CIV Final MIDDLE EAST

First City State created in Mesopotamia: Sumer

5000 BCE

It's a multi-ethnic city-state with a tolerance for different people and cultures unlike anything seen at this time! Located between the Tigris and the Euphrates gives this land the name of "Mesopotamia," translated to "the land between two rivers."
Pictured: "Sumerian Vessel." One of the first pieces we studied in ART 111, a carved vessel thought to depict the hierarchy in place in Sumer.

Hammurabi Rules and Makes Some Rules

1792 BCE

Hammurabi was a Sumerian who focused on strengthening bureaucracy when he gained power in 1792 BCE. He's most well known for his "eye for an eye" laws within the Code of Hammurabi, but a lot of his rules were based heavily structured around gender and class. These huge stele stones were placed within every marketplace, so nobody could claim ignorance of the law as an excuse. They were incredibly strict and promoted order much like the Legalist policies in China.
Pictured: detail shot of a Stele.

Alexander Swings By and Remixes Persian Culture

331 BCE

In 331, Alexander and his forces wreck the Persians at Gaugamela. Alexander didn't linger though, he chased down King Darius, ended him, and then quickly moved on from Persia entirely. Alex wasn't interested in conquering the Persians, he wanted to blend the cultures of those he conquered with his Grecian one. He instated one of his own guys in their government, and then moved on further East. This begins the Seleucid Dynasty!
Pictured: Art from the Achaemenid Dynasty, the one that got ousted.

Seleucids are out, Parthians are in!

247 BCE

The Parthian people were a very brutal warrior culture, and they chased out the Seleucids, stressing a need to return to Achaemenid values like the 52 satrap and regular taxation. They originated from the Turkish steppe like a lot of conquerors through history!
Pictured: A funerary relief made during Parthian rule. The text by the family's faces details who is who in Aramaic. The women wear veils and the men have short-cut hair, which is good cause the artist can only sculpt one face.

Diocletian Splits the Roman Empire

284

By reintroducing the concept of co-consuls to both East and West Rome, Diocletian created a tetrarchy, which worked for a while! But ultimately, his bureaucratic attempt wouldn't be able to save West Rome. He died of natural causes years later, after successfully growing pumpkins (some sources say cabbages) and having little parades for the biggest crop he could produce.
Pictured: a meme I made about Diocletian and his pumpkin farm. I really adore that part of the whole, messy story.

Justinian Takes* the Throne

527

*Takes as in, his adoptive father died and now he must rule Byzantium, not as in he stormed the gates and "took the city."
By this point in Justinian's history, he wasn't the great ruler of Byzantium that we remember him today as. Really, by this point, he had begun some public works and had changed some laws around, but he hadn't entirely come into his own yet.
Pictured: Mosaic of Justinian I and his attendants. It's in a chapel in Italy, across from a mosaic of his queen, Theodora.

The Nika Revolt

532

In Byzantium, especially in Constantinople, horse races meant a lot more than just who won & lost betting money. They often had political ties based on teams, and in 532, the Greens thought the Whites won because Justinian liked the Whites and started a wildly violent revolt. This trapped Justinian in his palace as the rioters closed in, and though he wanted to catch a boat and flee, Theodora demanded that he step up to the mantle of Emperor. He ended up crushing the rebels.
Pictured: Queen Theo

Hagia Sophia is So-phinished: A Marvel in Architecture

537

During the Nika Revolts the original structure was damaged; Justinian demanded it demolished, and he reconstructed the whole basilica from scratch. This iteration of the Hagia Sophia is the same structure that we see standing today, although it's gone through many, many repurposings.
Here is a study on what the Hagia Sophia would have sounded like when people sang in it.
Pic: detail of inside

Gabriel Appears to Muhammad

610

According to Islamic gospel, in the year 610, the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad as he prayed in a cave and demanded he recite the word of God, which would later be written down and understood to be the Qur'an. Technically, Islam as a religion wouldn't start until the creation of the first mosque.
Pictured: A cutaway drawing of the Dome of the Rock.

Muhammad and his followers flee from Mecca to Medina in a flight known as the "hijira."

622

The hijira is one of the most important dates in Islam, and marks year 0 on the Islamic calendar. It's in Medina where Islam really takes off, and it's here that the community expands dramatically!

C R U S A D E S

Period: 1095 to 1492

Oh, the crusades. Technically, there were a few Crusades to the Middle East, but in order to present the amount of tumultuous war that ravaged the area, I chose to lump them all in one long timespan.
This was an effort by the Latin church to "take back" the holy lands of Jerusalem, which at this point was being controlled by the Islamic empire. Much like long bouts of war throughout history: Lots of people died, and things were generally gross, abhorrent, and terrible.

Byzantium Falls

1453

A new wave of Turks, the Seljuk, have come migrating and this time, they brought cannons to break down the capital city's defenses. Sad to see the Byzantines go, but all empires fall. And lasting a thousand years past the fall of West Rome is nothing to sneeze at!
Pictured: A fresco painted in the Late Byzantine era, titled "Anastasis." It depicts Jesus linking the lands of the living and dead, ushering people to heaven.