revered by later generations as
11925-535: Is possible that the seated figure in the Puzur-Ashur dynasty seals should be interpreted as Ashur, with the bald servant being led before him by a goddess being the Assyrian king. Though the seated figure is not given any other visual markers of divinity (such as horns or other non-human body features), the symbolism alone could not theologically be applied by the Old Assyrians to anyone but Ashur. Shamshi-Adad I retained in his more absolute kingship certain aspects of
12150-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
12375-529: Is the first noticeable impression left by the Assyrians in the historical record. Assur was able to maintain its central position in the trade network despite being relatively small and having no history of military success. After the discovery of the Kültepe tablets in the 20th century, many historians suggested that they were evidence of a large "Old Assyrian Empire", stretching into Anatolia, but this interpretation
12600-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
12825-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
13050-453: Is today discredited based on surviving archaeological and literary evidence. It is however possible that the cultural traditions that reached Assur during the time of its early trade network played some role in the rise of the first Assyrian territorial state centuries later. Though an extensive number of Assyrian traders are known to have lived in the Kültepe trade colony, approximately 500 to 800 people, there are no obvious Assyrian elements in
13275-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
13500-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
13725-507: The Synchronistic History , a later text concerning border disputes between Assyria and Babylonia, suggesting that Assyria first entered into diplomacy and conflict with Babylonia at this time and that Assur at this time ruled a small stretch of territory beyond the city itself. In the first half of the 15th century BC, there is also evidence of gifts for the first time being exchanged between Assyrian kings and Egyptian pharaohs . It
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#173284472260813950-605: The 1991 uprisings . Kurdish villages were razed and thousands of new homes were built, including at least 200 homes for relatives of Iraqi soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq War . Between 1968, when the Ba'ath Party first rose to power in Iraq, and 2003 between 200,000 and 300,000 persons were forcibly relocated out of Kirkuk. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, by August 2005 (during
14175-589: The Achaemenid Empire (546–332 BC) where it was incorporated into the province of Athura ( Achaemenid Assyria ). Later it became part of the Macedonian Empire (332–312 BC) and succeeding Seleucid Empire (311–150 BC) before falling to the Parthian Empire (150 BC–224 AD) as a part of Athura. The Parthians seemed to only exercise loose control, and a number of small Neo-Assyrian kingdoms sprang up in
14400-502: The Akkadian language , several terms were used for slaves, commonly wardum , though this term could confusingly also be used for (free) official servants, retainers and followers, soldiers and subjects of the king. Because many individuals designated as wardum in Old Assyrian texts are described as handling property and carrying out administrative tasks on behalf of their masters, many may have in actuality been free servants and not slaves in
14625-580: The Battle of Mosul . Witnesses reported multiple explosions and gun battles in the city, most centered on a government compound. At least 11 workers, including several Iranians, were killed by a suicide bomber at a power plant in nearby Dibis. The attack was brought to an end by 24 October, with 74 militants being killed and others (including the leader) being arrested. Under Kurdish control, Turkmen and Arab residents in Kirkuk experienced intimidation, harassment and were forced to leave their homes, in order to increase
14850-561: The Hittites and began its transition into a large territorial state under a series of warrior-kings. Through extensive cuneiform records, amounting to over 22,000 clay tablets found at the Old Assyrian trading colony at Kültepe, much information can be gathered about the culture, language and society of the Old Assyrian period. As in other societies of the Ancient Near East, the Old Assyrians practiced slavery, though confusion resulting from
15075-486: The Indo-Aryan Mittani of Anatolia formed a ruling class over the language isolate speaking Hurrians , and began to expand into a Hurri - Mitanni Empire. In the 1450s they attacked Assyria, sacking Assur , and bringing the cities of Gasur and Arrapkha under their control. From c.1450 to 1393 BC the kings of Assyria paid tribute to the kingdom of Mittani. The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) overthrew
15300-581: The Old Babylonian Empire , Mari and Eshnunna , but also between different Assyrian dynasties and nobles who vied for power over the city. This period culminated in the re-establishment of Assur as an independent city-state under the Adaside dynasty c. 1700 BC. Assur became a vassal of the Mitanni kingdom c. 1430 BC but broke free in the early 14th century after Mitanni suffered a series of defeats by
15525-595: The Saddam Hussein years may have seriously, and even permanently, damaged Kirkuk's oil field. One example showed an estimated 1,500,000,000 barrels (240,000,000 m) of excess fuel oil being reinjected. Other problems include refinery residue and gas-stripped oil . Fuel oil reinjection has increased oil viscosity at Kirkuk making it more difficult and expensive to get the oil out of the ground. Over all, between April 2003 and late December 2004 there were an estimated 123 attacks on Iraqi energy infrastructures, including
15750-629: The Ubaid period were also excavated from several Tells in the city. Ancient Arrapkha was a part of Sargon of Akkad 's Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC), and city was exposed to the raids of the Lullubi during Naram-Sin's reign. Later the city was occupied around 2150 BC by language Isolate speaking Zagros Mountains dwellers who were known as the Gutian people by the Semitic and Sumerian of Mesopotamians. Arraphkha
15975-696: The Vilayet of Mosul (of which Kirkuk was a part), the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 failed to solve the issue. For this reason, the question of Mosul was sent to the League of Nations . A committee travelled to the area before coming to a final decision: the territory south of the "Brussels line" belonged to Iraq. By the Treaty of Angora of 1926, Kirkuk became a part of the Kingdom of Iraq . In 1927, Iraqi and American drillers working for
16200-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
16425-490: The Zagros Mountains in the east to central Anatolia in the west. During their time as prominent traders the Assyrians founded a number of trading colonies at various sites in the trading network, such as Kültepe . The first Assyrian royal dynasty, founded by Puzur-Ashur I c. 2025 BC came to an end when the city was captured by the foreign Amorite conqueror Shamshi Adad I in c. 1808 BC. Shamshi-Adad ruled from
16650-815: The Zoroastrian Shapur II ordered the massacre of all Assyrian Christians in the Persian Sassanid Empire. During the persecution, about 1,150 were martyred in Arrapha. Arab Muslims fought the Sassanid empire in the 7th century AD, conquering the region. The city was a part of the Islamic Caliphate until the tenth century. Kirkuk and the surrounding areas were then ruled by the Hasanwayhid Kurds & Annazid Kurds from 1014 to 1120 AD, then it
16875-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
17100-403: The "Akkadians [i.e. southerners] and their children" and selling copper. That Ilu-shuma was able to sell copper to kings in the south is significant because it illustrates that Assur at this time was producing enough copper to sustain both itself and others. Where this copper came from is not clear, perhaps Assyrian miners made the long trip to Ergani in the north-west, in later texts described as
17325-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
17550-723: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Old Assyrian Empire For most of
17775-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
18000-410: The 18th century BC and royal inscriptions and archival texts from Assur are very scanty in this time. In any case it is apparent that Assur at some point returned to being an independent city-state. The Assyrian King List , the only real overarching source for the period, presents a continuous sequence of rulers during this time, but its account of at least the decades following Shamshi-Adad's death
18225-545: The 41 seats of Kirkuk Provincial Council as follows: The new Kirkuk Provincial Council started its second turn on 6 March 2005. Its inaugural session was dedicated to the introduction of its new members, followed by an oath ceremony supervised by Judge Thahir Hamza Salman, the Head of Kirkuk Appellate Court. Kirkuk is located in a disputed area of Iraq that runs from Sinjar on the Syrian border southeast to Khanaqin and Mandali on
18450-514: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
18675-484: The 7th century, Muslim writers used the name Kirkheni ( Syriac for "citadel") to refer to the city. Others used other variant, such as Bajermi (a corruption of Aramaic "B'th Garmayeh" or Jermakan (a corruption of Persian Garmakan) . It is suggested that Kirkuk was one of the places occupied by Neanderthals based on archeological findings in the Shanidar Cave settlement. A large amount of pottery shards dating to
18900-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
19125-574: The Arab population of Kirkuk. Kurds were forbidden from buying property in Kirkuk, and could sell their properties only to Arabs. They were denied permission to renovate properties in need of maintenance, and poor Shi'a Arab families were paid to move to Kirkuk, while Kurds were paid to move out. Negotiations between Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party and the Iraqi government collapsed in March 1974 and Barzani rejected President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr declaration of Kurdish autonomy. Many disputes persisted between
19350-411: The Assyrian community or between the Assyrian traders and the locals. Non-commercial loans often consisted of small quantities of silver and were given out with interest; this interest amounted to 30% every year for Assyrians, though it was higher for the locals in the trading colonies. Loans usually had to be paid back within a short timespan, typically within a year, and successful repayment was marked by
19575-435: The Assyrian national deity Ashur, who had probably originated in the preceding Early Assyrian period as a deified personification of the city of Assur itself. Modern researchers divide the thousands of years of ancient Assyrian history into several stages based on political events and gradual changes in language. "Old Assyrian" is one of these stages and is thus a chronological label. As defined by Klaas Veenhof in 2008,
19800-417: The Assyrians viewed themselves as a distinct group. Though Old Assyrian evidence concerning personal lives from Assur itself is limited, consisting of a few marriage contracts and wills, the extensive Old Assyrian cuneiform records found at Kültepe document not only the participation of the traders in the Assyrian trade network, but also their everyday life not only in Kültepe but also at home in Assur. There
20025-501: The Ba'athist Arabization policy would be reversed: Displaced Kurds who had relocated to areas in the Kurdish autonomous region would return to Kirkuk, while the Arab Shi'a population would be compensated and relocated to areas in the south. After the Ba'athist regimes demographic and redistricting policies were undone a census and referendum would determine whether Kirkuk would be administered by
20250-689: The Green Line. In May 1991, Massoud Barzani announced that Baghdad had conceded Kirkuk as the capital of the autonomous region, but when the Iraqi government demanded the Kurds join the Ba'athist government the dispute once again escalated to violent conflict and in October 1991 Iraqi forces had withdrawn from several Kurdish provinces in the North including Erbil , Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah . American and British military forces led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003, marking
20475-657: The House of Seleucid' in Mesopotamian Aramaic , the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent in that era. The region around Kirkuk was known historically in the Eastern Aramaic and Syriac Assyrian sources as "Beth Garmai" ( Syriac : ܒܝܬܓܪܡܝ ). The name "Beth Garmai" or "Beth Garme" may be of Syriac origin which meaning "the house of bones", which is thought to be a reference to bones of slaughtered Achaemenids after
20700-644: The Hurri-Mitanni in the mid 14th century BC. Arrapha became part of Assyria proper, whith the Hurrian population driven away from the region. In the 11th and 10th centuries BC the city rose to prominence, becoming an important city in Assyria until the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC). It remained as such throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) where it became an important Assyrian city. After
20925-686: The IPC's French partner CFP. After reaching an agreement with the Iraqis in 1973, the IPC members were able to retain some of their interests in southern Iraq through the Basra Petroleum Company but had lost Iraq's main oilfields, including the Kirkuk field. In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was quickly routed by the United States in the First Gulf War (also called Operation Desert Storm ). In
21150-456: The Iranian border. Kirkuk has been a disputed territory for around eighty years — Kurds wanted Kirkuk to become part of the Kurdistan Region , which has been opposed by the region's Arab and Turkmen populations. The Kurds sought to annex the long disputed territory to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) through Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution that was enacted in 2005. Under Article 140
21375-555: The Iraq War), approximately 224,544 Kurds had returned to Kirkuk and 52,973 Arab persons had left the city. In 1972 the Iraqi government, led by then Vice-President Saddam Hussein, nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), after being unable to reach an agreement that would increase oil exports and resolve a longstanding dispute over Law 80 of 1961 . The Iraqi government began to sell its oil to Eastern bloc countries and
21600-517: The Iraqi government reached an agreement with Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani called the March Agreement of 1970 , but the question of whether the oil-rich province of Kirkuk would be included within the Kurdish autonomous region remained unresolved, pending a new census. Despite the signing of the March Agreement, relations between the Kurds and Iraqi government continued to deteriorate due to
21825-565: The KRG or Baghdad. Following the 2010 parliamentary election the Kurds signed the Erbil Agreement and backed Nouri al-Maliki on the condition that Article 140 would be implemented. Three churches in Kirkuk were targeted with bombs in August 2011. On 12 July 2013, Kirkuk was hit by a deadly bomb, killing 38 people in an attack on a café. A few days prior, on 11 July 2013, over 40 people were killed in
22050-425: The Kurdish demographic in Kirkuk and bolster their claims to the city. Multiple Human Rights Watch reports detail the confiscation of Turkmen and Arab families' documents, preventing them from voting, buying property and travelling. Turkmen residents of Kirkuk were detained by Kurdish forces and compelled to leave the city. Kurdish authorities expelled hundreds of Arab families from the city, demolishing their homes in
22275-810: The Kurds and Arabs and the conflict escalated into the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War (also called the Barzani rebellion). The rebellion collapsed after Iran withdrew its support for Barzani's forces following the 1975 Algiers Agreement and the Ba'ath regime intensified Arabization efforts. After Barzani's rebellion was defeated in 1974, the districts of Chemchemal and Kelar , which had been part of Kirkuk, became part of Sulaymaniyah and Kifri became part of Diyala province . Other Arab-populated districts, like Zab , became part of Kirkuk. Kurds, Turkmen and Christian populations were forcibly relocated and replaced with Shi'a from Iraq's south. The expulsions continued after
22500-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
22725-429: The North. Arabs families were expelled from the Kurdish region and relocated to Kirkuk, which was still controlled by the Iraqi government. In these circumstances, Hussein's government further intensified the decades long policy of Arabization in Kirkuk, requiring that Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians fill out "ethnic identity correction" forms and register as Arabs and many who refused to comply were forcibly relocated north of
22950-424: The Old Assyrian period, Assur was a minor city-state with little political and military influence. In contrast to Assyrian kings of later periods, the kings in the Old Assyrian period were just one of the prominent leading officials in the city's administration and normally used the style Išši'ak Aššur , which translates to "governor (on behalf) of (the god) Ashur ", rather than šar (king). The kings presided over
23175-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
23400-561: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
23625-500: The aftermath of the Iraqi army's defeat, rebellions broke out in Iraq; first in southern Iraq on March 1, and in the northern Kurdish region a few days later. By March 24, Kurdish Peshmerga forces had seized control of Kirkuk, but they were only able to hold it until March 28 when it was reclaimed by Hussein's forces. The US and UK began to enforce a no-fly zone in Northern Iraq and a de facto Kurdish Autonomous region emerged in
23850-453: The assembly was first divided into three groups and if no unamity was reached divided further into seven groups. A smaller group within the assembly, referred to as "the Elders" in a handful of texts, may have been the ones to finally pass verdicts. Assur first experienced a more autocratic form of kingship under Shamshi-Adad I, the earliest ruler of Assur during the Old Assyrian period to assume
24075-470: The assembly's executive officers and chairmen. In documents from Kültepe, it is common to find mentions of "the City" (i.e. the city assembly) passing verdicts in judicial matters. Documents also however attest to rulers often being approached for legal advice, as they were seen as "constitutional experts". Though the Assyrian kings themselves used the style Išši'ak , the citizens of Assur often referred to them with
24300-404: The bride belonged to her, not the husband, and was inherited by her children after her death. After the marriage was complete, wives moved in with their husbands, who were obliged to provide them with garments and food. Marriages were typically monogamous , but husbands were allowed to buy a female slave (sometimes chosen by the wife) in order to produce heirs in case his wife had not given birth to
24525-406: The brief conquests of Assur by outside powers, such as Eshnunna, Elam and Babylon during Ishme-Dagan's time. Documents at Mari and a fragmentary alternate version of the king list also show that Ishme-Dagan was succeeded by his son Mut-Ashkur , who in turn was succeeded by Rimush . It is possible that these kings only ruled Ekallatum, and not Assur, but the Assyrian ruler Puzur-Sin , also absent in
24750-446: The buildings constructed earlier in the Old Assyrian period were repaired, rebuilt and extended under their reigns, including the temples dedicated to Ishtar and Adad, as well as the walls of the city itself. Under Puzur-Ashur III, the city walls were extended to cover a greater tract of land, presumably attesting to a growing population. Later documents also reference the construction of a "new city" ( alu eššu ) during this time, adding to
24975-462: The businesses, particularly through weaving the textiles that their male relatives then sold. The women themselves received the gold or silver payment for these textiles and could in many transactions represent their husbands and brothers. Sons could after their father's deaths either inherit their father's business or choose to start their own enterprises. Some of the most common cuneiform tablets recovered from Kültepe are loan contracts, both within
25200-481: The children. Sometimes they had to live with their in-laws, not always successfully. Because the Assyrian traders in Anatolia could be away for long periods of time, they were allowed to take second wives in Anatolia. This arrangement had certain rules, including that the two wives could not be of the same status (one had to be the aššatum , "main wife", and the other the amtum , "second wife"), they could not both live in
25425-540: The city Shubat-Enlil and established a short-lived kingdom, sometimes called the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia, that collapsed after his death in c. 1776 BC. Events after Shamshi-Adad's death until the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period are poorly known, but there appears to initially have been some decades of frequent conflict in Assur and the surrounding region, not only between different states and empires, such as
25650-473: The city and played a central role in Kirkuk's urbanization, initiating housing and development projects in collaboration with Iraqi authorities in the 1940s and 1950s. The presence of the oil industry had an effect on Kirkuk's demographics. The exploitation of Kirkuk's oil, which began around 1930, attracted both Arabs and Kurds to the city in search of work. Kirkuk, which had been a predominantly Iraqi Turkmen city, gradually lost its uniquely Turkmen character. At
25875-438: The city as his residence. His wife, Lamassi-Ashur was even named after the god Ashur. In c. 1772 BC, the new king of Eshnunna, Ibal-pi-el II invaded Ishme-Dagan's kingdom, occupying Assur, Ekallatum and Qattare before seizing Shamshi-Adad's old capital at Shubut-Enlil. Ishme-Dagan fled from his realm during this time, taking refuge in southern Mesopotamia, now ruled by the Old Babylonian Empire . Ibal-pi-el II's invasion
26100-569: The city is a model for coexistence in the country. The ancient name of Kirkuk was the Hurrian Arrapha During the Parthian era, a Korkura/Corcura ( Ancient Greek : Κόρκυρα ) is mentioned by Ptolemy , which is believed to refer either to Kirkuk or to the site of Baba Gurgur 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) from the city. Since the Seleucid Empire it was known as karkā d-ḇeṯ slōḵ ( Syriac : ܟܪܟܐ ܕܒܝܬ ܣܠܘܟ ), which means 'Citadel of
26325-405: The city of Shubat-Enlil and in c. 1785 BC placed his two sons in control of different parts of the kingdom as his vassals; Yasmah-Adad was granted Mari and the surrounding lands and Ishme-Dagan, the elder son, was granted Ekallatum, Assur and surrounding territories. Under Shamshi-Adad's kingdom, Assur remained a distinct city and might have continued its trading with other cities. Local trade
26550-405: The city's actual administrative body, the Ālum (city assembly), which was made up of prominent and influential members among Assur's populace. Though lacking in military and political might, Assur was an important economic center in northern Mesopotamia. From the time of Erishum I ( c. 1974–1935 BC) until the late 19th century BC, the city was a hub in a large trading network that spanned from
26775-432: The city's finances through collecting taxes and fines and also acted as a public warehouse, selling certain wares, such as barley and precious metals. On some wares, such as lapis lazuli and iron, the city all appears to have had a local monopoly . Documents from Kültepe have shown that the verdicts of the local court, and thus possibly also the city assembly in Assur as well, during this time were reached by majority vote:
27000-401: The city, which left few traces of the original Old Assyrian structures. Surviving finds at Assur include a new phase of the city's Ishtar temple (dubbed Ishtar D), built during the preceding Early Assyrian period , as well as an early palace. The new Ishtar temple measured 34 by 9.5 meters (111.5 by 31.2 feet) and was substantially larger than preceding temples at the site. This temple included
27225-436: The common meaning of the term. A number of wardum are however also recorded as being bought and sold. All other terms used for slaves also had secondary or alternative meanings in other contexts: for instance, the term subrum (used to refer to a collection of slaves) could also mean utensils or livestock and the term amtum (used for female slaves) was the same word as the word used for second wives. Another term that
27450-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
27675-601: The country's 7,000 km-long pipeline system. In response to these attacks, which cost Iraq billions of US dollars in lost oil-export revenues and repair costs, the US military set up the Task Force Shield to guard Iraq's energy infrastructure and the Kirkuk–Ceyhan Oil Pipeline in particular. In spite of the fact that little damage was done to Iraq's oil fields during the war itself, looting and sabotage after
27900-941: The debts of their parents and sold off into slavery when their parents were unable to pay. Children born to slave women automatically became slaves themselves, unless some other arrangement had been agreed to. Owning several slaves was considered a sign of wealth, similar to owning several houses; on average a male slave cost 30 shekels and a female slave 20 shekels. Typically slaves from Anatolia, where Assur had prominent trading colonies, were less expensive than slaves from Mesopotamia. Slaves were owned by both women and men, with many women being recorded as both purchasing and inheriting slaves of their own. Female slaves were tasked with cleaning, preparing meals and helping their owners in raising their children. At times, men engaged in sexual relations with their female slaves and they were sometimes forced to become pregnant and give birth to children on behalf of infertile owners. Some male slaves worked in
28125-625: The earlier "inner city" ( libbi alī ). Around c. 1430 BC, Assur was subjugated by Mitanni and forced to become a vassal, an arrangement that lasted for about 70 years, until c. 1360 BC. Assur retained some autonomy under the Mitanni kings, as Assyrian kings during this time are attested as commissioning building projects, trading with Egypt and signing boundary agreements with the Kassites in Babylon. Chiefly responsible for bringing an end to Mitanni rule
28350-472: The earliest known experiment in free trade , leaving the initiative for trade and large-scale foreign transactions entirely to his populace. Though large institutions, such as the temples and the king himself, did take part in trade, the financing itself was provided by private bankers, who in turn bore nearly all the risk (but also earned nearly all the profits) of the trading ventures. Through Erishum's efforts, Assur appears to have quickly established itself as
28575-414: The early Old Assyrian period, though they are not from Assur or northern Mesopotamia, but rather from central Anatolia . The largest known collection of old Assyrian tablets are from Kültepe , near the modern city of Kayseri . Kültepe, in this time period known by the name Kanesh, was also a city-state ruled by its own line of kings. In the lower city of Kültepe, to the northwest, the Assyrians established
28800-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
29025-598: The ethnic make-up of the region. Pipelines from Kirkuk run through Turkey to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea and were one of the two main routes for the export of Iraqi oil under the Oil-for-Food Programme following the Gulf War of 1991. This was in accordance with a United Nations mandate that at least 50% of the oil exports pass through Turkey. There were two parallel lines built in 1977 and 1987. In 1970
29250-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
29475-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
29700-419: The fall of Assyria between 612 and 599 BC it was still an integral part of the geo-political province of Assyria – Achaemenid Assyria , Athura , Seleucid Syria , Assyria (Roman province) and Assuristan . In the Parthian and Sassanid eras Kirkuk was capital of the small Assyrian state of Beth Garmai (c.160 BC–250 AD). The city briefly came to be part of the short-lived Median Empire before falling to
29925-518: The foreign-owned and British-led Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) struck a huge oil gusher at Baba Gurgur ("St. Blaze" or father blaze in Kurdish) near Kirkuk. The IPC began exports from the Kirkuk oil field in 1934. The Company moved its headquarters from Tuz Khormatu to a camp on the outskirts of Kirkuk, which they named Arrapha after the ancient city. Arrapha remains a large neighborhood in Kirkuk to this day. The IPC exercised significant political power in
30150-468: The formation and maintenance of ethnic and cultural identities. Perhaps the distinct identity of the early city-state was reinforced by its frequent contact with foreigners through its trade network. A verdict issued under one of the kings of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty decided that "Assyrians can sell gold among each other but, in accordance with the words of the stele, no Assyrian whosoever shall give gold to an Akkadian, Amorite or Subaraean", illustrating that
30375-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
30600-466: The free citizens there was also a division into rabi ("big") and ṣaher ("small") members of the city assembly. Marriages in Old Assyrian Assur were decided and arranged between the prospective groom or his family and the parents of the prospective bride; usually marriages took place at the time the bride-to-be reached adulthood. Marriage gifts were customary; some texts mention that betrothals were broken off when no gifts were given. The dowry given to
30825-483: The god Ashur and the city Assur, both were inscribed in the exact same way in ancient times ( Aššur ). Because Old Assyrian documents sometimes appear to not differentiate between the city and the god, it is believed that Ashur is a deified personification of the city itself. Perhaps the site of the city, originating as a holy site prior to the city's construction and settled due to its strategic location came to gradually be regarded as divine in its own right at some point in
31050-458: The god and representations of his divine objects since one of the preserved texts describe thieves breaking into the Ashur temple in Kültepe and stealing Assur's dagger and a sun-disc that was placed on his chest. Ashur is frequently alluded to in surviving Old Assyrian texts and inscriptions. Assyrian texts from Kültepe show that Assyrians swore their oaths by "the City and the prince" or "the City and
31275-438: The history, politics, economics, religion, language and distinctive features of Assur and its people from the earliest comprehensive historical records at the site to the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period. Assur was much older than the commonly used beginning date for the Old Assyrian period, though the preceding Early Assyrian period is much more poorly known and Assur was not independent during that time but instead part of
31500-466: The husband and wife and both were allowed to remarry afterwards. If a man grew to dislike his wife, he could return her to her family, but had to pay compensation. If the wife had behaved badly in some way, the husband could strip her of her possessions and chase her away. Divorces with the second wife in Anatolia were more common than divorces in Assur itself, resulting from their husbands retiring from trading and staying in Assur permanently. In these cases,
31725-429: The husband had to decide whether to take his children with him or not, and had to pay certain amounts of money depending on how many of the children he took. If a husband died, his children inherited his goods and had to take care of their mother. If there were no children, the wife kept her dowry for herself and was allowed to remarry. If the husband had written a will, his wife could also inherit his goods and estates. If
31950-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
32175-469: The independent block. They were also infuriated that their only representative at the council's helm was an assistant mayor whom they considered pro-Kurdish. Abdul Rahman Mustafa ( Arabic : عبدالرحمن مصطفى ), a Baghdad -educated lawyer was elected mayor by 20 votes to 10. The appointment of an Arab, Ismail Ahmed Rajab Al Hadidi ( Arabic : اسماعيل احمد رجب الحديدي ), as deputy mayor went some way towards addressing Arab concerns. On 30 June 2005, through
32400-618: The international trade and it was largely organized around family businesses: every family member had specific tasks to perform and many professional relationships were founded in family ties. This is also reflected by the vocabulary used when referring to businesses; the boss, who often stayed at home in Assur and did not travel to the trading colonies, was typically referred to as abum ("father"), partners were called aḫum ("brothers") and employees were called ṣūḫārū (younger family members). Enterprises were often called bētum ("house"). As can be gathered from hiring contracts and other records,
32625-400: The international trade as personnel in the trading caravans. The major institutions in Assur, such as the city hall and temple of Ashur, owned slaves which were used for various maintenance duties. Slaves were sometimes sold to pay off debts, and were sometimes taken by force by authorities as security for debts. A major portion of the Old Assyrian population appears to have been involved in
32850-588: The king Ashur-uballit I ( c. 1363–1328 BC) and Ashur-uballit I's conquests of nearby territories, most importantly the fertile region between the Tigris, the foothills of the Taurus Mountains and the Upper Zab , marks the transition between the Old and Middle Assyrian periods, though Assur's transformation into a territorial state appears to have already begun under the last few decades of Mitanni rule. Ashur-uballit I
33075-453: The king list, claims in one of his inscriptions to have deposed a-sí-nim , grandson (or descendant) of Shamshi-Adad and liberated Assur from the Amorites. A-sí-nim is typically interpreted as a proper name, Asinum , in which case he was the last of Shamshi-Adad's dynasty to rule Assur, but it might alternatively have been a title, in which case the man driven away by Puzur-Sin could have been
33300-516: The king of Mari, c. 1792 BC. Shamshi-Adad also went on to conquer cities to the north and east of Assur, such as Arrapha , Nineveh, Qabra and Erbil . The realm founded by Shamshi-Adad eventually came to include most of northern Mesopotamia and has been given various names by modern historians, such as the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia and the North-Mesopotamian Empire. To rule this new realm, Shamshi-Adad established his capital at
33525-412: The kings themselves. In addition to trade, the cuneiform records at Kültepe also provide insight into the family lives of the traders, who often corresponded with their wives back home in Assur. These wives were in many cases responsible for gathering or acquiring the materials sold in the trading colonies. The original trading colony at Kültepe appears to have been burnt down c. 1836 BC, which led to
33750-422: The kings. Only four royal seals from the kings of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty are known, though only from their impressions, coming from Erishum I (two seals), Sargon I and Naram-Sin. With the sole exception of one of the seals of Erishum, found on a ceramic jar from Assur, they are all from the cuneiform tablets found at Kültepe. The known seals of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty kings are highly consistent in content, both in
33975-506: The language itself. Though it was a more archaic variant of the later Assyrian language, Old Assyrian also contains several words that are not attested in later periods, some being peculiar early forms of words and others being names for commercial terms or various textile and food products from Anatolia. Like the calendars used by the early Egyptians and Arabs, the Old and Middle Assyrian calendar consisted of twelve months, each allotted three constellations (one constellation corresponding to
34200-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
34425-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
34650-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
34875-472: The loan contractor returning the cuneiform tablet recording the loan, sometimes alongside a receipt. Evidence of what the citizens of Assur itself ate during the Old Assyrian period is very limited, consisting only of a few mentions in letters of wives buying barley and preparing bread and beer. By and large, food was prepared by the women. More detailed records of food are available from the cuneiform records at Kültepe, which establish that bread and beer were
35100-430: The lord", "prince" and "lord" probably meaning Ashur. In several texts, family members at home in Assur wrote to the traders in Kültepe that they ought to return to Assur and "come and see the eye of Ashur" or "seize Ashur's foot", suggesting that the god disapproved of his subjects leaving his city for too long periods of time only for the sake of monetary gain, even though there were sanctuaries dedicated to Ashur in all of
35325-466: The main food and drink products (water as well, though this was taken for granted and is thus typically not mentioned in the texts). Two varieties of bread were eaten; sourdough bread and bread made only with water and flour . Animal fat and sesame oil were sometimes used in cooking. To enhance flavors, honey was sometimes added as a sweetener, and common herbs and spices included salt, cumin , coriander and mustard . Meat, often grilled or in stews,
35550-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
35775-420: The materials sold by Assyrian colonists came from far-away places; the textiles sold by Assyrians in Anatolia were imported from southern Mesopotamia and the tin came from the east in the Zagros Mountains . An Assyrian trader could probably make the 1,000 kilometer (620 mile) distance between Assur and Kültepe in six weeks, travelling through donkey caravans. Though the traders had to pay road taxes and tolls to
36000-427: The matter. Mitanni would in time become the dominant power in northern Mesopotamia, but in the power vacuum left after Mursili I's invasion, Assur also briefly rose to a first period of prominence. Assyrian rulers from c. 1520 to c. 1430 were more politically assertive than their predecessors, both regionally and internationally. Puzur-Ashur III ( c. 1521–1498 BC) is the earliest Assyrian king to appear in
36225-469: The most part less complex than those used during the succeeding Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods and they were fewer in number, amounting to no more than 150–200 unique signs, most of which were syllabic signs (representing syllables). As letters sometimes include awkwardly shaped signs and spelling mistakes, it is likely that most preserved Old Assyrian texts were written by the authors themselves (and not hired scribes). Since some such letters are by women, it
36450-453: The most powerful families of the city, many of whom were merchants. From the time of Erishum I onwards, a yearly office-holder, a limmu official, was elected from this body of citizens. The limmu official held substantial executive powers and gave their name to the year, which meant that their name appeared in all administrative documents of that year. Kings were usually the limmu officials in their first regnal years. The city assembly
36675-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
36900-466: The next eponym also started with that month which means that sometimes the same month was repeated. As a result of its issues, the seasons over time moved backwards through the months of the Assyrian calendar by the speed of about one month every 120 years. In the 13th century BC, during the Middle Assyrian period, King Shalmaneser I had to adjust and correct the calendar, moving the months back to their original intended position. The Assyrians worshipped
37125-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
37350-456: The only prominent, official in the city's politics. Unlike in later Assyrian periods, the Assyrian kings of the Old Assyrian period are not thought to have been autocrats (i.e. rulers with sole power), but rather they acted as the stewards of the city's god, Ashur, and presided over the meetings of the Ālum (city assembly), Assur's main administrative body in this time. The kings in the Old Assyrian period appears to have mainly functioned as
37575-569: The original Kirkuk Citadel which sits near the Khasa River . It is described by the Kurdish leader and former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani as “the Jerusalem of Kurdistan”, while it is seen by the Turkmen activist Fatih Salah as the cultural and historical capital of Iraqi Turkmens. The government of Iraq states that Kirkuk represents a small version of Iraq due to its diverse population, and that
37800-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
38025-537: The people properly and returned to Assur its benevolent protective spirit". The time between the collapse of Shamshi-Adad's kingdom in the 18th century BC and the rise of Assyria in the 14th century BC is often regarded by modern scholars as an Assyrian "Dark Age" due to the lack of sufficient historical evidence to clearly establish events during this time. The main sources of historical records known from earlier Old Assyrian times; documents kept at other sites in northern Mesopotamia and in central Anatolia, fall silent in
38250-408: The preceding Early Assyrian period. Ashur's role as a deity was flexible and changed with the changing culture and politics of the Assyrians themselves. Though he would in later centuries be regarded as a god of war, guiding the Assyrian kings on their campaigns, he was in Old Assyrian times seen as a god of death and revival, related to agriculture. One of Ashur's main functions was also justice: it
38475-423: The presence of a second goddess behind the seated ruler, a very rare motif in both Ur III seals and in seals of non-royal Assyrians of the Old Assyrian period. In Ur III seals, the seated ruler was the divinely ordained king of Ur, but as the rulers of Assur were not regarded as divine themselves, but rather as servants of Assur's true king, the god Ashur, this connotation would have been ideologically problematic. It
38700-596: The preservation of the thousands of tablets, but it was shortly thereafter rebuilt, as attested by the presence of later Assyrian activity in the second layer. In total, it has been estimated that during just the time of documented trade in Level II of the Kültepe trading colony, about twenty-five tons of Anatolian silver was transported to Assur, and that approximately one hundred tons of tin and 100,000 textiles were transported to Anatolia in return. The Assyrians also sold livestock, processed goods and reed products. In many cases,
38925-478: The process. United Nations reports since 2006 have documented that Kurdish authorities and Peshmerga militia forces were illegally policing Kirkuk and other disputed areas, and that these militia have abducted Turkmen and Arabs, subjecting them to torture. On 16 October 2017, the Iraqi national army and PMF militia retook control of Kirkuk as the Peshmerga forces fled the city without fighting. Kirkuk has been
39150-463: The region between the 2nd century BC and 4th century AD, one such kingdom named "ܒܝܬܓܪܡܝ", (that is Bit Garmai in Syriac ) had Arrapha as its capital. Christianity also arose during this period, with Arrapha and its surrounds being influenced by the Assyrian Church of the East . The Sassanid Empire destroyed these kingdoms during 3rd and early 4th centuries AD, and Arrapha was incorporated into Sassanid ruled Assuristan (Sassanid Assyria). In AD 341,
39375-491: The region by the British Empire . At the end of World War I, the British occupied Kirkuk on 7 May 1918. Abandoning the city after about two weeks, the British returned to Kirkuk a few months later after the Armistice of Mudros . Kirkuk avoided the troubles caused by the Kurdish nationalist Mahmud Barzanji , who quickly attempted to overthrow the British Mandate in Iraq and establish his own fiefdom in Sulaymaniyah . As both Turkey and Great Britain desperately wanted control of
39600-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
39825-476: The royal ideology of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty as well and a mix of the traditions can be seen in his royal seals from Assur. The inscription designated him as "Shamshi-Adad, beloved of Ashur, Išši'ak Aššur , son of Ila-kabkabu", similar to the inscriptions of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty kings, but the visual depiction of Shamshi-Adad himself was noticeably different. Depicted with brimmed headgear, a full beard and one raised hand and one hand close to his body, Shamshi-Adad
40050-503: The rulers of the city's immediate neighbors. The earliest known surviving inscription by an Assyrian king was written by Puzur-Ashur's son and successor Shalim-ahum , and records the king having built a temple dedicated to Ashur "for his own life and the life of his city". Shalim-ahum's son and successor Ilu-shuma is the earliest Assyrian king known to have intervened in foreign affairs, campaigning and opening up trade. In one of his inscriptions, Ilu-shuma claims to have opened trade with
40275-446: The same pantheon of gods as the Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia. As known Old Assyrian texts are concerned mainly with trade, knowledge of Assyrian religion in the Old Assyrian period is not as detailed as in later periods. The chief deity in Assur in the Old Assyrian period, and in later times as well, was the Assyrian national deity Ashur. Though the deity and the city are commonly distinguished by modern historians through calling
40500-552: The same region (one had to live in Assur and the other in Anatolia) and a third wife in one of the trading posts in-between Assur and Anatolia was not allowed. Both wives also had to be provided with food, wood and a house to live in. Children born of the "second wife" may have had less rights in regards to inheritance than those of the "main wife". Most divorces recorded in the surviving texts were consensual and resulted from private discussions and arrangements. The high fines for divorce, up to 5 minas of silver, had to be paid by both
40725-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
40950-462: The same time, large numbers of Kurds from the mountains were settling in the uninhabited but cultivable rural parts of the district of Kirkuk. The influx of Kurds into Kirkuk continued through the 1960s. According to the 1957 census, Kirkuk city was 37.63% Iraqi Turkmen , 33.26% Kurdish with Arabs constituting 22.53% of its population. Assyrians comprised 1.25% of the population. Some analysts believe that poor reservoir -management practices during
41175-403: The same type of tombs were later used by prominent Assyrian families to bury their dead collectively beneath their houses, illustrating that this was a long-lasting Assyrian tradition. Several of the tombs contain rich funeral gifts, including jewelry, seals, stone objects and weapons. Assur in the Old Assyrian period was in many respects an oligarchy , where the king was a permanent, albeit not
41400-478: The scribe who created the king list. Ashur-dugul was according to the king list succeeded by Bel-bani , c. 1700 BC, apparently the son of Adasi. Bel-bani founded the Adaside dynasty , which went on to rule Assyria for about a thousand years. Later Assyrian monarchs, Bel-bani's descendants, would in times thereafter revere Bel-bani as a restorer of stability and as the founder of their long-lived dynasty. In time, he became an almost mythical ancestor figure. It
41625-464: The settlement itself, apart from the tablets and seals. The houses in the colony can not be differentiated from the houses of the locals, which suggests that the traders lived not as colonists, but as expatriates, using the local artefacts and houses. In all likelihood, the Assyrian community at Kültepe did not live in a separate walled part of the town, but rather simply in their own part of the lower city, also home to local Anatolians. The Assyrian colony
41850-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
42075-463: The south and making a treaty with Eshnunna. When relations quickly thereafter soured again, Ishme-Dagan fled to Babylon once more. Assur and the rest of Ishme-Dagan's realm shortly thereafter came under the, perhaps only brief, control of the Old Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi ( c. 1792–1750 BC), who conquered the region c. 1761 BC and appears to have respected Assur and its institutions since he wrote in one of his inscriptions that "I guided
42300-410: The south, the rulers of Larsa , Babylon and Eshnunna fought with one another to re-unite southern Mesopotamia. In the east, the rulers of Elam increasingly involved themselves in Mesopotamian politics and in the west, new kingdoms arose at Yamhad and Qatna . The success and survival of Shamshi-Adad's kingdom relied chiefly on his own military success, strength and charisma. Increasing conflict with
42525-498: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
42750-545: The star Sirius , Bēlti-ekallim was also the name of a goddess who was represented in the sky by the star Vega , and the name of the final month, Makhur ilī , means "meeting of the gods", probably in reference to conjunction of the moon and the Pleiades star cluster in the sky during this time. The Assyrian calendar must have started in the autumn, at the time when the farmers ploughed the fields, sometime between September 23 (the September equinox ) and December 21 (the winter solstice ). The Old and Middle Assyrian calendar
42975-459: The start of the Second Iraq War . Kurdish peshmerga fighters assisted in the 2003 capture of Kirkuk. Though the peshmerga were allowed to operate even after the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) disbanded and outlawed most of the armed militias in Iraq, the peshmerga were eventually asked to withdraw from Kirkuk and other Kurdish held provinces. Under the supervision of chief executive of Coalition Provisional Authority L. Paul Bremer ,
43200-446: The style rubā’um ("great one"), clearly indicating authority and the status of being a primus inter pares (first among equals). Since the same title was used to refer to the kings in Anatolia, whom the Assyrians traded with, it also shows understanding of their king as a royal (and not simply civic or religious) figure. The composition of the city assembly is not known, but it is generally believed to have been made up of members of
43425-409: The style šarrum (king) and the title ' king of the Universe '. Shamshi-Adad appears to have based his more absolute form of kingship on the rulers of the Old Babylonian Empire. In one of his royal inscriptions at Assur, Shamshi-Adad assumed the full style "king of the Universe, builder of Assur's temple, pacifier of the land between Tigris and Euphrates ". In some inscriptions and seals this style
43650-438: The surrounding kingdoms and Shamshi-Adad's death c. 1776 BC led to the collapse of the kingdom. Local rulers quickly returned to power in many parts of the former realm, including in Mari, where Zimri-Lim ousted Yasmah-Adad from power. Shamshi-Adad's senior heir, Ishme-Dagan, retained control only of Ekallatum, from where he ruled, and Assur. Ishme-Dagan was respectful of Assur's cults and traditions and occasionally used
43875-449: The term applies to "the earliest phase of the culture of ancient Assur that is historically sufficiently recoverable to be called Assyrian", "Assyrian" here meaning the city of Assur and its culture rather than Assyria as a state governing a stretch of territory; Assyria only transitioned from a small city-state to a kingdom governing a larger stretch of territory in the succeeding Middle Assyrian period . As such, "Old Assyrian" refers to
44100-425: The terminology used in the texts might mean that many, but not all, of the supposed slaves were actually free servants. Though men and women had different duties and responsibilities, they had more or less the same legal rights, with both being allowed to inherit property, make wills, initiate divorce proceedings and participate in trade. The chief deity worshipped in the Old Assyrian period was, like in later periods,
44325-472: The text and in the artwork. The inscriptions of the seals all include the name of the king, the title Išši'ak Aššur and further text establishing him as the son of the preceding king. When compared to other seals of non-royal Assyrians in the Old Assyrian period, the motif itself—a goddess who is holding the hand of a bald man and leading him to a seated ruler with brimmed, rounded headgear—is not very distinctive and appears in other seals as well. An aspect that
44550-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
44775-435: The trade involved people of many different occupations, including porters, guides, donkey drivers, agents, traders, bakers and bankers. In family-run businesses, the eldest son was typically the one to move to Kültepe and other trading colonies whereas the father stayed at home. The other sons, if there were any, could also be settled in the colonies and often helped with transporting the goods themselves. Women were also part of
45000-412: The unresolved status of Kirkuk, and there were two attempts to assassinate Barzani in 1972. In response to Barzani's continued demands during the early 1970s for Kirkuk to be recognized as part of the autonomous region under the terms of the March Agreement, settlement construction for newly arrived Arab families increased drastically as the Ba'athist government implemented Arabization policies to increase
45225-425: The various in Persia centred succeeding Turkic federations in the region, namely that of the Qara Qoyunlu , and the Aq Qoyunlu specifically. After the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 the city came under the Soran Emirate control until it was taken over by Babanids in 1694. In 1851 it became under direct control of the Ottoman Empire . Ottoman rule continued until World War I when the Ottomans were pushed out of
45450-430: The various states and rulers in the lands in-between, profits were massive since the Assyrians sold many of their goods at double the price in Mesopotamia, or even more. Assur's importance as a trading center declined in the 19th century BC, whereafter Assyrian traders played a more modest role. This decline might chiefly have resulted from increasing conflict between the states and rulers of the Ancient Near East leading to
45675-399: The wall had to be rebuilt due to normal wear or due to having been damaged in war is not known. It is possible that it was damaged during conflict with the southern city-state Eshnunna , which at this time was pursuing an expansionist policy. In any case, repairs were not complete until the long reign of Ikunum's son Sargon I ( c. 1920–1881 BC). Though Sargon's reign appears to have been
45900-435: The war ended was highly destructive and accounted for perhaps eighty percent of the total damage. The discovery of vast quantities of oil in the region after World War I provided the impetus for the annexation of the former Ottoman Vilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part), to the Iraqi Kingdom, established in 1921. Since then and particularly from 1963 onwards, there have been continuous attempts to transform
46125-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
46350-448: Was also eaten, with records of Assyrians eating sheep, oxen, pork, shrimp and fish. Animals were often killed at home, but it was also possible to purchase pre-cut pieces of meat, either in Assur or by traders along the travel routes. Though beer and water were the primary drinks, the preserved texts also demonstrate a great appreciation for wine, seen as a luxury commodity and called kerānum or, more rarely, karānum in Assyrian. Wine
46575-639: Was an Amorite king, originally ruling the city of Ekallatum, where he had succeeded his father Ila‐kabkabuhu c. 1835 BC. Threatened by Ipiq-Adad II in Eshnunna, Shamshi-Adad sought refuge in southern Mesopotamia for several years but returned to Ekallatum c. 1811 BC and conquered his rival. Three years later, in c. 1808 BC, Shamshi-Adad deposed the last king of Puzur-Ashur I's dynasty, Naram-Sin's son Erishum II ( c. 1828/1818–1809 BC), and took Assur for himself. After conquering both Eshnunna and Assur, Shamshi-Adad began extensive campaigns of conquest which culminated in his victory over Yahdun-Lim ,
46800-493: Was another Hittite king, Šuppiluliuma I , whose 14th century BC war with Mitanni over control of Syria effectively led to the beginning of the end of the Mitanni kingdom. At the same time as the Mitanni king Tushratta had to fight Šuppiluliuma I, he was also forced to contend with a rival claimant to the throne, Artatama II . After the war with the Hittites relegated Mitanni to a minor kingdom, Assyria managed to free itself from its suzerain. Assyria's independence, achieved under
47025-433: Was believed that anyone who gave false testimony or unjust judgement in court would be struck down by "Ashur's dagger" ( Patrum ša Aššur ), a weapon Assyrians had to take oaths on. Women also took oaths on the " tambourine ( huppum ) of Ishtar ". Both of these objects were likely physical divine emblems in Assur. The temples dedicated to Ashur in both Assur and the Assyrian trading colonies evidently included statues of
47250-421: Was believed that the deceased lived on in the Ancient Mesopotamian underworld as ghosts and that they could appear in the dreams of their descendants. Deceased family members were often honored with prayers and offerings, a practice made easier since they were typically buried beneath the houses of their descendants and relatives. Slavery was an important part of nearly every society in the Ancient Near East. In
47475-412: Was critical to Assyria's later development. This invasion destroyed the then dominant power in Mesopotamia, the Old Babylonian Empire, which created a vacuum of power that led to the formation of the Kassite kingdom of Babylonia in the south and the Hurrian Mitanni state in the north. The Hittite invasion must also directly have impacted Assur in some way, but there are no surviving sources discussing
47700-477: Was eventually pushed back by Zimri-Lim of Mari and around this time, probably with the aid of the Babylonians, Ishme-Dagan returned to power in Ekallatum and Assur. A few years later, northern mesopotamia was again invaded, this time by an army from Elam that also seized Shubut-Enlil and other cities. This invasion was pushed back by an alliance between Mari, Ishme-Dagan and Babylon and in its aftermath, Ishme-Dagan strengthened his position by seizing some territory to
47925-427: Was evidently important for Shamshi-Adad, as there are from his reign records of an official overseeing merchants. Shamshi-Adad renovated the city and rebuilt the temples of Assur, though a sanctuary to the god Enlil also appears to have been added there, and Adad. Referring to the city as a city "full of gods", Shamshi-Adad respected Assur and sometimes stayed there to partake in religious ceremonies, though he remained
48150-474: Was likely achieved in conjunction with the last Ur III ruler, Ibbi-Sin ( c. 2028–2004 BC), losing his administrative grip on the peripheral regions of his empire. Very little archaeological evidence survives from Assur in the first half of the second millennium BC and as a result, relatively little is known about the city, its people and its rulers during this time. Surviving royal inscriptions from this time deal almost exclusively with building projects. What
48375-481: Was mainly made from grapes grown in Cappadocia , though other sources existed as well, such as southern Anatolia or certain sites alongside the Euphrates river or Taurus Mountains. When they drank beer, Assyrians typically also ate beer bread , made of crushed barley. In certain situations, consumption of beer appears to have been formalized; the cuneiform texts found at Kültepe indicate that Old Assyrian traders bought and consumed beer when buying an animal, completing
48600-497: Was no legal distinction between men and women during the Old Assyrian period and they had more or less the same legal rights. Both men and women had to pay the same fines, could inherit property, participated in trade, bought, owned and sold houses and slaves, made their own last wills and were allowed to divorce their partners. Society was instead divided into two main groups: slaves ( subrum ) and free citizens, referred to as awīlum ("men") or DUMU Aššur ("sons of Ashur"). Among
48825-472: Was not only a trading settlement, but also functioned as a center of various craft production activities, such as the production of pottery and metal objects. The preserved cuneiform tablets demonstrate that the Assyrians had their own separate administrative structures and court at Kültepe, and thus were somewhat self-governing. The Assyrian court at Kültepe based its rulings on Assyrian law, and often based its decisions on commands from Assur, sometimes issued by
49050-405: Was not without its problems. An extra week, a time-unit referred to as ḫamuštum , had to be added to the twelve thirty-day months. This appears to have normally been done in the form of adding an extra full month every four years. Furthermore, eponym years did not always begin with the change of a year, but instead often coincided with stellar phenomena. If an eponym ended in the middle of a month,
49275-514: Was preceded by "appointee of Enlil" and/or succeeded by "beloved of Ashur". On inscribed bricks, used in the construction projects, Shamshi-Adad was more modest and assumed the for Assur more traditional style of ensí (the Sumerian version of the Assyrian Išši'ak ) of Ashur. Under Shamshi-Adad, Assyrians also swore their oaths by the king, not just by the god. This practice did not survive beyond his death. In Ancient Mesopotamia, royal seals served as both instruments of office and personal seals for
49500-410: Was referred to as akkadûm , with Assyrian being referred to as aššurû or aššurāyu . Though both were written with cuneiform script, the signs look quite different and can be distinguished relatively easily. Old Assyrian texts are for the most part limited to the early portion of the period, before the "Dark Age" from the 18th century BC onwards. The signs used in the texts from these times are for
49725-433: Was sometimes consecrated to a god (presumably Ashur) as priestesses. Consecrated women were not allowed to marry but also became economically independent. During the long trading journeys, the wives of Assyrian traders often stayed home alone in Assur, managing households and raising children. Often they had to, as the heads of the household, oversee gathering food and supplies, repairing the house and providing clothing for
49950-815: Was sometimes used as a synonym for wardum was ṣuḫārum (female version ṣuḫārtum ), though this word could also be used to refer to a child. Though Old Babylonian texts frequently mention the geographical and ethnic origin of slaves, there is only a single known such reference in Old Assyrian texts, a slave girl explicitly being referred to as Subaraean, indicating that these aspects were not seen as very important. There were two main types of slaves: chattel slaves, primarily foreigners who were kidnapped or who were spoils of war, and debt slaves, formerly free men and women who had been unable to pay off their debts. Many chattel slaves were Anatolians who had originated as debt slaves but had lost their right to redemption. In some cases, Assyrian children were seized by authorities due to
50175-437: Was taken over by Seljuk Turks for many years. After the divided empire collapsed, the city came under the Abbasids rule once again Suleiman Shah who was the governor of the city until it was taken over by Mongols in 1258. After the Mongol invasion, the Ilkhanate was founded in the region and the city became a part of it. The Ilkhanid rule ended when in 1336, the Ardalan took over the city, despite being vassals themselves of
50400-409: Was the capital of the short-lived Guti kingdom (Gutium). The Gutians were driven from Mesopotamia by the Neo-Sumerian Empire c. 2115 BC. Arrapkha became a part of the Old Assyrian Empire (c.2025–1750 BC), before Hammurabi briefly subjected Assyria to the short-lived Babylonian Empire , after which it again became a part of Assyria c.1725 BC. However, by the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C.
50625-479: Was the first native Assyrian ruler to claim the dignity of king (rather than governor). Shortly after achieving independence, he further claimed the dignity of a great king on the level of the pharaohs and the Hittite kings. Little archaeological finds have been discovered dating to the Old Assyrian period other than the trade archives at Kültepe. The lack of substantial finds at Assur is probably attributable to later Assyrian kings expanding and rebuilding portions of
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