Hammurabi was the oldest son of Sin-Muballit, and he became the sixth king of Babylon upon his father’s abdication around 1729 BC (based on the short chronology timeline).
Even though he didn’t inherit much power from his father and at the time he controlled only a small part of Babylonia, the city of Sippar, he later became the first king of the so-called Babylonian Empire. With his accession to the throne, he expanded Babylon’s dominance and authority over Mesopotamia by being victorious in a series of wars against adjoining lands and kingdoms. In his almost forty-three-year reign, he became the greatest conqueror Babylonia had ever seen and his empire dominated all of Mesopotamia.
Despite Hammurabi’s success and greatness as a conqueror and king, he’s best remembered, not for his accomplishments on the battlefield, but for being a great reformer and legislator. Most pertinently, Hammurabi produce and organized set of laws known as Hammurabi’s Code, which is possibly the very first written code of laws, or at the least, the oldest to have survived to this day.