Curated category
Former countries in West Asia
- Safavid IranSafavid Iran was born from a Sufi dervish order in the city of Ardabil, and within a single generation it became one of the largest empires the Islamic world…
- Republic of MahabadIn late August 1941, Allied forces invaded Iran and the Soviet Union took control of the northern region. The absence of a central government in Tehran…
- Mandate for Syria and the LebanonThe Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was born on the 29th of September 1923, when France was formally assigned control over a vast stretch of the eastern…
- PhoeniciaThe Phoenicians left behind thousands of inscriptions scattered from Cyprus to Morocco, yet for centuries they were called a lost civilization.
- Roman RepublicThe Roman Republic began with an act of violence and ended with one. In 509 BC, according to Roman tradition, a noblewoman named Lucretia was raped by Sextus…
- Kingdom of JerusalemThe Kingdom of Jerusalem was born on a specific summer day: the 15th of July, 1099, when Crusader armies stormed the holy city after a weeks-long siege.
- Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire never called itself Byzantine. Its citizens used the term Roman Empire and called themselves Romans, in Greek Romaioi.
- Mandatory PalestineIn 1920, the British Empire took control of a territory that had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. The League of Nations officially…
- Roman SyriaRoman Syria began its life not as a conquest but as a disposal. In 64 BCE, Pompey the Great had the last Seleucid king, Antiochus XIII Asiaticus, executed…
- ColchisColchis, the ancient Georgian polity that Greek poets called a land of gold, sits at the eastern edge of the Black Sea in what is now western Georgia.
- Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet RepublicThe Russian Empire dissolved in 1918, leaving the Caucasus provinces to form their own Transcaucasian Federation. This new state lasted only two months…
- Soviet UnionOn the 26th of December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule.
- Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was one of the most expansive and enduring political structures the ancient world produced, stretching from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked…