Nineveh in the context of "Assyrian Homeland"

Dur-Sharrukin (Neo-Assyrian Akkadian: 𒂦𒈗𒁺, romanized: Dūr Šarru-kīn, "Fortress of Sargon"; Arabic: دور شروكين, Syriac: ܕܘܪ ܫܪܘ ܘܟܢ), present day Khorsabad, was the Assyrian capital in the time of Sargon II of Assyria. Khorsabad is a village in northern Iraq, 15 km northeast of Mosul. The great city was entirely built in the decade preceding 706 BC. After the unexpected death of Sargon in battle, the capital was shifted 20 km south to Nineveh.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus, North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean throughout much of the 9th to 7th centuries BC, becoming the largest empire in history up to that point. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire has been described as the first world empire in history. It influenced other empires of the ancient world culturally, administratively, and militarily, including the Neo-Babylonians, the Achaemenids, and the Seleucids. At its height, the empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over all of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as parts of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia.

The early Neo-Assyrian kings were chiefly concerned with restoring Assyrian control over much of northern Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia and Levant, since significant portions of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC) had been lost during the late 11th century BC. Under Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 BC), Assyria once more became the dominant power of the Near East, ruling the north undisputed. Ashurnasirpal's campaigns reached as far as the Mediterranean, and he oversaw the transfer of the imperial capital from the traditional city of Assur to the more centrally located Kalhu (later known as Calah in the Bible and Nimrud to the Medieval Arabs) The empire grew even more under Ashurnasirpal's successor Shalmaneser III (r. 859–824 BC), though it entered a period of stagnation after his death, referred to as the "age of the magnates". During this time, the chief wielders of political power were prominent generals and officials, and central control was unusually weak. This age came to an end with the rule of Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745–727 BC), who re-asserted Assyrian royal power and more than doubled the size of the empire through wide-ranging conquests. His most notable conquests were Babylonia in the south and large parts of the Levant. Under the Sargonid dynasty, which ruled from 722 BC to the fall of the empire, Assyria reached its apex. Under Sennacherib (r. 705–681 BC), the capital was transferred to Nineveh, and under Esarhaddon (r. 681–669 BC) the empire reached its largest extent through the conquest of Egypt. Despite being at the peak of its power, the empire experienced a swift and violent fall in the late 7th century BC, destroyed by a Babylonian uprising and an invasion by the Medes. The causes behind how Assyria could be destroyed so quickly continue to be debated among scholars.

Aššur, also known as Ashur and Qal'at Sherqat, was the capital of the Old Assyrian city-state (2025–1364 BC), the Middle Assyrian Empire (1363–912 BC), and for a time, of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC). The remains of the city lie on the western bank of the Tigris River, north of the confluence with its tributary, the Little Zab, in what is now Iraq, more precisely in the al-Shirqat District of the Saladin Governorate.

Occupation of the city itself continued for approximately 3,000 years, from the Early Dynastic Period to the mid-3rd century AD, when the city was sacked by the Sasanian Empire. The site is a World Heritage Site and was added to that organisation's list of sites in danger in 2003 as a result of a proposed dam, which would flood some of the site. It has been further threatened by the conflict that erupted following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Assur lies 65 kilometres (40 mi) south of the site of Nimrud and 100 km (60 mi) south of Nineveh.

The royal Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal is shown on a famous group of Assyrian palace reliefs from the North Palace of Nineveh that are now displayed in room 10a of the British Museum. They are widely regarded as "the supreme masterpieces of Assyrian art".

They show a formalized ritual "hunt" by King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669–631 BC) in an arena, where captured Asian lions were released from cages for the king to slaughter with arrows, spears, or his sword. They were made about 645–635 BC, and originally formed different sequences placed around the palace. They would probably originally have been painted, and formed part of a brightly coloured overall decor.

Mosul is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh—once the largest city in the world—on its east side.

Due to its strategic and central location, the city has traditionally served as a hub of international commerce and travel in the region. It is considered as one of the historically and culturally significant cities of the Arab world. The North Mesopotamian Arabic spoken in Mosul is known as Maslawi and is widely spoken in the region. Together with the Nineveh Plains, Mosul is a historical center of the Assyrians. The surrounding region is ethnically and religiously diverse; a large majority of the city is Arabs, with Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmens, Shabaks, and other minorities comprising the population. Sunni Islam is the largest religion but there are a sizeable number of Christians and Yazidis as well as adherents of other Muslim sects such as Twelver Shi'ism and Shabakism, and in the past, Iraqi Jews. Mosul and its surrounding region are significant in biblical history.

The Early Assyrian period was the earliest stage of Assyrian history, preceding the Old Assyrian period and covering the history of the city of Assur, tge surrounding area of Upper Mesopotamia and its people and culture, prior to the foundation of Assyria as an independent city-state under Ushpia c. 2086 BC. Very little material and textual evidence survives from this period. The earliest archaeological evidence at Assur dates to the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2600 BC, but the city may have been founded even earlier since the area had been inhabited for thousands of years prior and other nearby Assyrian cities, such as Nineveh and Arbela are significantly older.

The archaeological evidence suggests that Assur was originally inhabited by both Semites and Hurrians and was the site of a fertility cult devoted to the Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ishtar. The name "Assur" is not historically attested prior to the age of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC; it is possible that the city was originally named Baltil, used in later times to refer to its oldest portion. In tge centuries before the rise of the Akkadian Empire, the Semitic-speaking ancestors of the Assyrians, Akkadians and Babylonians settled in Assur and the surrounding area, either displacing or assimilating the original population. Founded in a both holy and strategic location, the city itself was gradually deified during the Early Assyrian period and eventually became personified as the god Ashur, firmly established as the Assyrian national deity by the time of Puzur-Ashur I in 2025 BC.

The post-imperial period was the final stage of ancient Assyrian history, covering the history of the Assyrian heartland from the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 609 BC to the final sack and destruction of Assur, Assyria's ancient religious capital, by the Sasanian Empire c. AD 240. There was no independent Assyrian state during this time, with Assur and other Assyrian cities instead falling under the control of the successive Median (615–549 BC), Neo-Babylonian (612–539 BC), Achaemenid (539–330 BC), Seleucid (312–c. 141 BC) and Parthian (c. 141 BC–AD 224) empires. The period was marked by the continuance of ancient Assyrian culture, traditions and religion, despite the lack of an Assyrian kingdom. The ancient Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language went extinct however, completely replaced by Aramaic by the 5th century BC.

During the fall of Assyria in the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire 626–609 BC, northern Mesopotamia was extensively sacked and destroyed by Median and Babylonian forces. The Babylonian kings, who annexed large parts of Assyria cared little for economically or socially developing the region and as such there was a dramatic decline in population density. Many of the greatest cities of the Neo-Assyrian period, such as Nineveh, were deserted and others, such as Assur, decreased dramatically in size and population. The region only began the process of recovery under the rule of the Achaemenid Empire. After his conquest of Babylon in 539, the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great returned the cult statue of the Assyrian national deity Ashur to Assur. The Achaemenid practice of not interfering with local cultures, and the organization of the Assyrian lands into a single province, Athura, allowed Assyrian culture to endure.

The Assyrian homeland or Assyria (Classical Syriac: ܐܬܘܪ, romanized: Āṯōr or Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, romanized: Bêṯ Nahrin) is the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in the Upper Mesopotamia of West Asia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region. The majority of Assyrians in Iran currently reside in the capital city, Tehran.

The Assyrians are indigenous Mesopotamians, descended from the Akkadians, Sumerians and Hurrians who developed independent civilisation in the city of Assur on the eastern border of northern Mesopotamia. The territory that would encompass the Assyrian homeland was divided through the centre by the Tigris River, with their indigenous Mesopotamia on the west and western margins of the Urmia Plains, which they occupied in 2000 BCE prior to the arrival of the modern Iranians, to the east. In modern times, Assyrians largely only recognise Assyrian towns and cities immediately neighbouring the Tigris to the east as their indigenous territory, in addition to Mesopotamia, with the homeland only expanding beyond the borders due to the major centres of Assyrian civilisation, such as the cities of Nineveh, Assur and Nimrud, being built on the banks of the Tigris itself.