named the Kingdom of Hana. Later periods Mari survived the destruction and rebelled against Babylon in c. 1759 BC, causing Hammurabi to destroy the whole city. However, by an act of mercy Hammurabi allowed Mari to survive as a small village under Babylonian administration. Later, Mari became part of Assyria and was listed among the territories conquered by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned 1243–1207 BC). Afterward, Mari constantly changed hands between Assyria and Babylon. In the middle of the eleventh century BC, Mari became part of Hana whose king Tukulti-Mer took the title king of Mari and rebelled against Assyria, causing the Assyrian king Ashur-bel-kala to attack the city. Mari came firmly under the authority of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and was assigned in the first half of the 8th century BC to a certain Nergal-Erish to govern under the authority of king Adad-Nirari III (reigned 810–783 BC). In c. 760 BC, Shamash-Risha-Usur, an autonomous governor ruling parts of the upper middle Euphrates under the nominal authority of Ashur-dan III, styled himself the governor of the lands of Suhu and Mari, so did his son Ninurta-Kudurri-Usur. However, by that time, Mari was known to be located in the so-called Land of Laqe, making it unlikely that the Usur family actually controlled it, and suggesting that the title was employed out of historical reasons. The city continued as a small settlement until the Hellenistic period before disappearing from records. By 2015, ISIS devasted and looted systematically the site and specially the royal palace. It was one of the first archaeological sites to be occupied by this group. People, language and government The founders of the first city may have been Sumerians or more probably East Semitic speaking people from Terqa in the north. I. J. Gelb relates Mari's foundation with the Kish civilization, which was a cultural entity of East Semitic speaking populations, that stretched from the center of Mesopotamia to Ebla in the western Levant. At its height, the second city was the home of about 40,000 people. This population was East-Semitic speaking one, and used a dialect much similar to the language of Ebla (the Eblaite language), while the Shakkanakku period had an East-Semitic Akkadian speaking population. West Semitic names started to be attested in Mari since the second kingdom era, and by the middle Bronze-Age, the west Semitic Amorite tribes became the majority of the pastoral groups in