Mount Abdulaziz

Mount Abdulaziz or Abd al-Aziz (Arabic: جبل عبدالعزيز, romanized: Jabal ʿAbdulʿazīz) is a mountain ridge located in the southwestern part of the Hasakah Governorate, some 35 km west-south-west from the center of the city of Hasakah, in northeastern Syria. The mountain has taken its name after Abdul Aziz, a Kurdish military commander in Saladin's army who had once taken the mountain as a fortified place. The former name of the mountain was ʾAl-Ḥiyāl الحيال. During the Syrian civil war in March 2013, the mountain and its surrounding area came under the control of the Al-Nusra Front. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant then captured it from the al-Nusra Front in April 2014 following the Battle of Markada. The mount is currently under the control of Kurdish YPG forces who captured it in May 2015 from the Islamic State (IS).