Church of the EastThe Church of the East ( ʿĒḏtā d-Maḏenḥā) or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church or the Nestorian Church, was an Eastern Christian church of the East Syriac Rite, based in Mesopotamia. It was one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries, alongside the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Chalcedonian Church.
SayfoThe Sayfo or the Seyfo (sword), also known as the Assyrian genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I. The Assyrians were divided into mutually antagonistic churches, including the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Before World War I, they lived in mountainous and remote areas of the Ottoman Empire (some of which were effectively stateless).
Fertile CrescentThe Fertile Crescent (الهلال الخصيب, הסהר הפורה) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of Turkey and the western portion of Iran. Some authors also include Cyprus and Northern Egypt. The Fertile Crescent is believed to be the very first region where settled farming emerged as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation to grow newly domesticated plants as crops.
TikritTikrit (تِكْرِيت Tikrīt ˈtɪkriːt) is a city in Iraq, located northwest of Baghdad and southeast of Mosul on the Tigris River. It is the administrative center of the Saladin Governorate. , it had a population of approximately 160,000. Originally a fort during the Assyrian empire, Tikrit became the birthplace of Muslim military leader Saladin. It was the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and the city from where a significant portion of those he appointed to government roles originated during the time of Ba'athist Iraq until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
ElamElam (ˈiːləm; Linear Elamite: hatamti; Cuneiform Elamite: ; Sumerian: ; Akkadian: ; עֵילָם ʿēlām; 𐎢𐎺𐎩 hūja) was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The modern name Elam stems from the Sumerian transliteration elam(a), along with the later Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite haltamti. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the Ancient Near East.
RefugeeA refugee, conventionally speaking, is a person who has lost the protection of their country of origin and who cannot or is unwilling to return there due to well-founded fear of persecution. Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum.
YazidisYazidis or Yezidis (jəˈzi:di:z; ئێزیدی) are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous religious group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok. There is a disagreement among scholars and in Yazidi circles on whether the Yazidi people are a distinct ethnoreligious group or a religious sub-group of the Kurds, an Iranic ethnic group.
Ancient historyAncient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BC - AD 500. The three-age system periodizes ancient history into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, with recorded history generally considered to begin with the Bronze Age.
KültepeKültepe (Turkish: ash-hill), also known as Kanesh or Nesha, is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey, inhabited from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, in the Early Bronze Age. The nearest modern city to Kültepe is Kayseri, about 20km southwest. It consisted of an Upper city, and a lower city, where an Assyrian kārum, trading colony, was found. Its ancient names are recorded in Assyrian and Hittite sources.
AleppoAleppo (ʌˈlɛpoʊ; حَلَب / ALA-LC: , ˈħalab) is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous governorate of Syria. With an estimated population of 2,098,000 residents it is Syria's largest city and also one of the largest cities in the Levant region. Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; it may have been inhabited since the sixth millennium BC. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied by Amorites by the latter part of the third millennium BC.
