Since 2010 The Islamic State (IS) has resurrected from virtual extinction and has conquered vast territories in Iraq and Syria. It has transformed from a simple group of insurgents to a conventional army which has claimed to be a state of its own since it announced the for-mation of the Caliphate in mid-2014. Researchers have used many different theories to un-derstand the success of IS which has increased our knowledge of the phenomenon. Even so there are still questions that need to be answered in order to fully understand what we are facing in the Middle East (ME) today and what we might encounter in other parts of the world tomorrow. This essay uses revolutionary theories about Communism and Nationalism with the intent to expand our view of modern insurgencies. More precisely it investigates why IS has been so successful in its conquests, which are done through the narrative of its attitude towards the population of Iraq and Syria. The result reveals that IS uses a combination of the two above-mentioned ideologies. IS keeps conflicts going through constant terror against specific groups thus creating a gap be-tween the governments and the Sunnis in the region. Simultaneously it is trying to create an environment where the inhabitants can experience normal living conditions. The future of the ME is worrying since IS and its way of gaining conquests is hard to battle for whoever is intervening.

The biographical details of the 7828 individuals listed in the biographical dictionary known as the Ta'rikh Baghdad were entered in a database and used to create a profile of the hadith community of Baghdad. The thesis explains how the database was constructed and shows how the data can be used. Evidence derived from the many references to colleagues and relatives in the biographies made it possible to date most of the undated biographies, and to construct a chronological framework within which information on the origins, occupations, tribes and other personal attributes of the Khatib's subjects could be analysed. Changes in the frequency of these attributes over time were related to conversion rates, immigration, and the popular appeal of hadith study. The thesis also demonstrates the usefulness of the fortuitously dated topographical references found in the biographies. These were used with maps to show changes in residence patterns over the 320 years covered by the Ta'rikh Baghdad.