the name of a country and empire of Asia, Boun—the capital of which was Nineveh. The boundaries of the daries, country have been variously given by Greek and Roman historians. In its strictest and most original sense, it was applied to a long narrow district lying on the east side of the Tigris, and which is commonly called Assyria Proper. In a more extended sense, it comprehended the whole country watered by the Euphrates and Tigris, between the mountains of Armenia on the north, those of Kurdistan on the east, and the Arabian desert on the west; thus including not only Assyria Proper, but also Mesopotamia and Babylonia. It was also applied to the empire, the boundaries and extent of which varied with the character of its monarchs.

Assyria Proper was bounded on the north by Armenia, on the west and south-west by the Tigris, which separated it from Mesopotamia and Babylonia, on the south-east by Susiana, and on the east by the Zagros chain, separating it from Media. It corresponded to the modern pashalic of Mosul, including the plains below the Kurdistan and Persian mountains.

The upper part of this region is rugged and mountainous; while to the south and south-west extend vast level plains, interspersed with low ridges of hills of sandstone, limestone, and gypsum. According to Mr Ainsworth,—"Assyria, including Taurus, is distinguished into three districts; by its structure, into a district of plutonic and metamorphic rocks, a district of sedimentary formations, and a district of alluvial deposits; by configuration, into a district of mountains, a district of stony and sandy plains, and a district of low watery plains; by natural productions, into a country of forests and fruit trees, of olives, wine, corn, and pasture, or of barren rocks; a country of mulberry, cotton, maize, tobacco, or of barren clay, sand, pebbly or rocky plains; and into a country of date trees, rice, and pasture, or a land of saline plants." In the mountainous parts, iron, silver, copper, lead, and antimony, are found, and in the hills to the south-west are deposits of bitumen, naphtha, sulphur, and salt. Among the forest trees, pines, oaks, and ashes are common, as are also the walnut, mulberry, and plane; the last of which attains a great size. Besides the productions above enumerated, it yields gall-nuts, gum-arabic, mastich, manna, madder, castor-oil, and various kinds of grain, pulse, and fruit. In the mountain district, are bears (black and brown), panthers, lynxes, wolves, foxes, marmots, dormice, fallow and red deer, roebucks, antelopes, goats, &c.; and in the plains are found lions, tigers, hyenas, beavers, jerboas, wild boars, camels, &c. Bees are plentiful, producing honey of the finest quality.

The two principal rivers which water this country, besides Rivers the Tigris, are its tributaries, the Great and Little Zab, both rising in the lofty mountains of Northern Kurdistan. The Great Zab rises in the elevated plateau between Lakes Van and Urumiyah, 7000 feet above the sea, and falls into the Tigris, after a winding course of 200 miles. The lesser Zab has several sources, the principal of which are about 20 miles south of Lake Urumiyah, and has a course of about 100 miles. The rivers Great and Little Zab divide this territory into three parts; that north of the Great Zab, called Aturia, was the most ancient seat of the monarchy, and contained Nineveh the capital; the part between the two Zabs was called Adiabene, and the part south-east of Assyria, the Little Zab contained the provinces of Apollonia and Sittacene. According to Ptolemy, Assyria was divided into six provinces, the most northern of which was Arrapachitis; south of it Calakine; then Adiabene, with Arbela to the north-east; while to the south lay Apollonia and Sittacene, mentioned above.

The labours of Messrs Layard, Rawlinson, Botta, and others, promise to throw much light upon the history and manners of the ancient inhabitants of this country. We shall, however, defer notice of their researches till we come to the article Nineveh, in the expectation that, by that time, much additional light will be thrown upon this interesting subject, and shall, in the meantime, only give a short historical notice of the empire, founded principally on the sacred narrative; as, indeed, the accounts given by profane writers are so contradictory, and so mixed up with fables, that very little reliance can be placed upon them.

Being in the vicinity of Ararat, this district was early peopled after the Flood. From the word Ashur being used in Hebrew both as the name of Shem's second son, and for the country of Assyria, ambiguity has arisen as to the founder of this empire. In Genesis x. 11, the sacred historian, in speaking of Nimrod and his kingdom, adds—"Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh," or it may be translated as in the margin, "Out of that land he (i.e. Nimrod) went out into Assyria, and builded Nineveh." For reasons which it would be foreign to our present purpose to narrate, the latter reading is generally considered to be the more correct, and Nimrod is regarded as the founder of the Assyrian empire. For several centuries after this, Scripture is silent respecting the history of this country. In the days of Abraham, Chedorlaomer, a king of Elam, is mentioned (Gen. xiv.) as having, along with three other kings, invaded the territory of five petty princes of Palestine. These four kings, according to Josephus, were only commanders in the army of the Assyrian king, who had their dominion over Asia. In the time of the Judges, the Israelites became subject to a king of Mesopotamia, Chuscan-rishathaim, who is by Josephus styled King of the Assyrians.

According to the Greek historians, the founder of the Assyrian empire was Ninus, who is represented as having conquered Babylon, Media, Egypt, and other countries. He was succeeded by his widow Semiramis, who must not, however, be confounded with another queen of that name who reigned some centuries later. She was succeeded, after a long and glorious reign, by her son, Ninias, who, however, preferred luxurious ease and indulgence to martial glory. His example was followed by a long line of successors. In the reign of Teutanes, one of these, the Trojan war broke out. Troy was then, according to Ctesias and other Greek writers, subject to the king of Assyria. This, however, seems very doubtful, as neither Homer nor Herodotus make any allusion to it. Of this degenerate race, Sardanapalus, the last of the dynasty, was the most effeminate and voluptuous. His feeble administration prompted Arbaces, the governor of Media, to revolt, a measure in which he was encouraged by the advice and assistance of Belesys, a Chaldean priest, who persuaded the Babylonians also to assert their independence. These provinces, aided by the Persians and other allies, attacked the Assyrians, defeated their army, and took the capital after a siege of two years. The king, to prevent his falling into the hands of his enemies, collected all his treasures, his wives, and concubines, within the palace, which he then set on fire, and thus perished.

After the death of Sardanapalus, the Assyrian empire was divided into three kingdoms, namely, the Median, Assyrian, and Babylonian. Arbaces retained the supreme power in Media, and nominated governors in Assyria and Babylon, who were honoured with the title of kings, while they remained subject and tributary to the Median monarchs.

The first king of Assyria alluded to in Scripture is he who reigned at Nineveh when the prophet Jonah was sent thither. Hales supposes him to have been the father of Pul, the first Assyrian monarch whose name is mentioned in Scripture, and dates the commencement of his reign B.C. 821. By that time the metropolis of the empire had become a magnificent and populous city; but one pre-eminent in wickedness. Pul invaded the land of Israel during the reign of Menahem, and obliged that king to purchase peace at the price of 1000 talents of silver (2 Kings xv. 19, 20). According to Newton, this event took place in the year 770 B.C. Hales agrees with Newton in supposing that Pul's death his dominions were divided between his two sons, Tiglath-pileser and Nabonassar,—the latter ruling at Babylon, and giving name to the "era of Nabonassar," which took its rise in his reign, B.C. 747. In the sixth year of the reign of Tiglath-pileser, Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel, came up against Ahaz, and besieged him in Jerusalem. Ahaz thereupon sent messengers, with a large present to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, requesting his assistance. The Assyrian king accordingly invaded the territories of the confederate kings, annexed a portion of them to his own dominions, and carried captive a number of their subjects. In the year B.C. 729, he was succeeded by Shalmaneser, or Ennecesar. He made Hoshea, king of Israel, his tributary vassal, but finding him secretly negotiating with So or Sobaco, king of Egypt, he laid siege to the Israelitish capital, Samaria, and took it after an investment of three years (B.C. 719). He then reduced the country of the ten tribes to a province of his empire, carried into captivity the king and people, and settled Cuthaeans from Babylonia in their room. Hezekiah, king of Judah, seems to have been for some time his vassal. We learn from Josephus, on the authority of the Tyrian annals, that he subdued the whole of Phoenicia with the exception of Tyre, which successfully resisted a siege of five years, and was at length relieved by his death in B.C. 715. Sargon, mentioned in Isaiah (xx. 1) as being king of Assyria, in whose reign Tartan, elsewhere mentioned as a general of Sennacherib, besieged and took Ashdod in Philistia, is by some supposed to be Shalmaneser or Esarhaddon, Sennacherib's successor; but Gesenius is probably more correct in thinking that he was a king of Assyria who succeeded Shalmaneser, and reigned only for two or three years.

The result of Tartan's expedition against Egypt and Ethiopia was predicted by Isaiah, while that general was yet on the Egyptian frontier at Ashdod. In the reign of Sennacherib, Hezekiah king of Judah threw off the Assyrian yoke, and allied himself with Egypt. This brought against him Sennacherib with a mighty host, who attacked and subdued the fenced cities of Judah, and compelled him to purchase peace with 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. But notwithstanding this agreement, the king of Assyria was not long in returning to invest Jerusalem. By the divine interposition, however, a pestilence destroyed in one night the Assyrian army. Sennacherib himself fled to Nineveh, where he was slain by his sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, about B.C. 709. The partriarchs fled to Armenia, and a third son, Esarhaddon, the Sacherdon or Sarchedon of Tobit, and the Asaradinus of Ptolemy's canon, ascended the throne. The earlier part of his reign seems to have been employed in subduing the provinces that had revolted against him. He settled colonists in Samaria; and it seems to have been in his reign that the captains of the Assyrian host invaded Judah, and carried Manasseh the king captive to Babylon, which appears to have been at that time the capital of the Assyrian empire. The subsequent history of the empire is involved in much obscurity. The Medes had already shaken off the yoke, and the Chaldeans soon appear on the scene as the dominant nation of Western Asia; yet Assyria, though... much reduced in extent, existed as an independent state for a considerable period after Esarhaddon. Hales, following Syncellus, gives as his successor a prince called Ninus (n.c. 667), who was succeeded (n.c. 658) by Nebuchodonosor, for the transactions of whose reign Hales relies on the apocryphal book of Judith, the authority of which, however, is very questionable. The last monarch was Sarruc, (called also Saradanapalus,) in whose reign Cyaxares king of Media, and Nabopolassar viceroy of Babylon, besieged and took Nineveh, (B.C. 606). What remained of the empire was divided between the two victorious powers, and Assyria Proper became a province of Media.

The greater part of the country which formed Assyria Proper is now under the nominal sway of the Turks, who compose a considerable proportion of the population of the towns and larger villages, filling nearly all public offices, and differing in nothing from other Osmanli. The pasha of Mosul is nominated by the Porte, but is subject to the pasha of Baghdad; there is also a pasha at Solymaneah and Akra; a bey at Arbil, a mussulim at Kirkook, &c. But the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, and of the whole mountain-tract that here divides Turkey from Persia, are the Kurds, the Carduchii of the Greeks; from them a chain of these mountains was anciently called the Carduchian or Gordyean, and from them the country is now designated Kurdistan. Klaproth, in his Asia Polyglotta, derives the name from the Persian root kurd, i.e., strong, brave. They are still, as of old, a barbarous and warlike race, occasionally yielding a formal allegiance, on the west, to the Turks, and, on the east, to the Persians, but never wholly subdued; indeed, some of the more powerful tribes, such as the Hakkary, have maintained an entire independence. Some of them are stationary in villages, while others roam far and wide, beyond the limits of their own country, as nomadic shepherds; but they are all more or less addicted to predatory habits, and are regarded with great dread by their more peaceful neighbours. They profess the faith of Islam, and are of the Soonee sect. See Nineveh.