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By A.I. Makki


  Mesopotamia, is Greek for ‘…between the rivers…’ and refers to the valley between the Euphrates and Tigris.  It lies approximately eight hundred miles Northeast of Egypt in the land of modern days Iraq. It has had many names: ‘ Land of Shinar’,’ Sumer’ or in Sumerian ‘ki-en-gir’ which translates as something like ‘land of the civilised lords’.  It formed a Kingdom 170 miles long and only 40 miles wide and had as its capital the fabled city of Babylon.

  The twin rivers, born in the mountainous lands of Asia Minor, created a stretch of green land still widely known as the “Fertile Crescent.”  It was perfect spot for agriculture with water and sun in abundance supplementing the wondrously fertile silt deposited by the rivers.  It yielded enormous quantities of grain and dates and made an ideal place to breed cattle.  The clay from the river was an ideal material for making bricks and, later, fine enamelled pottery.

  It is then no wonder that the settlers here created a society widely held to be the first to qualify as a ‘Civilisation’.

  Sumer, Akkadia, Babylon and Assyria make full items on their own in the history.

  The Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Assyrians and others, Semitic and non-Semitic alike, were remarkable people living in remarkable times.  They were the first people known to have used wheeled vehicles for transport and warfare. The first true city states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what is now Syria and Palestine, starting in the 4th millennium BCE.

  They invented and developed arithmetic. Their sexagesimal (using a mix of base 6 and 10) system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia. Using the sexagesimal system they evolved the clock with its 60 seconds, 60 minutes, and 12 hours, and the 12 month calendar which is still in use.

  They probably invented military formations as we now know them and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry and archers.

  They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. 

  Several centuries after their invention of cuneiform, the practice of writing expanded beyond the simple trading records it was used for originally and was applied for the first time about 2600 BC to written messages and mail delivery, history, legends, mathematics, astronomical records and other pursuits generally corresponding to the fields occupying teachers and students ever since. And so it led to the establishment of the first formal schools under the control of the primary temple of one of the dozen or so City-states that made up the country.

  The history of the Mesopotamian region as a whole is filled with names we all learned at school – names that seem somehow redolent of myth and fable as much as of history.

  Sargon of Akkad was one of history’s great monarchs though what is reported of his early life and rise to power owes as much to myth as to history.  What is undeniable is that around 2300BCE he created and ran an Empire reaching from Elam on the Mediterranean coast to the South of Modern Iraq and East past Persia and into Anatolia. 

  Hammurabi the Lawgiver was the sixth King of Babylon. He conquered Sumer and Akkad, ending the last Sumerian dynasty of Isin and became the first king of the Babylonian Empire which he reigned over from 1792 BCE until his death in 1750 BCE.

  He is perhaps best known for promulgating his code of laws, known as the Code of Hammurabi which was a major stepping stone on the road to modern ideas of civilisation. The idea of "innocent until proven guilty", so central to Western concepts of justice, comes straight from the laws he imposed.

  Sennacherib (705 BCE–681 BCE), son of Sargon II concentrated on building and beautifying the City of Nineveh in the mountains. He made it his capital meticulously laid-out and complete with statues, parks and avenues along with other works of art. He assured the water supply to the citizens of using a mechanical device that sucked up the underground water and stored it in a vast underground reservoir. The story of his failure to take Jerusalem and his subsequent downfall is told in the Bible and in Lord Byron's poem. The Destruction of Sennacherib with its famous quote "The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold..."

  Assurbanipal or, in Akkadian, A_ur-b_ni_apli, reigned 660 BCE – 625 BCE or thereabouts. The grandson of Sennacherib was the last great king of ancient Assyria and is famous as one of the few kings in antiquity who could himself read and write. He proved that he was a great builder like his grandfather and secured for himself a place in history as a Lawgiver with a complete code of history. He became the last great king to rule Nineveh before it collapsed during the 7th century BCE.

  The Chaldean, Nebuchadnazzar (604-561 BCE), extended his conquests over the kingdom of Judah and destroyed the famous Temple of Solomon and led the surviving Jews into captivity to Babylon.

  But he was a wise and able ruler who maintained an iron grip over the affairs of the empire under his rule. He brought prosperity to the region not known since Hammurabi’s time. He rebuilt the city of Babylon and constructed the Hanging Gardens for his homesick Persian consort who missed the green hills of her own land. This wonderful garden was immortalized by Greek scholars as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The Chaldeans encouraged education and learning and the pursuit of science. These sciences would eventually form the basis of scientific development in Greek and Roman times.

  This then was the legacy of the people of the region to us today. Science, technology, art, politics, civics, law, military and social planning; all this can be traced back to the Sumerians and their successors.

  The Sumerians themselves placed a great importance on cultivating their land, by building canals and embankments to increase their agricultural output. They had organized their trade into a complex system of economics life and had created systems which closely resembled modern banking. They were the first to invent an Alphabet which they initially used to record business transactions. This is the alphabet known to us as Cuneiform (wedge shaped) after the shapes made by sharp instruments on baked pieces of clay.

  The Akkadians who came after them relied heavily on their army and military strength for gaining power. They introduced new systems of weapons and warfare which were unknown to the Sumerians.

  The Amorites paid great attention to the welfare of their people and under the rule of Hammurabi gave the Mesopotamians a comprehensive system of by which they could govern themselves. Nearly 300 pieces of these laws are still retained by the governments of the modern world intact in their constitutions. His rule gave a boost to agriculture, trade and industry. He connected the cities of his kingdoms with proper roads and provided security for his citizens by policing these highways with the help of his army which enhanced peace and prosperity in the Empire.

  Many of the Mesopotamian rulers were great patrons of art, architecture, learning, education and science.

  Schools were found all over the Empire for children who had to master the use of the Sumerian alphabet from an early age. They preserved all their records and history by inscribing it with sharp instruments on baked pieces of clay.

  The Assyrians under Assurbanipal had built up a great library of arts and sciences to encourage learning among scholars. They constructed magnificent buildings, stepped pyramid temples (ziggurats) and palaces. They embellished them with sophisticated works of art and encouraged architecture as a major branch of learning.

  Sumerian fabrics were famous all over the known world at that time and they traded extensively in it. They developed a woollen textile industry which helped the people to live in winter seasons comfortably and kept them warm in the cold climate. Jewellery making and pottery designs were developed into a highly sophisticated art, beautifully coloured and enamelled.

  They also developed a formal system of weights and measures. They did their counting by sixties – not by tens as it is done today – and it was from the Sumerians that modern civilisations inherited the system of calculating their time of minutes and seconds in sixties.

  They developed an accurate lunar calendar with an additional month every eleven years to conform to the solar calendar. Women enjoyed exceptional rights during the time of Hammurabi. They had a right to property and freedom of education. They were free to practice the profession of their choice. Artisans used their services for making copper and silver utensils. They worked in the textile industry. Most remarkably for the time women were free to trade on their own across land, river, and sea routes which took them sometimes as far as India.

  Trade was done by barter system where they exchanged goods for precious metals like gold and silver. Women often helped the merchants by acting as scribes.

  They also had the right of inheritance, marriage and divorce. This freedom declined after Hammurabi’s time and eventually women were pushed into the background losing so much of the independence and equality shown in his time.

  Their social lives were divided into a strict religious hierarchy. The upper classes were the priests, high officials and rich merchants. The middle classes were made up of artisans, shop owners, farmers and freemen. In the lowest class were the slaves. Slavery was an established institution, although slaves also enjoyed certain rights, like owning property or marrying into the family of freemen, under the benevolent rule of Hammurabi. But even the Laws of Hammurabi were partial towards the upper classes and were severe while dealing with those belonging to the lower classes. Heavy penalties were imposed on the slaves when they disobeyed their masters.

  Early Sumerian records give us stories that are familiar to us today.They tell us, for example, of a pious man named Ziusudra who built an ark and saved his family and himself from the Wrath of God, an account that is preserved in other ancient religious texts including the Bible, where he is described as Noah and the Holy Qur’an also confirms that the Prophet Nuh was indeed a true and mighty Messenger of God sent to warn those who had taken to the worship of their ancestors.

  These ancient texts tell us also the story of the Abraham and the cruelties he suffered in Ur under Nimrod, King of Babylon. We also have accounts of the friendship of David with the Assyrian King Tiglath Pilser I.

  But throughout Mesopotamia people worshiped many gods. They would erect ziggurats in their honour. These had great terraced towers of seven stories, rather like a modern skyscrapers, on the top story of which stood the shrine of their favourite God.  The lower levels meanwhile were used by rich merchants in the priestly class to trade in goods.

  The Land Between the Rivers really was the cradle of civilisation as we know it.  We see their legacy around us every day and we live it in our daily lives.  The first traces of the monotheism that ultimately gave life to Islam and the teachings of Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) can be found 6000 years ago and felt just as strongly today.

   

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