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 of Iraq and 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 the Islamic State, having proclaimed such an entity in large parts of Iraq and Syria.
