How international is international humanitarian law? The Laws of Yesterday's Wars 4: From Mesopotamia to Somalia, together with its companion volumes, attempts to answer that question. It offers a culture-by-culture account of various unique restrictions placed on warfare over time. Containing essays by a range of laws of war academics and practitioners, it approaches the laws of yesterday’s wars from a wide cross-section of history and culture, seeking to find any common ground and to demonstrate a history of international law outside the usual confines of its ‘development’ by Europeans and its later ‘contributions.’ This volume includes studies on Egyptian, Jewish and Somali rules of war.