Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 8

= December 8 =

Atrocities in northern Mesopotamia
Jehovah's Witnesses have published an article about the Assyrian Empire and made it available online at http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200000447. The section "Militarism" describes atrocities which it committed, and quotes from Volume I (pages 145, 147, 153, 162) of Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia by D. D. Luckenbill. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute has published that volume at https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/publications/misc/ancient-records-assyria-and-babylonia-volume-1-historical-records-assyria, from where it can be downloaded. After the end of the Assyrian Empire, has northern Mesopotamia, during most periods of history, been ruled by people associated with atrocious deeds of that sort? —Wavelength (talk) 20:43, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Mesopotamia_(Roman_province) and Asōristān have some relevant info. I'll leave it for you to decide how atrocious various deeds may have been. I wonder if the Principality_of_Antioch governed as benevolent and welcoming Christians? Assyrian_continuity may also provide some context, and History_of_the_Assyrian_people has a nice side bar that will let you check out the many different rulers/governing systems in the area. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:52, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The crusaders in Antioch understood that there were Greek, Armenian, and "Jacobite" Christians in their principality, but what they meant by "Jacobite" is not always clear. In any case, they generally left them alone, aside from disputes over primacy among the various patriarchs of Antioch. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:01, 9 December 2015 (UTC)


 * That region was ruled by the Mongols (specifically the Ilkhanate), and parts were later either ruled or raided by Timur. Both those regimes were prone to use extreme violence and brutality to enforce their rule, although I'm not sure how many specifically Assyrian tactics then employed.  (Timur was fond of building towers of heads).  Iapetus (talk) 09:16, 9 December 2015 (UTC)


 * We have a [rather splendid!] article Execution_by_elephant, which is just one type of what we'd label "atrocity" these days, with quite a bit of relevance to this question. --Dweller (talk) 12:22, 9 December 2015 (UTC)