The Legacy of Urartu: A Highland Civilization

The Urartu civilization, also known as the Kingdom of Van, rose to prominence around the 9th century BCE in the Armenian Highlands, encompassing parts of modern eastern Turkey, Armenia, and northwestern Iran. Positioned strategically around Lake Van, Urartu emerged as a formidable power and direct rival to Assyria. The kingdom was especially noted for its military fortifications, advanced metallurgy, and pioneering hydraulic engineering. Extensive irrigation systems, including canals built by King Menua, remain functional today, a testament to their enduring craftsmanship.

Urartians spoke a language linked to Hurrian and employed a modified Assyrian cuneiform script for inscriptions. These texts—often etched onto stone stelae—highlight royal conquests, construction achievements, and religious offerings. Their capital, Tushpa (modern-day Van), displayed complex urban planning, including citadels, granaries, and temples built with sophisticated stone masonry techniques.

Urartian religion was polytheistic, centered on the warrior god Haldi, often depicted standing on a lion. Haldi’s cult was supported by a well-organized priesthood and temple economy. Other deities included Teisheba (storm god) and Shivini (sun god). Rituals, offerings, and temple architecture reveal a religious system that paralleled, yet remained distinct from, neighboring Mesopotamian practices.

The kingdom began to decline in the early 6th century BCE, likely due to invasions by the Medes and Scythians and internal instability. Eventually, Urartu was absorbed into the Achaemenid Persian Empire, but its cultural imprint persisted.

Modern archaeology—particularly excavations at Erebuni, Karmir Blur, and Van Fortress—continues to reveal the depth of Urartian influence. Their innovations in architecture, statecraft, and water management helped shape the development of later Armenian and Anatolian societies. Today, Urartu is recognized not just as a lost kingdom, but as a foundational culture of the ancient Near East.
The Legacy of Urartu: A Highland Civilization

History of Kurdish people

The name Kurd can be dated with certainty to the time of the tribes’ conversion to Islam in the 7th century AD. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, and among them are many who practice Sufism and other mystical sects.

Before Islam, the majority of Kurds followed a western Iranic pre-Zoroastrian faith which derived directly from Indo-Iranian tradition, some elements of this faith survived in Yezidism, Yarsanism and Kurdish Alevism.

Kurds lost their lands when the Ottoman Empire took over most Kurdish-held territory in the 1500s. Kurds were mostly nomadic until the end of World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.

Kurds have never achieved nation-state status, making Kurdistan a non-governmental region and one of the largest stateless nations in the world.

The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement divides the Middle East into British and French zones of influence and delineates the borders of the modern Middle East. After World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.

Such hopes were dashed three years later, however, when the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries of modern Turkey, made no provision for a Kurdish state. Since then, the Kurds have made multiple attempts to set up their own state, but their efforts have been in vain.

Kurds make up about 10% of the population in Syria, 19% of the population of Turkey, 15-20% of the population of Iraq and are one of the largest ethnic minorities in Iran.
History of Kurdish people

Khwarezmian Empire

The Khwarezmian Empire was a Turkic-speaking, Muslim Persian dynasty that rule Central Asia and present-day Iran between the 11th and 13th centuries.

It founder was Anush Tegin Gharchai, a former slave of the Seljuk sultans, who was appointed the governor of Khwarezm in 1077.

This empire picked up many of the pieces left by the demise of the Seljuk Empire, uniting most of Persia under the rule Ala al-Din Muhammad, the man with Turkic ancestry but raised in Persian court culture.

Ala al-Din Muhammad took over the throne of the Khwarezmian Empire in 1200. Ala al-Din Muhammad was the son of a slave who had first gained his freedom and then became viceroy of a small province called Khwarezm, in present day Uzbekistan. He extended Khwarezm’s territories far to the south.

The Khwarezmian Empire reached its highest point in 1212, when Khwarezmshah conquered its former rulers, the Kara Khitai Khaganate.

In 1218, Genghis Khan decides to invade the Khwarezmian Empire. The Mongol force consists of four main armies invading form the northeast under Genghis Kahn and his sons, Juji, Jagatai and Ogodei as well as a small force under Chepe from Kara-Khitai.
Khwarezmian Empire

The ancient Cimmerians

The Cimmerians were nomadic herdsmen, apparently unacquainted with the horse as a mount, and distinguished for their archery. Its earliest name ‘Cimmeria’ or the ‘land of Cimmerians’ known in the second millennium BC referred to the steppe part of the peninsula stretching eastward as far as the Sea of Azov.

It was said that Cimmerians mixed with Tumulus-Urnfield fusion when they raided through Asia Minor and south to Egypt between BC 15th and 12th centuries.

About 720 BC the Cimmerians were driven out of Europe across the Caucasus Mountains into Asia.  Cimmerians were dislodge form their homeland by incoming Scythians who fought from their horses using bows and arrows as well as swords.

From the south in the year 714 BC, they constituted the Assyrian forces in the Mannaeans fortress along the border.

By the end of the 8th century BC the influx of Cimmerians was felt in all the peripheral states north and east of the Fertile Crescent.

After being defeated by the Assyrians under Sargon II, they headed westward into Asia Minor, where in 696-695 BC they conquered the Phrygians led by King Midas, who reportedly committed suicides after defeat.

Cimmerians then settled into a nomadic life in western Turkey until they were joined by Thracian warriors from Europe. By 626 BC the Cimmerian-Thracian warriors were destroyed by a combined force of Assyrians and Scythians.

The name Crimea, identifying a peninsula extending into the Baltic Sea is derived from the name of Cimmerians.
The ancient Cimmerians

Lydian empire

The Lydians were an ancient people of the Anatolian Peninsula. The Lydians may have migrated from north Africa at an early stage in their history.

They then have emerged for the Luwian-speaking peoples who widespread in western and central Anatolia at the time of the Hittite Empire.

After the collapse of the Hittite Empire, the Lydians regained their independence and gradually became strong.

They established a kingdom centered on the city of Sardis (45 miles inland from the modern Turkish city of Izmir) around 1200 BC.

Izmir was the site of the oldest human settlements in the Mediterranean world, going back to 4000 BC or even earlier.

Lydia had excellent trade routes to the east and west and had its own reserves of gold and silver.

According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to invent coinage.

Lydia was renowned for its wealth in ancient Persian and Greek literature, and King Croesus has passed into legend as a figure of unparalleled wealth.

In 546 BC Lydia fell under the expanding power of Persia, which was reaching for the Aegean.

Lydia was then made a province of the Medo-Persian Empire and never recovered its independence.

Under Persian rule, Lydia remained an important province until it was conquered by Alexander the Great.
Lydian empire