Mesopotamia between past and present

After the death of Alexander the Great, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart that resulted in the formation of a number of states ruled by his surviving generals and formed the Arsacid Dynasty.
However, wars with Rome and the Nomads, and the fighting among the Parthian nobility had weakened the Arsacids and the empire broke and vanquished by the Persian Sassanids, and Parthia folded into a newly formed province Khorasan.

In the 7th Century AD, the Sassanid Empire was conquered by the Muslim Armies under the famous Arab military leader Khalid Ibn Al Waleed.
Consequently Mesopotamia was reunited under the Arabs, but governed by two provinces: Northern Mosul and Southern Baghdad. Later under the Abbasid Dynasty,

Baghdad became the capital of the Arab Empire until the sack of Baghdad 1258 by the Mongolian leader Hulagu Khan who left Baghdad with 1 million person dead, and the city was totally burnt including the House of Wisdom and all its libraries.
He used the invaluable books to make a passage across the Tigris River.

This year marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age.

Later the Ottoman Turks took over Baghdad and Mesopotamia was ruled as three separate territories: Mosul, Baghdad and Basra which is a territory included Kuwait.

At the end of WWI, Mesopotamia was occupied by the British Army who under the authority of the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, set up the government of Syria and Iraq under one Hashemite ruler.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, in 1920, the nation-state of Iraq was formed with its present days borders. Kuwait was a British protectorate, granted its independence from Britain in 1961.
Today we see further attempts to divide the region again into demographic lands. to reshuffle history at present, and prepare it for a certain future.

This ends a brief outlook of Mesopotamia and will try to dig more in the past of this region to see why it reached this mess and confusion in the present days

Sami Cherkaoui