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The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State (IS), and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh, is a Salafi jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam.<br/><br/> The group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and many individual countries. ISIL is widely known for its videos of beheadings of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, and its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has charged the group with ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in northern Iraq.
Nineveh (Akkadian: Ninua) is an ancient Mesopotamian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.<br/><br/> It was the largest city in the world for some fifty years until, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria itself, it was sacked by an unusual coalition of former subject peoples, the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians in 612 BCE. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq.<br/><br/> In early 2015 the jihadist group ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) announced their intention to destroy the walls of Nineveh if the Iraqis try to liberate the city, they also threatened to destroy artifacts. On February 26 they destroyed several items and statues in the Mosul Museum, and are believed to have plundered others to sell overseas. The items were mostly from the Assyrian exhibit, which ISIL declared blasphemous and idolatrous.
Ferghana horses were one of China's earliest major imports, originating in an area in Central Asia.<br/><br/> Dayuan, north of Bactria, was a nation centered in the Ferghana Valley of present-day Central Asia, and even as early as the Han Dynasty, China projected its military power to that area.<br/><br/> The Han imperial regime required Ferghana horses and imported such great numbers of them that the rulers of Ferghana closed their borders to such trade. That move resulted in a war that China won. In 102 CE, the Chinese required of the defeated Ferghana that they provide at least 10 of their finest horses for breeding purposes, and 3,000 Ferghana horses of ordinary quality.