Islamic State grew out of the ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ franchise group in the late 2000s, which nominally was directed by the remnants of the Al Qaeda leadership. By the time the Syrian Civil War was in full flow the group had split from Al Qaeda and renamed itself. At first it was known by the outside world as ISIL (‘Islamic State In the Levant’) but as the Arabic word for the Levant is Al Sham, gradually it became ISIS. In the summer of 2014 the group began calling itself Islamic State, having proclaimed such an entity in large parts of Iraq and Syria.
