The earliest contemporary mention of Christians in Mesopotamia is in the inscriptions of Kartēr, the chief Zoroastrian priest after the reign of Shāpūr I. He mentions both Christians and Nazareans, possibly two kinds of Christians, Greek-speaking and Syriac-speaking, or two sects. It is not known which groups are meant, but it is known that followers of the gnostic Christian leaders Bardesanes (Bar Daiṣān) and Marcion were active in Mesopotamia. By the 5th century the Church of the East dominated Mesopotamia, formally constituting itself in 410 at Ctesiphon. It simultaneously adopted the Nicene Creed, which had been formulated in the Roman Empire under the oversight of Emperor Constantine I, but by 424 it was asserting its autonomy from the Roman imperial church. A few years later the imperial church affirmed a dogmatic teaching that Mary was Theotokos (Greek: “birth-giver of God”). While the Church of the East was not directly involved in that debate, its theological tradition maintained a strict separation of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ, and, therefore, in its view, Mary could have given birth only to his human nature. The theological division between the two entities would prove decisively divisive. After about 485 the Sāsānian government was satisfied that the church in its domains was not loyal to Constantinople. The Church of the East thereafter received at least some support and recognition from the Sāsānian kings, whose divine right to rule was likewise pronounced by its bishops. Further persecutions were not state-inspired but rather prosecuted by the Zoroastrian clergy. At the end of the Sāsānian period, however, the Church of the East was fighting the miaphysites, now called Jacobites, more than the Zoroastrians. The Jacobites had established a network of monasteries, especially in northern Mesopotamia, introducing institutional competition with the Church of the East.
Ethnicity became less important than religious affiliation under the Sāsānians, who thus changed the social structure of Mesopotamia. The Arabs continued to grow in numbers, both as nomads and as settled folk, and Arabic became widely spoken. King Nuʿmān III of the Arab client kingdom of the Lakhmids of Al-Ḥīrah in southern Mesopotamia became a Christian in 580, but in 602 he was deposed by Khosrow II, who made the kingdom a province of the empire. This act removed a barrier against inroads by Arab tribesmen from the desert, and, after the union of Arabs in the peninsula under the banner of Islam, the fate of the Sāsānian empire was sealed. The Muslims, on the whole, were welcomed in Mesopotamia as deliverers from the foreign yoke of the Persians, but the conversion of the mass of the population to Islam did not proceed rapidly, mainly because of the well-organized Christian and Jewish communities. The arrival of Islam, of course, changed the history of Mesopotamia more than any other event in its history. Richard N. Frye
Citation Information
Article Title: History of Mesopotamia
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 05 August 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-Asia
Access Date: August 22, 2019
Additional Reading General works
The Cambridge Ancient History contains much relevant information, especially vol. 1–2, 3rd ed. (1970–75), vol. 3–4, 2nd ed. (1982–88), and vol. 6 (1927); they include lengthy and richly documented chapters covering Mesopotamian prehistory to the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the region. Chapters on Mesopotamia under the Seleucids, Parthians, and Sāsānians are included in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 (1983). Robert McC. Adams, The Land Behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains (1965); Nicholas Postgate, The First Empires (1977); Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, 2nd ed. (1980); Richard N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (1984); Seton Lloyd, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest, rev. ed (1984); and Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (1990), also provide broad coverage. I.M. Diakonov (ed.), Ancient Mesopotamia: Socio-Economic History, trans. from Russian (1969, reissued 1981), collects representative articles by Diakonov and others on Mesopotamian history, with emphasis on social and economic aspects. A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, rev. ed. completed by Erica Reiner (1977), includes some controversial views. Prehistory to the Old Babylonian period
A balanced picture of political, social, and economic history may be found in Jean Bottéro, Elena Cassin, and Jean Vercoutter (eds.), The Near East: The Early Civilizations (1968; originally published in German, 3 vol., 1965–67), with contributions on prehistory and protohistory, Akkad, Early Dynastic history, the 3rd dynasty of Ur, and the Old Babylonian period. Adam Falkenstein, The Sumerian Temple City, trans. from French (1974), is a very short work describing the Sumerian temple economy and its political implications. Dietz Otto Edzard, Die zweite Zwischenzeit Babyloniens (1957), offers details on the history of the Old Babylonian period from the 3rd dynasty of Ur to the end of Hammurabi. Mogen Trolle Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and Its Colonies (1976), is a standard work on the Old Assyrian trade colonies in Anatolia. Gernot Wilhelm, The Hurrians (1989; originally published in German, 1982), is the best book on the third cultural element in early Mesopotamian history. Fiorella Imparati, I Hurriti (1964), offers a short synopsis. Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (1987), includes a comprehensive bibliography for the early periods. Mesopotamia to the end of the Achaemenian period
Histories of Assyria and Babylonia include Wolfram Von Soden, Einführung in die Altorientalistik (1985); J.A. Brinkman, Prelude to Empire: Babylonian Society and Politics, 747–626 bc (1984); Stefan Zawadzki, The Fall of Assyria and Median-Babylonian Relations (1988); and H.W.F. Saggs, The Might That Was Assyria (1984, reprinted 1990), and The Greatness That Was Babylon: A Survey of the Ancient Civilization of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (1988). Joan Oates, Babylon, rev. ed. (1986), deals with history and civilization. Wolfram Von Soden, Herrscher im alten Orient (1954), examines Assyrian and Babylonian politics. Standard works, now partly out-of-date, include A.T. Olmstead, History of Assyria (1923, reprinted 1975); and Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2 vol. (1920–25). J.A. Brinkman, A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia, 1158–722 bc (1968), is an extensive special study, with complete documentation. Muhammad A. Dandamaev, Slavery in Babylonia: From Nabopolassar to Alexander the Great (626–331 bc), rev. ed. (1984; originally published in Russian, 1974), includes an extensive bibliography. Jacob Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, 5 vol. (1965–70), studies in detail the history of the Jews in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia from c. 320 bc to c. ad 620