Last month, the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS/ISIL took the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Further compounding this stunning seizure was the extremist group’s capture of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, thus gaining control of over half of Syria. As its biggest victory in almost a year, it illustrates that despite western intervention the group is not going away quietly. ISIL was propelled into the news last summer when on the morning of June 11th, the world was stunned to hear that Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, had fallen to the extremist group in a lightning advance. Since then they have continued to push south and spread their control across the region. Yet what does all of this mean? Factionalism and sectarian rifts are nothing new in the ancient lands that hold tribalism and religion over all other political wants. Iraq, however, was not always Iraq, and the Sunni-Shia rift is not a product of the twentieth century. To understand the issues of ISIL and Iraq today, we must understand the history of this divided region of the world.