e "besought the Lord, and the Lord hearkened unto him: for he saw the
oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them. And
the Lord gave Israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the
hands of the Syrians."[463] The "saviour", as will be shown, was
Assyria. Not only Israel, but Judah, under King Joash, Edom, the
Philistines and the Ammonites were compelled to acknowledge the
suzerainty of Damascus.

Shalmaneser III swayed an extensive and powerful empire, and kept his
generals continually employed suppressing revolts on his frontiers.
After he subdued the Hittites, Kati, king of Tabal, sent him his
daughter, who was received into the royal harem. Tribes of the Medes
came under his power: the Nairi and Urartian tribes continued battling
with his soldiers on his northern borders like the frontier tribes of
India against the British troops. The kingdom of Urartu was growing
more and more powerful.

In 829 B.C. the great empire was suddenly shaken to its foundations by
the outbreak of civil war. The party of rebellion was led by
Shalmaneser's son Ashur-danin-apli, who evidently desired to supplant
the crown prince Shamshi-Adad. He was a popular hero and received the
support of most of the important Assyrian cities, including Nineveh,
Asshur, Arbela, Imgurbel, and Dur-balat, as well as some of the
dependencies. Shalmaneser retained Kalkhi and the provinces of
northern Mesopotamia, and it appears that the greater part of the army
also remained loyal to him.

After four years of civil war Shalmaneser died. His chosen heir,
Shamshi-Adad VII, had to continue the struggle for the throne for two
more years.

When at length the new king had stamped out the last embers of revolt
within the kingdom, he had to undertake the reconquest of those
provinces which in the interval had thrown off their allegiance to
Assyria. Urartu in the north had grown more aggressive, the Syrians
were openly defiant, the Medes were conducting bold raids, and the
Babylonians were plotting with the Chaldaeans, Elamites, and Aramaeans
to oppose the new ruler. Shamshi-Adad, however, proved to be as great
a general as his father. He subdued the Medes and the Nairi tribes,
burned many cities and collected enormous tribute, while thousands of
prisoners were taken and forced to serve the conqueror.

Having established his power in the north, Shamshi-Adad then turned
attention to Babylonia. On his way southward he subdued many villages