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125-458: Though Lovecraft himself was quite fond of the story, it was roundly rejected by a variety of magazines. The unnamed narrator of the story goes into the middle of the Arabian Peninsula to seek out and enter a lost city. After hearing a clanging seemingly coming from deep inside the earth, the narrator inspects mysterious carvings and ruins until nightfall. The next day, the narrator discovers

250-539: A military intervention in Yemen in March 2015. The civil war and subsequent military intervention and blockade caused a famine in Yemen . Chaldaea Chaldea ( / k æ l ˈ d iː ə / ) was a small country that existed between the late 10th or early 9th and mid-6th centuries BC, after which the country and its people were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population of Babylonia . Semitic -speaking, it

375-534: A border treaty in Assyria's favour. The Assyrians allowed him to remain on the throne, although subject to Assyria. Eriba-Marduk , another Chaldean, succeeded him in 769 BC and his son, Nabu-shuma-ishkun in 761 BC, with both being dominated by the new Assyrian king Ashur-Dan III (772–755 BC). Babylonia appears to have been in a state of chaos during this time, with the north occupied by Assyria, its throne occupied by foreign Chaldeans, and continual civil unrest throughout

500-412: A cliff riddled with low-ceilinged buildings, unfit for human use. While he attends to his suddenly nervous camel , the narrator discovers a somewhat larger temple , with altars , painted murals , and a small staircase going down. After he descends, his torch dies, and he crawls on his hands and knees until he enters a hallway with small wooden coffins containing bizarre reptiles inside of them lining

625-564: A counterattack, marched his army into Assyria proper in 616 BC, and tried to besiege Assur and Arrapha (modern Kirkuk ), but was defeated by Sin-shar-ishkun and chased back into Babylonia after being driven from Idiqlat (modern Tikrit ) at the southernmost end of Assyria. A stalemate seemed to have ensued, with Nabopolassar unable to make any inroads into Assyria despite its greatly weakened state, and Sin-shar-ishkun unable to eject Nabopolassar from Babylonia due to constant rebellions and civil war among his own people. Nabopolassar's position, and

750-406: A cross between a crocodile and a seal with a strange head common to neither of them, involving a protruding forehead, horns, lack of a nose, and an alligator-like jaw crawling behind the lit portal. The wind dies down after the last of it flows down into the light, when suddenly the door closes behind the narrator, leaving him in the dark. Lovecraft said that the story was based on a dream, which

875-563: A large and powerful Median-dominated force. The Medes, Persians, Parthians, Chaldeans and Babylonians formed an alliance that also included the Scythians and Cimmerians to the north. While Sin-shar-ishkun was fighting both the rebels in Assyria and the Chaldeans and Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia, Cyaxares (hitherto a vassal of Assyria), in alliance with the Scythians and Cimmerians launched

1000-469: A lavish scale. His building activity at Babylon, expanding on the earlier major and impressive rebuilding of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon , helped to turn it into the immense and beautiful city of legend. Babylon covered more than 8 km (3 sq mi), surrounded by moats and ringed by a double circuit of walls. The Euphrates flowed through the center of the city, spanned by a beautiful stone bridge. At

1125-443: A native Mesopotamian people, but were late 10th- or early 9th-century BC West Semitic Levantine migrants to the southeastern corner of the region, who had played no part in the previous three millennia of Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian Mesopotamian civilization and history. The ancient Chaldeans seem to have migrated into Mesopotamia sometime between c. 940 and 860 BC, a century or so after other new Semitic arrivals ,

1250-659: A persuasive background for his horrors. At one point, the narrator recalls: To myself I pictured all the splendours of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not recall it, and thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that stood in the land of Mnar when mankind was young, and of Ib, that was carven of grey stone before mankind existed. In this passage, Chaldaea is a historic region in Mesopotamia , whereas Sarnath, Mnar, and Ib are places in Lovecraft's story " The Doom that Came to Sarnath ". Later in

1375-748: A small number of urban trading settlements, such as Mecca and Medina , located in the Hejaz in the west of the peninsula. Archaeology has revealed the existence of many civilizations in pre-Islamic Arabia (such as the Thamud ), especially in South Arabia . South Arabian civilizations include the Himyarite Kingdom , the Kingdom of Awsan , the Kingdom of Ma'īn , and the Sabaean Kingdom (usually considered to be

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1500-444: A sort of dreamlike manner, despite his coldly clinical use of adjectives. The story is often reprinted in various short story collections. Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula ( / ə ˈ r eɪ b i ə n p ə n ɪ n sj u l ə / ; Arabic : شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَة الْعَرَبِيَّة , shibhu l-jazīra l-ʿarabiyya , "Arabian Peninsula" or جَزِيرَةُ الْعَرَب , jazīratu l-ʿarab , lit.   ' Island of

1625-488: A surprise attack on civil-war-beleaguered Assyria in 615 BC, sacking Kalhu (the Biblical Calah / Nimrud ) and taking Arrapkha (modern Kirkuk ). Nabopolassar, still pinned down in southern Mesopotamia, was not involved in this major breakthrough against Assyria. From this point however, the alliance of Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Sagartians, Scythians and Cimmerians fought in unison against Assyria. Despite

1750-521: A time able to keep their identity despite the dominant native Assyro-Babylonian (Sumero-Akkadian-derived) culture although, as was the case for the earlier Amorites , Kassites and Suteans before them, by the time Babylon fell in 539 BC, perhaps before, the Chaldeans ceased to exist as a specific ethnic group . In the Hebrew Bible , " Ur of the Chaldees " ( Ur Kaśdim ) is cited as the starting point of

1875-756: Is Saudi Arabia. In the classical era, the Sinai Peninsula was also considered a part of Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula formed as a result of the rifting of the Red Sea between 56 and 23 million years ago, and is bordered by the Red Sea to the west and southwest, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the northeast, the Levant and Mesopotamia to the north and the Arabian Sea and

2000-538: Is a large volcanic field that extends from northwestern Arabia into Jordan and southern Syria . The Peninsula's constituent countries are (clockwise from north to south) Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the east, Oman on the southeast, Yemen on the south, and Saudi Arabia at the center. The island country of Bahrain lies just off the east coast of the Peninsula. Due to Yemen's jurisdiction over

2125-437: Is applied in a very artificial manner", Carter writes. "Rather than creating in the reader a mood of terror, Lovecraft describes a mood of terror: the emotion is applied in the adjectives." He does, however, allow that the tale has some "evocative power". Lovecraft himself was powerfully moved by an emotion of awe and fascination when contemplating the mysterious ruins of unthinkable antiquity. This emotion he manages to convey in

2250-594: Is known for its rich oil, i.e. petroleum production due to its geographical location. According to NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data (2003–2013) analysed in a University of California, Irvine (UCI) -led study published in Water Resources Research on 16 June 2015, the most over-stressed aquifer system in the world is the Arabian Aquifer System , upon which more than 60 million people depend for water. Twenty-one of

2375-731: Is located in the continent of Asia and is bounded by (clockwise) the Persian Gulf on the northeast, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman on the east, the Arabian Sea on the southeast, the Gulf of Aden , and the Guardafui Channel on the south, and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait on the southwest and the Red Sea, which is located on the southwest and west. The northern portion of the peninsula merges with

2500-647: Is the location of the Kaaba , Islam's holiest site, and the Masjid al-Nabawi (the Prophet's Mosque) in Medina is the location of Muhammad 's grave; as a result, from the 7th century, Mecca and Medina became the pilgrimage destinations for large numbers of Muslims from across the Islamic world . Despite its spiritual importance, in political terms Arabia soon became a peripheral region of

2625-407: Is unsuited to agriculture, making irrigation and land reclamation projects essential. The narrow coastal plain and isolated oases, amounting to less than 1% of the land area, are used to cultivate grains, coffee and tropical fruits . Goat, sheep, and camel husbandry is widespread elsewhere throughout the rest of the Peninsula. Some areas have a summer humid tropical monsoon climate , in particular

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2750-721: The Al Saud , began in Najd in central Arabia in 1744, when Muhammad bin Saud , founder of the dynasty, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab , founder of the Wahhabi movement , a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam. The Emirate of Diriyah established in the area around Riyadh rapidly expanded and briefly controlled most of the present-day territory of Saudi Arabia, sacking Karbala in 1802, and capturing Mecca in 1803. The Damascus Protocol of 1914 provides an illustration of

2875-755: The Arabs ' ), or Arabia , is a peninsula in West Asia , situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate . At 3,237,500 km (1,250,000 sq mi), comparable in size to India , the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Bahrain , Kuwait , Oman , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen , as well as southern Iraq and Jordan . The largest of these

3000-556: The Aramaic dialect used in the Hebrew Bible was not closely related to the ancient Chaldean language. Ancient Chaldeans believed in "three heavens". The region that the Chaldeans eventually made their homeland was in relatively poor southeastern Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf. They appear to have migrated into southern Babylonia from the Levant at some unknown point between

3125-600: The Arameans and the Suteans , appeared in Babylonia, c. 1100 BC. According to Ran Zadok, they first appear in written record in cylinder inscriptions of the King of Mari Aššur-ketta-lēšir II (late 12th-early 11th century BC), which record them reaching Mesopotamia as early as the 11th century BC. They later appear in the annals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III during the 850s BC. This

3250-697: The Caucasus . Nabopolassar was not able to enjoy his success for long, dying in 604 BC, only one year after the victory at Karchemish. He was succeeded by his son, who took the name Nebuchadnezzar II , after the unrelated 12th century BC native Akkadian-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I , indicating the extent to which the migrant Chaldeans had become infused with native Mesopotamian culture. Nebuchadnezzar II and his allies may well have been forced to deal with remnants of Assyrian resistance based in and around Dur-Katlimmu , as Assyrian imperial records continue to be dated in this region between 604 and 599 BC. In addition,

3375-451: The Dhofar and Al Mahrah areas of Oman and Yemen. These areas allow for large scale coconut plantations. Much of Yemen has a tropical monsoon rain influenced mountain climate. The plains usually have either a tropical or subtropical arid desert climate or arid steppe climate . The sea surrounding the Arabian Peninsula is generally tropical sea with a very rich tropical sea life and some of

3500-577: The First Islamic State - a single Arab Muslim religious polity in the Arabian Peninsula. Under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates , rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula formed a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from the northwest Indian subcontinent , across Central Asia , the Middle East , North Africa , southern Italy , and

3625-567: The Hejaz ( Tihamah for the western coast), as described by Ibn al-Faqih . In antiquity, the term "Arabia" encompassed a larger area than the current term "Arabian Peninsula" and included the Arabian desert and large parts of the Syrian-Arabian desert . During the Hellenistic period , the area was known as Arabia ( Ancient Greek : Ἀραβία ). The Romans named three regions "Arabia": One of

3750-704: The Iberian Peninsula , to the Pyrenees . With Muhammad's death in 632, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. Umar ibn al-Khattab , a prominent companion of Muhammad, nominated Abu Bakr , who was Muhammad's intimate friend and collaborator. Others added their support and Abu Bakr was made the first caliph . This choice was disputed by some of Muhammad's companions, who held that Ali ibn Abi Talib , his cousin and son-in-law, had been designated his successor. Abu Bakr's immediate task

3875-564: The Indian Ocean to the southeast. The peninsula plays a critical geopolitical role in the Arab world and globally due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas . Before the modern era, the region was divided into primarily four distinct regions: the Central Plateau ( Najd and Al-Yamama ), South Arabia ( Yemen , Hadhramaut and Oman ), Al-Bahrain (Eastern Arabia or Al-Hassa ), and

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4000-489: The Islamic world , in which the most important medieval Islamic states were based at various times in such far away cities as Damascus , Baghdad , and Cairo . However, from the 10th century (and, in fact, until the 20th century) the Hashemite Sharifs of Mecca maintained a state in the most developed part of the region, the Hejaz . Their domain originally comprised only the holy cities of Mecca and Medina but in

4125-571: The Nefud Desert dates to approximately 90,000 years ago and is the oldest human fossil discovered outside of Africa and the Levant. This indicates human migrations from Africa to Arabia occurred around this time. The Arabian Peninsula may have been the homeland of a ' Basal Eurasian ' population, which diverged from other Eurasians soon after the Out-of-Africa migration, and subsequently became isolated, until it started to mix with other populations in

4250-725: The Rashidun or "rightly guided" Caliphate . Under the Rashidun Caliphs, and, from 661, their Umayyad successors , the Arabs rapidly expanded the territory under Muslim control outside of Arabia. In a matter of decades Muslim armies decisively defeated the Byzantine army and destroyed the Persian Empire , conquering huge swathes of territory from the Iberian peninsula to India. The political focus of

4375-558: The Scythians , Cimmerians , and Lydians . Like their Assyrian relations, the Babylonians had to campaign yearly in order to control their colonies. In 601 BC, Nebuchadnezzar II was involved in a major but inconclusive battle against the Egyptians . In 599 BC, he invaded Arabia and routed the Arabs at Qedar . In 597 BC, he invaded Judah , captured Jerusalem after the siege of Jerusalem (597 BC) and deposed its king Jehoiachin , carrying

4500-708: The Socotra Archipelago , the Peninsula's geopolitical outline faces the Guardafui Channel and the Somali Sea to the south. The six countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers the greater part of the Peninsula. The majority of the population of the Peninsula lives in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Peninsula contains

4625-459: The Syrian Desert with no clear borderline, although the northern boundary of the peninsula is generally considered to be the northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, also southern regions of Iraq and Jordan. The most prominent feature of the peninsula is desert , but in the southwest, there are mountain ranges, which receive greater rainfall than the rest of the peninsula. Harrat ash Shaam

4750-505: The Tuwayr , Shammar and Dhofar generally do not exceed 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in height. Not all mountains in the peninsula are visibly within ranges. Jebel Hafeet in particular, on the border of the UAE and Oman, measuring between 1,100 and 1,300 m (3,600 and 4,300 ft), is not within the Hajar range, but may be considered an outlier of that range. Most of the Arabian Peninsula

4875-465: The United States –led 2003 invasion of Iraq . Despite its historically sparse population, political Arabia stands out for its rapid population growth, driven by both significant inflows of migrant labor and persistently high birth rates. The population is characterized by its relative youth and a heavily skewed gender ratio favoring males. In several states, the number of South Asians surpasses that of

5000-464: The nomes of Ptolemaic Egypt was named Arabia . Arabians used a north–south division of Arabia: ash-Sham vs. al-Yaman , or Arabia Deserta vs. Arabia Felix . Arabia Felix had originally been used for the whole peninsula, and at other times only for the southern region. Because its use became limited to the south, the whole peninsula was simply called Arabia. Arabia Deserta was the entire desert region extending north from Arabia Felix to Palmyra and

5125-634: The 13th century it was extended to include the rest of the Hejaz . Although, the Sharifs exercised at most times independent authority in the Hejaz , they were usually subject to the suzerainty of one of the major Islamic empires of the time. In the Middle Ages, these included the Abbasids of Baghdad , and the Fatimids , Ayyubids , and Mamluks of Egypt . The provincial Ottoman Army for Arabia (Arabistan Ordusu)

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5250-467: The Assyrian army and the army of the Egyptians , whose 26th Dynasty had formed a brief allied coalition with the Assyrians, were defeated at Karchemish . Nabopolassar and his Median, Scythian and Cimmerian allies were now in possession of much of the huge Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Egyptians had belatedly come to the aid of Assyria, which they would have hoped to support as a secure buffer between Egypt and

5375-516: The Assyrian king to turn back in order to quell the revolt. Nabopolassar took advantage of this situation, seizing the ancient city of Nippur in 619 BC, a mainstay of pro-Assyrianism in Babylonia, and thus Babylonia as a whole. However, his position was still far from secure, and bitter fighting continued in the Babylonian heartlands from 620 to 615 BC, with Assyrian forces encamped in Babylonia in an attempt to eject Nabopolassar. Nabopolassar attempted

5500-407: The Assyrian prince who was king of Babylon and son of Sennacherib. The Chaldeans and Babylonians again allied with their more powerful Elamite neighbors in this endeavour. This prompted the enraged Assyrian king Sennacherib to invade and subjugate Elam and Chaldea and to sack Babylon, laying waste to and largely destroying the city. Babylon was regarded as a sacred city by all Mesopotamians, including

5625-764: The Assyrians, and this act eventually resulted in Sennacherib's being murdered by his own sons while he was praying to the god Nisroch in Nineveh . Esarhaddon (681–669 BC) succeeded Sennacherib as ruler of the Assyrian Empire. He completely rebuilt Babylon and brought peace to the region. He conquered Egypt, Nubia and Libya and entrenched his mastery over the Persians, Medes, Parthians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Arameans, Israelites, Phoenicians, Canaanites, Urartians, Pontic Greeks, Cilicians, Phrygians, Lydians, Manneans and Arabs. For

5750-459: The Babylonians, Persians , Chaldeans, Medes , Elamites , Sultans, Arameans, Israelites , Arabs and Canaanites , together with some disaffected elements among the Assyrians themselves. After a bitter struggle lasting five years, the Assyrian king triumphed over his rebellious brother in 648 BC, Elam was utterly destroyed, and the Babylonians, Persians, Medes, Chaldeans, Arabs, and others were savagely punished. An Assyrian governor named Kandalanu

5875-410: The Chaldeans settled in on the Persian Gulf), Bet-Dakuri , Bet-Adini , Bet-Amukkani , and Bet-Shilani . Chaldean leaders had by this time already adopted Assyro-Babylonian names, religion, language, and customs, indicating that they had become Akkadianized to a great degree. The Chaldeans remained quietly ruled by the native Babylonians (who were in turn subjugated by their Assyrian relations) for

6000-426: The Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Elamites. He attacked and deposed Marduk-apla-adding II in 710 BC, also defeating his Elamite allies in the process. After defeat by the Assyrians, Merodach-Baladan fled to his protectors in Elam In 703, Merodach-Baladan very briefly regained the throne from a native Akkadian-Babylonian ruler Marduk-zakir-shumi II , who was a puppet of the new Assyrian king, Sennacherib (705–681 BC). He

6125-432: The Chaldeans, and later, also the southern Levant . One form of this once widespread Aramaic language was used in some books of the Hebrew Bible (the Book of Daniel and the Book of Ezra ). The use of the name "Chaldean" (Chaldaic, Chaldee) to describe it, first introduced by Jerome of Stridon (d. 420), became common in early Aramaic studies , but that misnomer was later corrected, when modern scholars concluded that

6250-560: The Earth's Core was one of Lovecraft's primary inspirations for "The Nameless City", citing "the reptile race, the tunnel to the interior of the earth, and the 'hidden world of eternal day'" as elements common to both tales. More generally, Fulwiler suggests, the theme of "alien races more powerful and more intelligent than man", which recurs frequently in Lovecraft's writings, may derive from Burroughs' Pellucidar stories. However, both writers drew on an already existing and vast literature of " lost city " stories and novels. The story contains

6375-428: The Egyptians from Canaan, Marduk-apla-iddina II (the Biblical Merodach-Baladan ) of Bit-Yâkin, allied himself with the powerful Elamite kingdom and the native Babylonians, briefly seizing control of Babylon between 721 and 710 BC. With the Scythians and Cimmerians vanquished, the Medes and Persians pledging loyalty, and the Egyptians defeated and ejected from southern Canaan, Sargon II was free at last to deal with

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6500-411: The Egyptians remained in the region an attempt to revive the Asian colonies of the ancient Egyptian Empire. Nebuchadnezzar II was to prove himself to be the greatest of the Chaldean rulers, rivaling another non-native ruler, the 18th century BC Amorite king Hammurabi , as the greatest king of Babylon. He was a patron of the cities and a spectacular builder, rebuilding all of Babylonia's major cities on

6625-466: The Euphrates, including all the area between Pelusium on the Nile and Babylon. This area was also called Arabia and not sharply distinguished from the peninsula. The Arabs and the Ottoman Empire considered the west of the Arabian Peninsula region where the Arabs lived 'the land of the Arabs' – Bilad al-'Arab ( Arabia ), and its major divisions were the bilad al-Sham ( Levant ), bilad al-Yaman ( Yemen ), and Bilad al-'Iraq ( Iraq ). The Ottomans used

6750-445: The Gulf Cooperation Council's mediation. He eventually handed power to Vice President Hadi, who was sworn in as President of Yemen on 25 February 2012. Hadi launched a national dialogue to address new constitutional, political and social issues. The Houthi movement , dissatisfied with the outcomes of the national dialogue, launched an offensive and stormed the Yemeni capital Sanaa on 21 September 2014. In response, Saudi Arabia launched

6875-412: The Israelites into captivity in Babylon . Egyptian and Babylonian armies fought each other for control of the Near East throughout much of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, and this encouraged king Zedekiah of Judah to revolt. After an eighteen-month siege, Jerusalem was captured in 587 BC, thousands of Jews were deported to Babylon, and Solomon's Temple was razed to the ground. Nebuchadnezzar successfully fought

7000-661: The Land of Chaldea". "Chaldea" came to be used in a wider sense, of Southern Mesopotamia in general, following the brief ascendancy of the Chaldeans during 608–557 BC. This is especially the case in the Hebrew Bible , which was substantially composed during this period (roughly corresponding to the period of Babylonian captivity ). The Book of Jeremiah makes frequent reference to the Chaldeans ( King James Version Chaldees following LXX Χαλδαίοι ; in Biblical Hebrew as Kasdîm כַּשְׂדִּים ). Book of Habakkuk 1:6 calls them "that bitter and hasty nation" ( הַגֹּוי הַמַּר וְהַנִּמְהָר ). Book of Isaiah 23:13 DRB states, “Behold

7125-416: The Middle East since around 25,000 years ago. These different Middle Eastern populations would later spread Basal Eurasian ancestry via the Neolithic Revolution to all of Western Eurasia. There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 106,000 to 130,000 years ago. The harsh climate historically prevented much settlement in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, apart from

7250-459: The Muslim world then shifted to the newly conquered territories. Nevertheless, Mecca and Medina remained the spiritually most important places in the Muslim world . The Qur'an requires every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it, as one of the five pillars of Islam , to make a pilgrimage, or Hajj , to Mecca during the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah at least once in his or her lifetime. The Masjid al-Haram (the Grand Mosque) in Mecca

7375-453: The Neo-Assyrian Empire. Shamash-shum-ukin (668–648 BC) had become infused with Babylonian nationalism after sixteen years peacefully subject to his brother, and despite being Assyrian himself, declared that the city of Babylon and not Nineveh or Assur should be the seat of the empire. In 652 BC, he raised a powerful coalition of peoples resentful of their subjugation to Assyria against his own brother Ashurbanipal . The alliance included

7500-403: The Saudi Arabian border and rallied popular support. The royalist side received support from Saudi Arabia, while the republicans were supported by Egypt and the Soviet Union. Both foreign irregular and conventional forces were also involved. The Egyptian President , Gamal Abdel Nasser , supported the republicans with as many as 70,000 troops. Despite several military moves and peace conferences,

7625-458: The Witch House " (1932), " The Thing on the Doorstep " (1933), and " The Shadow out of Time " (1934). In "The Nameless City", Alhazred is not yet identified as the author of the famous Necronomicon , but the "unexplained couplet" that Lovecraft attributes to him is later established as coming from that work. "The Nameless City" is an early example of Lovecraft's technique of mixing references from history, literature and his own fiction to create

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7750-399: The annals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III , who mentions invading the southeastern extremes of Babylonia and subjugating one Mushallim-Marduk , the chief of the Amukani tribe and overall leader of the Kaldu tribes, together with capturing the town of Baqani , extracting tribute from Adini , chief of the Bet-Dakkuri , another Chaldean tribe. Shalmaneser III had invaded Babylonia at

7875-461: The biblical land of Sheba ). From 106 AD to 630 AD northwestern Arabia was under the control of the Roman Empire , which renamed it Arabia Petraea . Central Arabia was the location of the Kingdom of Kinda in the 4th, 5th and early 6th centuries. Eastern Arabia was home to the Dilmun civilization . The earliest known events in Arabian history are migrations from the peninsula into neighbouring areas. The Arabian Peninsula has long been accepted as

8000-409: The biggest ongoing threat believed to be coastal construction activity altering the marine environment. The fertile soils of Yemen have encouraged settlement of almost all of the land from sea level up to the mountains at 10,000 feet (3,000 m). In the higher elevations, elaborate terraces have been constructed to facilitate grain, fruit, coffee, ginger and khat cultivation. The Arabian peninsula

8125-634: The center of the city rose the giant ziggurat called Etemenanki , "House of the Frontier Between Heaven and Earth," which lay next to the Temple of Marduk . He is also believed by many historians to have built The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (although others believe these gardens were built much earlier by an Assyrian king in Nineveh) for his wife, a Median princess from the green mountains, so that she would feel at home. A capable leader, Nebuchadnezzar II conducted successful military campaigns; cities like Tyre , Sidon and Damascus were subjugated. He also conducted numerous campaigns in Asia Minor against

8250-414: The chaos and anarchy gripping Assyria and Babylonia and seized the city of Babylon in 620 BC with the help of its native Babylonian inhabitants. Sin-shar-ishkun amassed a powerful army and marched into Babylon to regain control of the region. Nabopolassar was saved from likely destruction because yet another massive Assyrian rebellion broke out in Assyria proper, including the capital Nineveh, which forced

8375-445: The course of these rivers and averaging about 160 km (100 mi) in width. There were several kings of Chaldean origins who ruled Babylonia. From 626 BC to 539 BC, a ruling family referred to as the Chaldean dynasty , named after their possible Chaldean origin, ruled the kingdom at its height under the Neo-Babylonian Empire , although the final ruler of this empire, Nabonidus (556–539 BC) (and his son and regent Belshazzar )

8500-470: The delirious Image du Monde of Gautier de Metz . I repeated queer extracts, and muttered of Afrasiab and the daemons that floated with him down the Oxus ; later chanting over and over again a phrase from one of Lord Dunsany 's tales--"The unreverberate blackness of the abyss." The paragraph goes on to quote the Irish poet Thomas Moore . The Colossi of Memnon are also mentioned. Though Lovecraft counted "The Nameless City" among his favorite stories, it

8625-413: The early 9th century and late 7th century BC, mat Kaldi was the name of a small sporadically independent migrant-founded territory under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) in southeastern Babylonia, extending to the western shores of the Persian Gulf . The expression mat Bit Yâkin is also used, apparently synonymously. Bit Yâkin was the name of the largest and most powerful of

8750-435: The east) constituting only a quarter of people aged between 20 and 40. The eleven most populous cities on the Arabian Peninsula are: The rocks exposed vary systematically across Arabia, with the oldest rocks exposed in the Arabian-Nubian Shield near the Red Sea, overlain by earlier sediments that become younger towards the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the best-preserved ophiolite on Earth, the Semail Ophiolite , lies exposed in

8875-421: The eastern Al-Qassim Province , which would indicate that many prehistoric sites, located along a network of rivers, had once existed in the area. Acheulean tools found in Saffaqah, Riyadh Region reveal that hominins lived in the Arabian Peninsula around 188,000 years ago. Human habitation in Arabia may have occurred as early as 130,000 years ago. A fossilized Homo sapiens finger bone found at Al Wusta in

9000-542: The eastern, southern and northwestern borders of the peninsula. Broadly, the ranges can be grouped as follows: From the Hejaz southwards, the mountains show a steady increase in altitude westward as they get nearer to Yemen, and the highest peaks and ranges are all located in Yemen. The highest, Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb or Jabal Hadhur of the Haraz subrange of the Sarawat range, is 3,666 metres (12,028 ft) high. By comparison,

9125-427: The end of the reign of Ninurta-kudurri-usur II (a contemporary of Tiglath-Pileser II ) circa 940 BC, and the start of the reign of Marduk-zakir-shumi I in 855 BC, although there is no historical proof of their existence prior to the late 850s BC. For perhaps a century or so after settling in the area, these semi-nomadic migrant Chaldean tribes had no impact on the pages of history, seemingly remaining subjugated by

9250-572: The far southeastern portion of Babylonia, chiefly on the left bank of the Euphrates . Though for a short time the name commonly referred to the whole of southern Mesopotamia in Hebraic literature, this was a geographical and historical misnomer as Chaldea proper was in fact only the plain in the far southeast formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris , extending about 640 kilometres (400 mi) along

9375-535: The fate of the Assyrian empire, was sealed when he entered into an alliance with another of Assyria's former vassals, the Medes , the now dominant people of what was to become Persia. The Median Cyaxares had also recently taken advantage of the anarchy in the Assyrian Empire, while officially still a vassal of Assyria, he took the opportunity to meld the Iranian peoples ; the Medes , Persians , Sagartians and Parthians , into

9500-518: The first mention of Abdul Alhazred , a fictional authority on the occult who would later be mentioned in most of Lovecraft's major Cthulhu Mythos stories, including " The Hound " (1922), " The Festival " (1923), " The Call of Cthulhu " (1926), The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927), " The Dunwich Horror " (1928), " The Whisperer in Darkness " (1930) At the Mountains of Madness (1931), " The Dreams in

9625-483: The five tribes of the Chaldeans, or equivalently, their territory. The original extension of Bit Yâkin is not known precisely, but it extended from the lower Tigris into the Arabian Peninsula . Sargon II mentions it as extending as far as Dilmun or "sea-land" (littoral Eastern Arabia). "Chaldea" or mat Kaldi generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which at

9750-584: The land of the Chaldeans, there was not such a people, the Assyrians founded it: they have led away the strong ones thereof into captivity, they have destroyed the houses thereof, they have brought it to ruin.” Unlike the East Semitic Akkadian -speaking Akkadians , Assyrians and Babylonians , whose ancestors had been established in Mesopotamia since at least the 30th century BC, the Chaldeans were not

9875-457: The land once more fell completely under the yoke of the powerful Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), a ruler who introduced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of the empire. The Assyrian king at first made Nabonassar and his successor native Babylonian kings Nabu-nadin-zeri , Nabu-suma-ukin II and Nabu-mukin-zeri his subjects, but decided to rule Babylonia directly from 729 BC. He

10000-452: The land. The Chaldean rule proved short-lived. A native Babylonian king named Nabonassar (748–734 BC) defeated and overthrew the Chaldean usurpers in 748 BC, restored indigenous rule, and successfully stabilised Babylonia. The Chaldeans once more faded into obscurity for the next three decades. During this time both the Babylonians and the Chaldean and Aramean migrant groups who had settled in

10125-521: The modern era, the term bilad al-Yaman came to refer specifically to the southwestern parts of the peninsula. Arab geographers started to refer to the whole peninsula as 'jazirat al-Arab', or the peninsula of the Arabs. The railway was started in 1900 at the behest of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was built largely by the Turks , with German advice and support. A public subscription

10250-486: The modern state of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis absorbed the Emirate of Asir , with their expansion only ending in 1934 after a war with Yemen . Two Saudi states were formed and controlled much of Arabia before Ibn Saud was even born. Ibn Saud, however, established the third Saudi state. The second major development has been the discovery of vast reserves of oil in the 1930s. Its production brought great wealth to all countries of

10375-472: The mountains of the UAE and northern Oman. The peninsula consists of: Arabia has few lakes or permanent rivers. Most areas are drained by ephemeral watercourses called wadis , which are dry except during the rainy season. Plentiful ancient aquifers exist beneath much of the peninsula, however, and where this water surfaces, oases form (e.g. Al-Hasa and Qatif , two of the world's largest oases ) and permit agriculture, especially palm trees , which allowed

10500-486: The native Akkadian speaking kings of Babylon or by perhaps regionally influential Aramean tribes. The main players in southern Mesopotamia during this period were Babylonia and Assyria, together with Elam to the east and the Aramaeans , who had already settled in the region a century or so prior to the arrival of the Chaldeans. The very first written historical attestation of the existence of Chaldeans occurs in 852 BC, in

10625-436: The native population. The four smallest states (by area), with coastlines entirely bordering the Persian Gulf, showcase the world's most extreme population growth, nearly tripling every two decades. In 2014, the estimated population of the Arabian Peninsula was 77,983,936 (including expatriates). The Arabian Peninsula is known for having one of the most uneven adult sex ratios in the world, with females in some regions (especially

10750-591: The new powers of Babylon, Medes and Persians, having already been raided by the Scythians. The Chaldean king of Babylon now ruled all of southern Mesopotamia (Assyria in the north was ruled by the Medes), and the former Assyrian possessions of Aram ( Syria ), Phoenicia , Israel , Cyprus , Edom , Philistia , and parts of Arabia , while the Medes took control of the former Assyrian colonies in Ancient Iran , Asia Minor and

10875-462: The next 60 or so years, Babylon and Chaldea remained peacefully under direct Assyrian control. The Chaldeans remained subjugated and quiet during this period, and the next major revolt in Babylon against the Assyrian empire was fermented not by a Chaldean, Babylonian or Elamite, but by Shamash-shum-ukin , who was an Assyrian king of Babylon, and elder brother of Ashurbanipal (668–627 BC), the new ruler of

11000-405: The next seventy-two years, only coming to historical prominence for the first time in Babylonia in 780 BC, when a previously unknown Chaldean named Marduk-apla-usur usurped the throne from the native Babylonian king Marduk-bel-zeri (790–780 BC). The latter was a vassal of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV (783–773 BC), who was otherwise occupied quelling a civil war in Assyria at the time. This

11125-501: The original Urheimat of the Semitic languages by most scholars. The seventh century saw the rise of Islam as the peninsula's dominant religion. The Islamic prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca in about 570 and first began preaching in the city in 610, but migrated to Medina in 622. From there he and his companions united the tribes of Arabia under the banner of Islam and created

11250-597: The patriarch Abraham's journey to Canaan . Ancient Chaldeans originally spoke a West Semitic language similar to Old Aramaic . During the Neo-Assyrian Empire , Imperial Aramaic became the lingua franca of the empire under the rule of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in the mid-8th century BC. As a result, in late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian became marginalized, and Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, including among

11375-399: The peninsula to produce more dates than any other region in the world. In general, the climate is extremely hot and arid , although there are exceptions. Higher elevations are made temperate by their altitude, and the Arabian Sea coastline can receive cool, humid breezes in summer due to cold upwelling offshore. The peninsula has no thick forests. Desert-adapted wildlife is present throughout

11500-454: The process. A new Assyrian king, Ashur-uballit II (612–605 BC), took the crown amidst the house-to-house fighting in Nineveh, and refused a request to bow in vassalage to the rulers of the alliance. He managed to fight his way out of Nineveh and reach the northern Assyrian city of Harran , where he founded a new capital. Assyria resisted for another seven years until 605 BC, when the remnants of

11625-513: The region from the Levant between the 11th and 9th centuries BC. The earliest waves consisted of Suteans and Arameans , followed a century or so later by the Kaldu, a group who became known later as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. These migrations did not affect the powerful kingdom and empire of Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia , which repelled these incursions. These nomadic Chaldeans settled in

11750-612: The region, with the exception of Yemen. The North Yemen Civil War was fought in North Yemen between royalists of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and factions of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1962 to 1970. The war began with a coup d'état carried out by the republican leader, Abdullah as-Sallal , which dethroned the newly crowned Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. The Imam escaped to

11875-419: The region. A plateau more than 2,500 feet (760 m) high extends across much of the Arabian Peninsula. The plateau slopes eastwards from the massive, rifted escarpment along the coast of the Red Sea, to the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. The interior is characterized by cuestas and valleys, drained by a system of wadis . A crescent of sand and gravel deserts lies to the east. There are mountains at

12000-499: The region. At the same time, Egypt began encouraging and supporting the rebellion against Assyria in Israel and Canaan , forcing the Assyrians to send troops to deal with the Egyptians. These events allowed the Chaldeans to once more attempt to assert themselves. While the Assyrian king was otherwise occupied defending his Iranian colonies from the Scythians and Cimmerians and driving

12125-608: The regional relationships. Arabs living in one of the existing districts of the Arabian peninsula, the Emirate of Hejaz , asked for a British guarantee of independence. Their proposal included all Arab lands south of a line roughly corresponding to the northern frontiers of present-day Syria and Iraq. They envisioned a new Arab state, or confederation of states, adjoining the southern Arabian Peninsula. It would have comprised Cilicia – İskenderun and Mersin , Iraq with Kuwait, Syria, Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate , Jordan, and Palestine . In

12250-486: The request of its own king, Marduk-zakir-shumi I , who, being threatened by his own rebellious relations, together with powerful Aramean tribes pleaded with the more powerful Assyrian king for help. The subjugation of the Chaldean tribes by the Assyrian king appears to have been an aside, as they were not at that time a powerful force or a threat to the native Babylonian king. Important Kaldu tribes and their regions in southeastern Babylonia were Bit-Yâkin (the original area

12375-759: The ruling Ottoman Empire and creating a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen. During World War I, the Sharif Hussein entered into an alliance with the United Kingdom and France against the Ottomans in June 1916. These events were followed by the foundation of Saudi Arabia under King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud . In 1902, Ibn Saud had captured Riyadh . Continuing his conquests, Abdulaziz subdued Al-Hasa, Jabal Shammar , Hejaz between 1913 and 1926 founded

12500-569: The singular form of Kasdim (כַּשְׂדִּים), meaning Chaldeans. Kesed is identified as son of Abraham 's brother Nahor (and brother of Kemuel the father of Aram), residing in Aram Naharaim . Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 – c. 100) also links Arphaxad and Chaldaea, in his Antiquities of the Jews : "Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans." In the early period, between

12625-568: The sorely depleted state of Assyria, bitter fighting ensued. Throughout 614 BC the alliance of powers continued to make inroads into Assyria itself, although in 613 BC the Assyrians somehow rallied to score a number of counterattacking victories over the Medes-Persians, Babylonians-Chaldeans and Scythians-Cimmerians. This led to a coalition of forces ranged against it to unite and launch a massive combined attack in 612 BC, finally besieging and sacking Nineveh in late 612 BC, killing Sin-shar-ishkun in

12750-495: The story, a single paragraph mentions Lovecraft's fictional Arab poet, an actual 5th century philosopher , a writer from the Middle Ages , a legendary Persian king, and one of Lovecraft's favorite fantasy authors: In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab , paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius , and infamous lines from

12875-616: The term Arabistan in a broad sense for the region starting from Cilicia , where the Euphrates river makes its descent into Syria, through Palestine , and on through the remainder of the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas. The provinces of Arabia were: Al Tih, the Sinai peninsula, Hejaz, Asir, Yemen, Hadramaut, Mahra and Shilu, Oman, Hasa, Bahrain, Dahna, Nufud, the Hammad, which included the deserts of Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia. The Arabian Peninsula

13000-541: The thirty seven largest aquifers "have exceeded sustainability tipping points and are being depleted" and thirteen of them are "considered significantly distressed". Stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic age along with fossils of other animals discovered at Ti's al Ghadah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, might imply that hominins migrated through a "Green Arabia" between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago. 200,000-year-old stone tools were discovered at Shuaib Al-Adgham in

13125-401: The throne of the empire in 626 BC but was immediately engulfed in a torrent of fierce rebellions instigated by rival claimants. He was deposed in 623 BC by an Assyrian general ( turtanu ) named Sin-shumu-lishir (623–622 BC), who was also declared king of Babylon. Sin-shar-ishkun (622–612 BC), the brother of Ashur-etil-ilani, took back the throne of empire from Sin-shumu-lishir in 622 BC, but

13250-513: The time discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea. The tribal capital Dur Yâkin was the original seat of Marduk-Baladan . The king of Chaldea was also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia and Assyria were regularly styled simply king of Babylon or Assur , the capital city in each case. In the same way, what is now known as the Persian Gulf was sometimes called "the Sea of Bit Yakin", and sometimes "the Sea of

13375-414: The walls. The narrator notices a large amount of light coming from an unknown source. After crawling to it on his hands and knees, he sees a large brass door with a descent into a misty portal. He then hears moaning coming from the coffin passage, and feels a strong wind coming from the passage, trying to pull him down. Against all odds, he resists, and sees what appear to be reptiles with a body shaped like

13500-501: The war in Yemen as analogous to the United States ' role in the Vietnam War . In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces led to the 1990–91 Gulf War . Egypt, Qatar, Syria, and Saudi Arabia joined a multinational coalition that opposed Iraq. Displays of support for Iraq by Jordan and Palestine resulted in strained relations between many of the Arab states. After

13625-478: The war sank into a stalemate. Egypt's commitment to the war is considered to have been detrimental to its performance in the Six-Day War of June 1967, after which Nasser found it increasingly difficult to maintain his army's involvement and began to pull his forces out of Yemen. By 1970, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia recognized the republic and a truce was signed. Egyptian military historians refer to Egypt's role in

13750-635: The war, a so-called "Damascus Declaration" formalized an alliance for future joint Arab defensive actions between Egypt, Syria, and the GCC member states. The Arab Spring reached Yemen in January 2011. People of Yemen took to the street demonstrating against three decades of rule by President Ali Abdullah Saleh . The demonstration led to cracks in the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) and Saleh's Sanhani clan. Saleh used tactics of concession and violence to save his presidency. After numerous attempts, Saleh accepted

13875-510: The world's largest reserves of oil. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are economically the wealthiest in the region. Qatar, the only peninsular country in the Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is home to the Arabic-language television station Al Jazeera and its English-language subsidiary Al Jazeera English . Kuwait, on the border with Iraq, is an important country strategically, forming one of the main staging grounds for coalition forces mounting

14000-578: The world's largest, undestroyed and most pristine coral reefs. In addition, the organisms living in symbiosis with the Red Sea coral, the protozoa and zooxanthellae , have a unique hot weather adaptation to sudden rise (and fall) in sea water temperature. Hence, these coral reefs are not affected by coral bleaching caused by rise in temperature as elsewhere in the indopacific coral sea. The reefs are also unaffected by mass tourism and diving or other large scale human interference. The Persian gulf has suffered significant loss and degradation of coral reefs with

14125-476: Was a period of weakness in Babylonia, and its ineffectual native kings were unable to prevent new waves of semi-nomadic foreign peoples from invading and settling in the land. Though belonging to the same West Semitic speaking ethnic group and migrating from the same Levantine regions as the earlier arriving Aramaeans, they are to be differentiated; the Assyrian king Sennacherib , for example, carefully distinguishes them in his inscriptions. The Chaldeans were for

14250-596: Was a usurper of Assyrian ancestry. The name Chaldaea is a latinization of the Greek Khaldaía ( Χαλδαία ), a hellenization of Akkadian māt Kaldu or Kašdu , suggesting an underlying /kaɬdu/. The name appears in Hebrew in the Bible as Kaśdim ( כשדים ) and in Aramaic as Kaśdāy ( כשדי ). The Bible ( Book of Genesis 22:22) uses the name Kesed (כשׂד, ancient pronunciation /kaɬd/ ),

14375-474: Was followed by Shalmaneser V (727–722 BC), who also ruled Babylon in person. When Sargon II (722–705 BC) ascended the throne of the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V , he was forced to launch a major campaign in his subject states of Persia , Mannea and Media in Ancient Iran to defend his territories there. He defeated and drove out the Scythians and Cimmerians who had attacked Assyria's Persian and Median vassal colonies in

14500-567: Was headquartered in Syria , which included Palestine, the Transjordan region in addition to Lebanon ( Mount Lebanon was, however, a semi-autonomous mutasarrifate ). It was put in charge of Syria, Cilicia, Iraq, and the remainder of the Arabian Peninsula. The Ottomans never had any control over central Arabia, also known as the Najd region. The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as

14625-798: Was in turn inspired by the last line of Lord Dunsany 's story "The Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men", quoted in the story itself: "the unreverberate blackness of the abyss". Another identified source is the 9th Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica , whose description of " Irem , the City of Pillars" he copied into his commonplace book : "which yet, after the annihilation of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say, invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally, and at rare intervals, revealed to some heaven-favoured traveller." Critic William Fulwiler argues that Edgar Rice Burroughs ' At

14750-618: Was located in the marshy land of the far southeastern corner of Mesopotamia and briefly came to rule Babylon . The Hebrew Bible uses the term כשדים ( Kaśdim ) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Greek Old Testament , although there is some dispute as to whether Kasdim in fact means Chaldean or refers to the south Mesopotamian Kaldu . During a period of weakness in the East Semitic -speaking kingdom of Babylonia, new tribes of West Semitic -speaking migrants arrived in

14875-553: Was once more soundly defeated at Kish , and once again fled to Elam where he died in exile after one final failed attempt to raise a revolt against Assyria in 700 BC, this time not in Babylon, but in the Chaldean tribal land of Bit-Yâkin. A native Babylonian king named Bel-ibni (703–701 BC) was placed on the throne as a puppet of Assyria. The next challenge to Assyrian domination came from the Elamites in 694 BC, with Nergal-ushezib deposing and murdering Ashur-nadin-shumi (700–694 BC),

15000-650: Was opened throughout the Islamic world to fund the construction. The railway was to be a waqf , an inalienable religious endowment or charitable trust. The major developments of the early 20th century were the Arab Revolt during World War I and the subsequent collapse and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire . The Arab Revolt (1916–1918) was initiated by the Sherif Hussein ibn Ali with the aim of securing independence from

15125-775: Was rejected (following its original amateur appearance) by a variety of professional outlets, including Weird Tales (twice), Fantasy Magazine and possibly The Galleon . It was accepted by The Fantasy Fan , which folded before publishing it. It eventually appeared in the fall 1936 issue of Fanciful Tales , published by Donald A. Wollheim and Wilson Shepherd, and was reprinted in the November 1938 issue of Weird Tales after Lovecraft's death. Lin Carter described "The Nameless City" as "a trivial exercise in Poe -esque gothica", calling it "overwritten [and] over-dramatic". "[T]he mood of mounting horror

15250-457: Was then himself faced with unremitting rebellion against his rule by his own people. Continual conflict among the Assyrians led to a myriad of subject peoples, from Cyprus to Persia and The Caucasus to Egypt, quietly reasserting their independence and ceasing to pay tribute to Assyria. Nabopolassar , a previously obscure and unknown Chaldean chieftain, followed the opportunistic tactics laid down by previous Chaldean leaders to take advantage of

15375-460: Was then placed on the throne of Babylon to rule on behalf of Ashurbanipal. The next 22 years were peaceful, and neither the Babylonians nor Chaldeans posed a threat to the dominance of Ashurbanipal. However, after the death of the mighty Ashurbanipal (and Kandalanu) in 627 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire descended into a series of bitter internal dynastic civil wars that were to be the cause of its downfall. Ashur-etil-ilani (626–623 BC) ascended to

15500-451: Was to avenge a recent defeat by Byzantine (or Eastern Roman Empire ) forces, although he first had to put down a rebellion by Arab tribes in an episode known as the Ridda wars , or "Wars of Apostasy". On his death in 634, he was succeeded by Umar as caliph, followed by Uthman ibn al-Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib . The period of these first four caliphs is known as al-khulafā' ar-rāshidūn :

15625-527: Was to set a precedent for all future Chaldean aspirations on Babylon during the Neo-Assyrian Empire ; always too weak to confront a strong Assyria alone and directly, the Chaldeans awaited periods when Assyrian kings were distracted elsewhere in their vast empire, or engaged in internal conflicts, then, in alliance with other powers stronger than themselves (usually Elam ), they made a bid for control over Babylonia. Shalmaneser IV attacked and defeated Marduk-apla-user, retaking northern Babylonia and forcing on him

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