One region, twenty peoples

The Shared Timeline

Read separately, these are twenty histories. Read together, they are one story — of empires that made room, states that didn't, and communities that outlasted both. The coloured tags lead to the peoples each moment touched.

Before the common era

Deep roots

1. c. 2500 BCEMesopotamia and the Nile The deep ancestries begin: Assur rises on the Tigris, the pharaohs' Egypt flourishes, Amazigh peoples range across North Africa. The region's minorities will later trace their lines to these worlds.AssyriansCoptsAmazigh
2. 587 BCEThe Babylonian exile Jerusalem falls and Jews are carried to Babylon — the start of two and a half millennia of Jewish life in Mesopotamia. On Mount Gerizim, the Samaritans keep the older Israelite rite.JewsSamaritans
3. c. 600 BCEZoroaster's fire The teachings of Zarathustra become the faith of three Persian empires; fire temples burn from the Caucasus to Central Asia.Zoroastrians

1st–15th century

Faiths take shape

1. 1st–4th c.Christianity takes root Edessa and the Nineveh plains pray in Aramaic; Mark's church grows in Alexandria; in 301 Armenia becomes the first Christian state.AssyriansCoptsArmenians
2. 451The Council of Chalcedon A definition of Christ splits the churches: Copts, Armenians and Syriac Orthodox part ways with the imperial church and keep their own paths ever after.CoptsArmeniansAssyrians
3. 7th c.The Arab conquests Islam reorders the region. Jews, Christians, Mandaeans and (unevenly) Zoroastrians live on as protected but second-class dhimmi; Aramaic begins its long retreat; Zoroastrians withdraw toward Yazd; the Maronites consolidate in Mount Lebanon.JewsAssyriansMandaeansZoroastriansSamaritansCoptsMaronites
4. 969–1017Fatimid Cairo An Ismaili caliphate founds al-Azhar and rules from Egypt; at its height, the call that becomes the Druze faith goes out from Cairo.IsmailisDruze
5. 10th c.The Alawite synthesis Around al-Khasibi's school, the Alawite faith takes form; its followers later gather in the coastal mountains that bear their name.Alawites
6. 12th c.Sheikh Adi at Lalish A Sufi mystic settles in a Kurdish valley; his teaching fuses with far older tradition, and Yazidism assumes its classical form.Yazidis
7. 14th c.Sultan Sahak at Perdiwar In the Hawraman mountains, the Yarsan tradition is sealed — its hymns entrusted to the tanbur and to memory.Yarsan
8. 15th–16th c.Qizilbash and Safavids Red-capped Anatolian devotees rally to the Safavid cause; from their world the Alevis descend. The Ottoman–Safavid frontier hardens at Çaldıran (1514), and Turkmen settle along it.AlevisTurkmen
9. 1453 →The millet system The Ottomans grant confessional communities internal autonomy — courts, schools, patriarchs. Unequal but durable, it lets a mosaic winter five centuries.ArmeniansJewsAssyriansMaronitesCopts

1800–1914

The long nineteenth century

1. 1843–46Badr Khan's raids Kurdish emirs descend on the Assyrian tribes of Hakkari; some 10,000 are killed — a rehearsal, in hindsight, for darker decades.Assyrians
2. 1860Mount Lebanon and Damascus Druze–Maronite civil war kills thousands and shocks Europe into intervention; the mountain gets an autonomous, Christian-governed province — and its communities a long memory.DruzeMaronites
3. 1864The Circassian expulsion The Russian Empire's final Caucasus campaign kills and deports the Circassian nation across the Black Sea. Ottoman resettlement scatters the survivors; in 1878 they refound a village called Amman.Circassians
4. 1868Bahá'u'lláh reaches Akka The Bahá'í faith's founder arrives in Ottoman Palestine as a prisoner; the faith's world centre later rises on the slopes of Haifa.Baha'is
5. 1895–96The Hamidian massacres Pogroms across Anatolia kill as many as 200,000 Armenians and thousands of Assyrians — the empire's twilight turning lethal.ArmeniansAssyrians

1915–1990

Nation-states

1. 1915The year of the sword The Armenian Genocide and the Sayfo: up to a million and a half Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Syriac Christians are killed in the Ottoman collapse. The region's Christian heartlands never recover.ArmeniansAssyrians
2. 1923Lausanne defines 'minority' The new Turkey recognises only non-Muslims — Armenians, Greeks, Jews — as minorities. Kurds, Alevis and Syriacs are defined out of existence, a legal fiction with a century of consequences.KurdsAlevisAssyriansArmeniansJews
3. 1933Simele Iraq's army massacres Assyrian villagers in the state's first year of independence. Raphael Lemkin cites the killings as he coins a new word: genocide.Assyrians
4. 1941The Farhud A pogrom in Baghdad kills at least 180 Jews over two June days — the beginning of the end for the region's oldest diaspora.Jews
5. 1948–72Departure of the Jews Some 850,000 Jews leave or are driven from Arab lands within a generation. Communities of 2,600 years — Baghdad, Cairo, Aleppo — dwindle to caretakers of empty synagogues.Jews
6. 1962Syria's exceptional census A one-day census strips some 120,000 Syrian Kurds of citizenship; their statelessness is inherited for two generations.Kurds
7. 1970The Assads take power An Alawite air-force general seizes Syria; a marginalised mountain community is bound — willingly and not — to a dynasty's fate for half a century.Alawites
8. 1975–90Lebanon's civil war Every sect arms; a hundred thousand die. The Taif Agreement rebalances the confessional state but does not retire it.MaronitesDruzeArmenians
9. 1979Iran's revolution The Islamic Republic keeps reserved seats for Zoroastrians, Jews and Armenians — and strips the unrecognised Bahá'ís of schooling, work and, at times, life.ZoroastriansJewsArmeniansBaha'isMandaeans
10. 1988Anfal and Halabja Iraq's campaigns against the Kurds kill tens of thousands, gas Halabja, and raze Kaka'i and Assyrian villages in their path.KurdsYarsanAssyrians

1991–today

The present

1. 2003 →Iraq after the invasion Sectarian war empties Iraq's minority quarters: churches bombed, Mandaean silversmiths kidnapped, most of both communities gone within a decade. The 2005 constitution, at least, names them — with quota seats.AssyriansMandaeansYazidisShabakTurkmen
2. 2011Tamazight becomes official Morocco's new constitution makes Tamazight a state language — Algeria follows in 2016. A century of Amazigh cultural struggle enters the statute books.Amazigh
3. 2011 →Syria's war The uprising becomes a war that scatters every community: Maaloula shelled, Salamiyah besieged, Afrin overturned, minorities pressed between regime and insurgents.AssyriansAlawitesDruzeIsmailisKurdsArmenians
4. 2014Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains ISIS attempts the extermination of the Yazidis — killings, enslavement, the flight up the mountain — and drives Christians, Shabak, Kaka'i and Shia Turkmen from the plains. The UN calls it genocide.YazidisAssyriansShabakYarsanTurkmen
5. 2015Kurdistan recognises its minorities The Kurdistan Region's minority-rights law names Yazidis, Kaka'i, Zoroastrians and others — first legal recognition ever, for some.YazidisYarsanZoroastrians
6. 2021A pope at Ur Francis prays in Abraham's birthplace, meets Iraq's marja in Najaf, and fills the rebuilt church of Qaraqosh — a state visit to the mosaic itself.AssyriansYazidisMandaeans
7. 2024–25Syria after the Assads The dynasty falls in December 2024. Alawite coastal towns suffer mass killings in March 2025; Suwayda sees deadly clashes in July 2025; Kurds negotiate integration. Every minority is renegotiating its place in the new state.AlawitesDruzeKurdsIsmailisArmenians
8. TodayThe count continues The Samaritans pass nine hundred and grow. Neo-Aramaic is taught on phone apps. Sinjar rebuilds slowly; the diasporas keep the archives. The mosaic is smaller than a century ago — and still here.SamaritansAssyriansCircassiansMandaeansYazidis