World's Earliest Civilization, Documentary on the World's First Civilizations in Iraq

King Jehu of Israel bows before Shalmaneser III of Assyria, 825 BC

Present day Iraq, known in classical antiquity as Mesopotamia, was home to the oldest civilizations in the world, with a cultural history of over 10,000 years, hence its common epithet, the Cradle of Civilization. Mesopotamia, as part of the larger Fertile Crescent, was a significant part of the Ancient Near East throughout the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Arabs have been the majority of Iraq's population since Sassanid times.[6] Iraq was ruled by the indigenous empires, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian and also by foreign empires; Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian empires during the Iron Age and Classical Antiquity, before Iraq was conquered by the Muslim Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, and became a center of the Islamic Golden Age during the medieval Abbasid Caliphate. After a series of invasions and conquest by the Mongols and Turks, Iraq fell under Ottoman rule in the 16th century, intermittently falling under Iranian Safavid and Mamluk control.

Credits: Wikipedia