An ancient city on the Tigris River. People lived there as far back as 2500 BC. Asshur was a smaller city (less than one-tenth the size of Babylon or Nineveh), but it was the homeland and first capital of the Assyrian kingdom.
By 2000 BC, Asshur was a busy city. It traded with an Assyrian colony at Kanish (in modern Turkey). Asshur was strongest during the old Assyrian Empire under King Shamshi-adad I, who ruled from 1813–1781 BC. He controlled much of northern Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), including the city of Mari.
Later, Hammurabi of Babylon took control and ruled from 1792–1750 BC. After he defeated Shamshi-adad, Asshur became less important. We know little about that time.
In the late second millennium, the Assyrians once again became a major power in the Near East. They moved their capital to a different city but Asshur remained their holy city and the home of their main god, also called Asshur.
For hundreds of years, people did not know where Asshur was. In the 1800s, they found out it was at a place called Qalat Shergat in Iraq. German researchers dug there for many years before World War I. They found: