Besides the Islamic State's very strong anti-Shi'a sentiment (as part of its wider railing against "apostates" from Islam), the group's propaganda has also emphasised the targeting of Christians in its attacks. This is especially so in the group's propaganda emanating from Africa, where the group regularly claims attacks targeting Christians and highlights the Christian identity of its victims in those claims. This highlights the group's wider approach to dealing with Christians beyond the more well-known denunciations of "Crusaders"- a term often associated with Western powers fighting against the Islamic State, but is in fact applied to all Christians in general perceived to be at war with the Islamic State. Simply put, the Islamic State's approach for Christians is three-fold: convert to Islam, submit to the authority of the Islamic State as dhimmis, or die. The only apparent exception is the aftermath of the group's takeover of Mosul in 2014, in which an agreement was struck that allowed the Christians to depart for territory not controlled by the Islamic State while relinquishing their property.

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Allegations and reports of torture and abuse in prisons in the Syrian civil war have abounded. Much of the focus in this regard is on the Syrian government side, though in truth, probably no side is innocent of allegations of torture and abuse against detainees. This assessment does not mean making an exact moral equivalence between all sides, but it should be recognised that much of the problem surrounding torture and abuse in prisons goes back to a wider regional culture of cruelty in the judicial system, in which it is considered acceptable to use coercive means to extract information and secure confessions.

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Syria's economic situation- particularly in areas held by the Syrian government- has only continued to deteriorate with time, and with this deterioration, living standards have continued to diminish. Perhaps the most familiar indicator of this economic decline is the deterioration of the value of the Syrian pound: one U.S. dollar is now equivalent to more than 5000 Syrian pounds.

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With the passing of time, documentation of the early years of the Syrian civil war often found on social media sites is increasingly at risk of deletion and thus being lost. This would mean that future analysts and historians would have much less information to access than those who were observing events at the time via the Internet. Fortunately, however, there are still some efforts to preserve detailed documentation and accounts of early events in the Syrian civil war. It is important that these efforts be maintained and archived. Not only do they preserve old details that might otherwise have been lost, but they can also provide new information and perspectives that were not available to observers at the time.

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Overview

Of the Visigothic kings who ruled Spain prior to the Islamic conquest, the reign of King Wamba (672-680 CE) is among those documented in greatest detail through contemporaneous or near contemporaneous historical writing, thanks to an extended narrative account by Julian of Toledo (archbishop of Toledo in the period 680-690 CE) of how Wamba dealt with a revolt early on in his reign (673 CE) in the Visigothic kingdom's holdings in southern Gaul (now southern France)- a region that has been called by various names such as Septimania and Gothic Gaul.

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