The City Assur and the Land of Assyria

After the collapse of the Ur III state,^[193] its former imperial provinces reverted to the political landscape of city-states and tribal groups tied into networks of changing political alliances that they had been prior to the imperial conquest.

This included the city-state of Assur, located on the northern fringes of the empire at an important crossing of the Tigris River. The city established a prolific long-distance trade in raw metal and luxury textiles. Wealth flowed into a society controlled by an elite of investors and financiers, and a ruling dynasty acted as religious figureheads and chairmen of a bicameral parliament controlled by wealthy traders. After almost two centuries during which the city maintained its parliamentary constitution and neutrality as a port of trade, Assur was conquered in 1808 bce by the warlord Samsi- Adad I and incorporated into his short-lived empire.^[194] A few centuries later Assur fell to the Syrian-based empire of Mitanni, perhaps to become a client kingdom with its own dynastic line. Its strategic position and proactive trading policy seem to have continued to secure it a status as a commercial hub, but historical sources for the period between 1750-1360 bce are few. The weakening of Mitanni during the fourteenth century bce and the expansion of the Babylonian and Hittite states led to changes in governance and economic structures in Assur.^[195] Mitanni became caught up in a war of succession and Assur reclaimed its independence to begin a process of rapid territorial expansion and transformation to a “Land of Assur.”^[196]

The resulting state in some sense represents the second culmination of the imperial drive in Mesopotamia by expanding its borders beyond the standards set by the Akkadian kings a millennium before.^[197] Assyria ruled as an empire for over three- quarters of a millennium and was able to act on a wider scale than any state before it.

It became a prototype for transnational imperialism, royal ideology, and court culture, establishing a model that would reach beyond its own history and the geographical area in which it had evolved. Through alternating periods of expansion and contraction it extended its hegemony to the edge of the urban world. Its rulers refined policies of territoriality and authority, adapting to past experience and existing challenges.

During the early phase of empire, ca. 1360-1080 bce, that is commonly known as the Middle-Assyrian period, the empire rose to power with provinces extending across northern Iraq and Syria.^[198] The era is characterized by a dismantling of the city-state and the consolidation of an expansive territorial empire. It is unclear exactly how the process of political centralization occurred. The popular assembly in Assur apparently continued to rule in local matters for another millennium,^[199] but on a larger scale the city-state had to be dissolved for the empire to function. There are indications that trade continued to play an important role in political life, and that the important families, which came to constitute the landed gentry of the empire, were to some extent descendants of the commercial elite that had started the trade centuries earlier.^[200]

The later or “Neo-Assyrian” phase of the state, ca. 883-609 bce, traditionally refers to a second era of rapid expansion, which culminated in the formation of a universal empire that brought together the Near East from Egypt to Iran under a single ruler. Internal restructuring transfigured Assyria from a system of isolated administrative focal points toward a state of territorial integration.^[201] In between were years of weakness and partial collapse, but dates are conventional and mainly refer to deteriorating conditions of elite political structures and the complex urban economy. A distinctive state and identity existed throughout the 15 centuries of recorded Assyrian history, ca.

2100—600 bce,^[202] and the modern chronological partition into “Middle” and “Neo-Assyrian” conceals what was internally perceived as a historical continuum. At least since 1350 bce Assyria was an empire ruled by a single dynasty that held the city of Assur as its religious and ideological center.

The Assyrian fusion of royal and priestly power was different from the tradition in Babylonia, where kingship was separated from the religious institutions during the second millennium bce. Particular to the first centuries of the Assyrian Empire was a tendency to restructure or demolish local political institutions in newly conquered areas and insert a local ruling class of ethnic Assyrians. With the growth of the universal state in the ninth century bce this practice was abandoned and the Assyrian imperial elite became inclusive, multicultural, and multiethnic. Assyrianized nobility from subordinate states could work their way into the imperial elite by openly emphasizing their commitment to the ruler.^[203] This process was tied to a gradual transfer of power from a hereditary landed aristocracy to a nobility whose position was personal, based on royal appointment, and dependent upon individual loyalty.^[204]

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Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

The City Assur and the Land of Assyria

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