Nineveh — where Jonah preached — was the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, which fell to the Medes in 612 BC.

And still others support the idea that the " book of vision " was written shortly before the fall of Nineveh at the hands of the Medes and Babylonians ( 612 BCE ).

Nineveh was a city of vast extent, and was then the center of the civilization and commerce of the world, a " bloody city all full of lies and robbery " ( Nahum 3: 1 ), for it had robbed and plundered all the neighboring nations.

" This is very symbolic showing that Nineveh was known for being a city full of prostitutes.

Jonah had already uttered his message of warning, and Nahum was followed by Zephaniah, who also predicted ( Zephaniah 2: 4-15 ) the destruction of the city, predictions which were remarkably fulfilled ( 625 BC ) when Nineveh was destroyed apparently by fire, and the Assyrian empire came to an end, an event which changed the face of Asia.

The collection was dramatically enlarged by the excavations of A. H. Layard at the Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh between 1845 and 1851.

Layard's work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam and in 1852 – 1854 he went on to discover the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh with many magnificent reliefs, including the famous Royal Lion Hunt scenes.

However, yet another massive rebellion broke out in the capital Nineveh, and the king was forced to turn back in order to quell the revolt.

Muhammad asked Addas where he was from and the servant replied Nineveh.

The earliest known key-based lock was built during the Assyrian Empire in Khorsabad near Nineveh about 704 BC.

Nineveh (; Akkadian: Ninwe ; ; Nīnewē ; Nineuē ; ; Naynuwa ; Nainavā ) was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Nineveh was one of the oldest and greatest cities in antiquity.

The historic Nineveh is mentioned about 1800 BC as a centre of worship of Ishtar, whose cult was responsible for the city's early importance.

It was Sennacherib who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city ( c. 700 BC ).

From about 616 BC, in a coalition with the Scythians and Cimmerians, they besieged Nineveh, sacking the town in 612 BC, after which it was razed to the ground.

The city is mentioned again in the Battle of Nineveh in 627 AD, which was fought between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia near the ancient city.

Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (); and ostensibly was the home of King Sennacherib, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah and the prophetic career of Isaiah.

According to scripture, Nineveh was also the place where Sennacherib died at the hands of his two sons, who then fled to the land of ` rrt Urartu.

Some works were carried out outside Kouyunjik, for instance on the mound of Nebi Yunus, which was the ancient arsenal of Nineveh, or along the outside walls.

A large battle was fought against the Babylonian rebels at Nippur, their king was captured and in turn taken to Nineveh.

A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world with entire suites of rooms panelled in alabaster bas-reliefs from highly important sites between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris and include the biblical cities of Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad.

Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk, Nippur, Nineveh, Assur and Babylon, as well as major territorial states such as the city of Ma-asesblu, the Akkadian kingdom, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the various Assyrian empires.

He was sent by the British Museum to Assyria, where he conducted important investigations, especially at Nineveh.

The rebellious brother, according to Shamshi-Adad's own inscriptions, succeeded in bringing to his side 27 important cities, including Nineveh.

The next two centuries, which are in many ways a continuation of the golden age, sees important Syriac poets and theologians: Jacob of Serugh, Narsai, Philoxenus of Mabbog, Babai the Great, Isaac of Nineveh and Jacob of Edessa.

" The prophet Jonah shows us where God shows concern for the people of Nineveh, while Nahum ’ s writing testifies to his belief in the righteousness / justice of God and how God dealt with those Assyrians in punishment according to " their cruelty " ( Nahum 3: 19 ).

When Babrius set down fables from the Aesopica in verse for a Hellenistic Prince " Alexander ," he expressly stated at the head of Book II that this type of " myth " that Aesop had introduced to the " sons of the Hellenes " had been an invention of " Syrians " from the time of " Ninos " ( personifying Nineveh to Greeks ) and Belos (" ruler ").

Ordered by God to go to the city of Nineveh to prophesy against it " for their great wickedness is come up before me ," Jonah seeks instead to flee from " the presence of the Lord " by going to Jaffa and sailing to Tarshish, which, geographically, is in the opposite direction.

" After Jonah walked for a day across Nineveh, the people of Nineveh began to believe his word and proclaimed a fast.

According to a recent hypothesis, the Archimedes screw may have been used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, although mainstream scholarship holds it to be a Greek invention of later times.

Texts from the Hellenistic period and later offered an eponymous Ninus as the founder of Nineveh, although there is no historical basis for this.

The Assyrian city of Nineveh became one of Mitanni's vassals for nearly a century until the mid 14th century BC, when the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I reclaimed it in 1365 BC while overthrowing the Mitanni Empire.

Nineveh had to wait for the Neo Assyrian Empire, particularly from the time of Ashurnasirpal II ( ruled 883 – 859 BC ) onward, for a considerable architectural expansion.

* University of California Digital Nineveh Archives A teaching and research tool presenting a comprehensive picture of Nineveh within the history of archaeology in the Near East, including a searchable data repository for meaningful analysis of currently unlinked sets of data from different areas of the site and different episodes in the 160-year history of excavations.

* CyArk Digital Nineveh Archives, publicly accessible, free depository of the data from the previously-linked UC Berkeley Nineveh Archives project, fully linked and georeferenced in a UC Berkeley / CyArk research partnership to develop the archive for open web use.

Fragments of it recovered from Assur-bani-pal's library at Nineveh and later Babylonian copies show that it was studied, divided into chapters, entitled Ninu ilu sirum from its incipit ( opening words ), and recopied for fifteen hundred years or more.

A tablet unearthed in 1854 by Austen Henry Layard in Nineveh reveals Ashurbanipal as an " avenger ", seeking retribution for the humiliations the Elamites had inflicted on the Mesopotamians over the centuries:

A recent theory proposes that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually constructed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib ( reigned 705 – 681 BC ) for his palace at Nineveh.

In addition, the old schoolhouse in Nineveh was used for the majority of the classroom scenes and many other scenes throughout the movie.

Apart from the archaeological value of his work in identifying Kuyunjik as the site of Nineveh, and in providing a great mass of materials for scholars to work upon, these two books of Layard's were among the best written books of travel in the language.

However, Jonah returned to disobedience when he hoped for the destruction of the city of Nineveh.