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Site of ancient, key battle in Iraq found by archeologists using spy satellite images
Beirut — Declassified 1970s-era U.S. spy satellite imagery has led a British-Iraqi archeological team to what they believe is the site of a seventh-century battle that became decisive in the spread of Islam throughout the region.
The Battle of al-Qadisiyah was fought in Mesopotamia — in present-day Iraq — in the A.D. 630s between Arab Muslims and the army of the Sassanid Persian dynasty during a period of Muslim expansion. The Arab army prevailed and continued on its march into Persia, now Iran.
A joint team of archeologists from the U.K.’s Durham University and the University of Al-Qadisiyah stumbled across the site while undertaking a remote sensing survey to map the Darb Zubaydah, a pilgrimage route from Iraq’s Kufa to Mecca in Saudi Arabia built more than 1,000 years ago. The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Antiquity.
While mapping the route, the team noticed that a site some 20 miles south of Kufa in Iraq’s southern Najaf province — a desert area with scattered plots of agricultural land — had features that closely matched the description of the al-Qadisiyah battle site described in historic texts.
William Deadman, a specialist in archaeological remote sensing at Durham University, said the Cold War era satellite images are commonly used tools by archeologists working in the Middle East because the older images often show features that have been destroyed or altered and wouldn’t show up on present-day satellite images.
“The Middle East has developed so much in the last 50 years, both agricultural expansion and urban expansion,” he said. Some of the distinguishing features at the al-Qadisiyah site, such as a distinctive trench, were “much more pristine and clear” in the 1970s images, he said.
A survey on the ground confirmed the findings and convinced the team that they had correctly identified the site.
The key features were a deep trench, two fortresses and an ancient river that was reportedly once forded by elephant-mounted Persian troops, said Jaafar Jotheri, a professor of archeology at the University of Al-Qadisiyah who’s part of the team that made the discovery. The survey team also found pottery shards consistent with the time period when the battle took place.
A revealing, well-known battle
Jotheri said Iraqis of his generation, who grew up under the rule of Saddam Hussein, were all familiar with the battle in minute detail, down to the names of the generals on both sides.
The battle at the time had political connotations — Iraq was engaged in a devastating war with Iran through much of the 1980s. Saddam pointed to the Battle of Qadisiyah as a harbinger of victory for Iraq.
Like most children growing up in that era, Jotheri said he’d watched a popular movie about the battle multiple times as it was on regular rotation on television.
In the post-Saddam era, al-Qadisiyah has become something of a political litmus test. Iraqis’ views of the battle vary depending on their feelings toward Iran, which has expanded its influence in the country since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam.
“There is some political and religious context in this battle because now, of course, we have religious differences, ethnic differences, political differences in Iraq and we read or we view everything based on our … differences,” Jotheri said. But he added, “We all agree that it is a very important battle, a decisive one, and we all know about it.”
Discovery was part of a regional trend
The team plans to begin excavations at the site in the coming year, Jotheri said.
The discovery comes as part of a broader project launched in 2015 to document endangered archaeological sites in the region.
It also comes at the time of a resurgence of archeology in Iraq, a country often referred to as the “cradle of civilization,” but where archeological exploration has been stunted by decades of conflict that halted excavations and led to the looting of tens of thousands of artifacts.
In recent years, the digs have returned and thousands of stolen artifacts have been repatriated.
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Four arrested in California for allegedly staging bear attacks to receive insurance payouts
A group of Los Angeles County residents were arrested after they allegedly staged bear attacks using a costume in order to receive payouts from their car insurance providers, investigators say.
The investigation, which was dubbed “Operation Bear Claw,” found that three of the four individuals submitted similar insurance claims after a so-called bear wrecked the interior of their cars in the San Bernardino County mountain community Lake Arrowhead, according to a release from the California Department of Insurance.
Investigators began to look into the incident after one of the insurance companies suspected fraud, revealing that multiple claims were filed for the same location on Jan. 28, 2024. The claimants allegedly provided video footage to their insurance companies of a supposed bear damaging the interior of their vehicles.
Those videos, all in the exact same location outside of a residence in the area, meant to show the bear entering the cars and crawling around. But “upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” the CDI release said.
In order to make sure that their beliefs were not unfounded, investigators sought the help a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who reviewed all three videos of the phony attacks and also opined that it was “clearly a human in a bear suit.”
Photos provided by insurance investigators showed surface-level scratch marks to the seats and door panels of the cars.
The claims, which resulted in the insurance companies being defrauded of a whopping $141,839, were made for a 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost, a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350, investigators noted.
The four suspects, identified as Glendale residents Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32 and Valley Village woman Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, were all arrested with the help of Glendale police and the California Highway Patrol, the release said.
Each was charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy.
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Shock in Washington, D.C., after Trump taps Gaetz for attorney general
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What does Trump’s tapping of Rubio and Hegseth say about his foreign policy plans?
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