Assyrian homelandThe Assyrian homeland, Assyria (Āṯōr or Bêth Nahrin) refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region.
KurdsKurds (کورد, Kurd) or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. There are exclaves of Kurds in Central Anatolia, Khorasan, and the Caucasus, as well as significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey (in particular Istanbul) and Western Europe (primarily in Germany). The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million.
TabrizTabriz (Persian: , tæbˈɾiːz; تبریز) is a city in the Central District of Tabriz County, East Azerbaijan province, in northwestern Iran. It is the sixth-most-populous city in Iran. Tabriz is in the Quru River valley in Iran's historic Azerbaijan region between long ridges of volcanic cones in the Sahand and Eynali mountains. Tabriz's elevation ranges between above sea level. The valley opens up into a plain that gently slopes down to the eastern shores of Lake Urmia, to the west.
CimmeriansThe Cimmerians were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, part of whom subsequently migrated into West Asia. Although the Cimmerians were culturally Scythian, they formed an ethnic unit separate from the Scythians proper, to whom the Cimmerians were related and who displaced and replaced the Cimmerians. The Cimmerians themselves left no written records, and most information about them is largely derived from Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century BC and later.
DiyarbakırDiyarbakır (diˈjaɾ.bakɯɾ; Տիգրանակերտ, local pronunciation: Dikranagerd; Amed; ܐܡܝܕ) is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province of southeastern Turkey. It is the second-largest city in the Southeastern Anatolia Region.
Old PersianOld Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian). Old Persian is close to both Avestan and the language of the Rig Veda, the oldest form of the Sanskrit language. All three languages are highly inflected. Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era (c.