Early Mesopotamian and Islamic Civilizations

Mesopotamia was home to some of humanity’s earliest great civilizations, including the Chaldeans, whose King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BCE and sent the Jews into the Babylonian Captivity. The religious practices of these early empires included pantheons of gods and local cults devoted to individual deities. Rulers frequently held both political and religious authority. Rule by foreigners began in the 5th century BCE, leaving the area with a diverse cultural heritage from the Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, and Sassanids. When Muslim Arabs invaded Mesopotamia in 634 CE, they quickly routed Sassanid forces. Formative events in Islam’s development took place in Iraq when Ali, the fourth caliph and the Prophet’s nephew, was murdered at Kufah in 661, and his son Husayn was defeated by Umayyad forces at Karbala in 680. The burial places of the two remain important pilgrimage sites for Shi’a Muslims. During the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), Baghdad was the center of Islamic power and civilization. The Sunni Abbasid caliphs gradually lost power to Turkic invaders, first the Buwayhids and then the Seljuks, who maintained the caliphate for the legitimacy it gave them. Baghdad, Basra, and other centers declined in influence after the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, and Baghdad was decimated under another sack in 1401 by Tamerlane. Iraq was then caught between the two great powers on either side of it: the Shi’a Safavids and the Sunni Ottomans fought a series of conflicts over Iraq’s holy sites and Baghdad until the region ultimately came under Ottoman control in the 17th century.