Mesopotamia—the land between the rivers—is the Classical name for the ancient land that lies along the Tigris and Euphrates, ancient Assyria and Babylonia. Most of it is now within present-day Iraq, but it also includes parts of eastern Syria and small parts of Turkey and Iran; conversely, the modern state of Iraq includes areas that in antiquity were outside Mesopotamia. To the west lies the Syrian Desert, home in the past to seminomadic groups— Amorites, Aramaeans, and Arabs—and the foothills and mountains to the east held other tribal groups, including Guti and Lullubi. Beyond them the Iranian plateau nurtured city-states and empires: in the west Elam by the fourth millennium, and Media and Persia in the first, by turns enemies, friends, and trading partners of the Mesopotamians. Mountainous regions also set a northern limit to Mesopotamia, as the Zagros swung west to join the Taurus range: Here the kingdom of Urartu grew up in the first millennium B. C.E., with Mannai to its southeast in the northern Zagros. Further west lies Anatolia, where towns and cities eventually united into the great Hittite Empire. City-states and kingdoms also sprang up in the Levant; their inhabitants included the seafaring Phoenicians and their enterprising predecessors, and the peoples of the Bible. The region is today the scene of strife and hostility among states and would-be states; in antiquity it was no less turbulent, fought over by local states but also frequently a battleground between the empires of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt, and beyond them Iran and Europe. At their greatest extent, the empires of Mesopotamia ruled not only the Levant and all the lands between but also Egypt itself. The Persians added this entire region to their empire, which already controlled the lands from Thessaly to northern India; and Alexander the Great united these briefly with Greece and its dominions before the region was carved up by his successors.
World History
