Assyria

   A region of ancient Mesopotamia that became the heartland of a series of Assyrian empires. Assyria was located in the region now occupied by northern Iraq, near the Tigris River. It stretched northward toward the foothills of the mountains of Armenia and eastward over the Jezirah plateau and Upper and Lower Zab rivers, tributaries of the Tigris. In ancient times most of the land in this region was a good deal more fertile than it is today. Consequently, in the late Stone Age (ca. 60003000 b.c.) Assyria was densely inhabited by farmers and herders. However, in the third millennium b.c., while urban centers were rising across Sumeria in the southwest, Assyria remained mostly rural. The area was absorbed into the Akkadian Empire in the 2300s b.c. But Assyria rose from near obscurity in the nineteenth century B.c. under an Amorite leader named Shamshi-Adad I, who established the first Assyrian Empire. After the collapse of the last Assyrian realm in the late 600s b.c., the region of Assyria faded back into obscurity and came under the control of a succession of outside powers, among them the Medes, Persians, Seleucid Greeks, Parthians, Sassanians, and Arabs.

   See also: Assyrian Empire; Babylonia; Medes