Iraq

E

International Organizations

Iraq is a charter member of the United Nations (UN) and a founding member of the Arab League. The country is also a founding member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which promotes solidarity among nations where Islam is an important religion, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

VII

History

The territory of modern Iraq is roughly equivalent to that of ancient Mesopotamia, which fostered a succession of early civilizations. Of these, the earliest known was the civilization of Sumer, which arose probably in the 4th millennium bc and had its final flowering under the 3rd Dynasty of Ur at the close of the 3rd millennium bc. Periods of control by Babylonia and Assyria followed. In 539 bc Cyrus the Great of Persia gained control of the region and incorporated it into the Persian Achaemenid empire. Achaemenid rule lasted until the military conquests of Macedonian king Alexander the Great in 331 bc. After Alexander’s death the Greek Seleucid dynasty reigned in Mesopotamia, infusing the region with Hellenistic culture. About 100 years later the area was absorbed into the Parthian Empire (see Parthia), which except for two brief interludes of Roman rule survived until a new Persian force, the Sassanids, conquered the region in ad 227. Their rule stretched from eastern Persia to the Syrian Desert and Anatolia.

A

Arab Islamic Conquest

In the 7th century Arab adherents of the new religion of Islam began conquering large parts of the Middle East and North Africa (see Spread of Islam). The Arab Islamic conquest of what is now Iraq started in 633 ad and culminated in 636 at the Battle of Qadisiyya, a village on the Euphrates south of Baghdād. At that battle an Islamic Arab army decisively defeated a Sassanid army that was six times larger. The Arab army moved quickly to Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanid Empire, where in 637 it seized a huge Persian treasure trove. The region was then absorbed into the expanding caliphate, or Islamic empire. Many tribes in the conquered land were Christian Arabs. Some of them converted to Islam, and the others were allowed to stay provided they paid a tax.

From the mid-8th century to 1258 Baghdād was the capital of the Abbasid caliphate. The Abbasid period was a golden age of Islamic power and culture. During that period Baghdād became the second largest city in the known world, after Constantinople, and the most important center of science and culture. For a time, the Abbasid realm was a mighty military power, its borders reaching southern France in the west and the borders of China in the east. In the mid-9th century the Abbasid caliphate began a slow decline. Turkic warrior slaves known as Mamluks became so prominent at the caliph’s court that they almost monopolized power. In 945 the Buwayhids, an Iranian Shia dynasty, conquered Baghdād. However, they allowed the Abbasid caliph to remain in office as a symbol of continuity and legitimacy. In 1055 the Seljuks, a Turkic Sunni clan, drove out the Buwayhids and reestablished Sunni rule in Baghdād. The Seljuks respected the Abbasid caliph but allowed him to be only a figurehead. At the end of the 11th century Seljuk power started to decline.

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B

Mongol and Persian Rule

In 1258 Baghdād was conquered and sacked by Hulagu, grandson of the great Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Hulagu had the caliph executed along with large numbers of Muslim clerics. Mongol horse cavalry and governmental neglect wrought havoc with the elaborate irrigation system that the Abbasids had established. Iraq became a neglected frontier area ruled from the Mongol capital of Tabrīz in Persia. In 1335 the last great Mongol ruler of this region died, and anarchy prevailed. The Turkic conqueror Tamerlane sacked Baghdād in 1401, again massacring many of its inhabitants.

Ottoman Turkish and Iranian rulers vied for supremacy in Iraq until the Ottoman Empire finally secured control in the 17th century. The region was brought under Persian control in 1508. The Ottoman Turks conquered much of it in 1534. The Persians recaptured Baghdād and large parts of Iraq in 1623, holding them until 1638, when Iraq was again brought under Ottoman rule. For almost three centuries thereafter Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire.

C

Ottoman Supremacy

The history of modern Iraq begins with the last phase of Ottoman rule, during the 19th century. Until the 1830s Ottoman rule in Iraq was tenuous, and real power shifted between powerful tribal chieftains and local Mamluk rulers. Local Kurdish dynasties held sway over the mountainous north. Many of the nomadic Arab tribes were never fully brought under Ottoman control. Under the influence of the Shia shrine cities of An Najaf and Karbalā’, which grew in importance in this period, large numbers of Arab tribespeople began adopting the Shia branch of Islam, a process that probably produced a Shia majority in what is now Iraq by the end of the 1800s. In the second half of the 18th century the Mamluks established effective control over the territory from Al Başrah to north of Baghdād. The Mamluks imposed central authority and introduced a functioning government. In 1831 the province of Iraq, then subdivided into the three vilayets, or administrative districts, of Mosul, Baghdād, and Al Başrah, came under direct Ottoman administration. From 1831 to 1869 a series of governors came and went in rapid succession.

From 1869 to 1872 Midhat Pasha, one of the Ottoman Empire’s ablest and most scrupulous officials, at long last imposed effective central control throughout the region. He modernized Baghdād, in everything from transportation to sanitation to education, and he imposed his rule on the tribal countryside. The Arabs began to experience the burdens of the new and more efficient methods of Ottoman administration, particularly with regard to tax collection. Local resentment of the centralized authority of the empire developed, giving rise to a strong spirit of Arab nationalism.

In the latter part of the 19th century Britain and Germany became rivals in the commercial development of the Mesopotamia area. The British first became interested in Iraq as a direct overland route to India. In 1861 they established a steamship company for the navigation of the Tigris to the port of Al Başrah. Meanwhile, Germany was planning the construction of a railroad in the Middle East—to run “from Berlin to Baghdād”—and, overcoming British opposition, obtained a concession from the Ottoman government to build a railroad from Baghdād to the Persian Gulf. Despite this defeat, the British government managed to consolidate its position in the Persian Gulf area by concluding treaties of protection with local Arab chieftains. British financiers were also successful in obtaining a concession in 1901 to exploit the oil fields of Iran. In 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) was formed to develop this new industry.

In November 1914, after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I (1914-1918) as an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary, a British Indian army division landed at Al Fāw, near Iraq’s southern tip, and quickly occupied Al Başrah. The main reason for the landing was Britain’s need to defend the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s oil fields and refineries nearby in Iran. This first expedition was too small and met defeat at Kut-al-Imara in April 1916. A second invasion, under General Frederick Stanley Maude, proved more successful. The British army gradually pushed northward against heavy Ottoman opposition, entering Baghdād in March 1917. The British and the Ottoman Turks signed an armistice agreement in October 1918, but the British army continued to move north until it captured Mosul in early November. With the capture of Mosul, Britain exerted its control over nearly all of what is now Iraq.

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