Iraq

VI

History

The territory of modern Iraq is roughly equivalent to that of ancient Mesopotamia, which fostered a succession of early civilizations. The earliest known of these 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 hegemony by Babylonia and Assyria followed. In 539 BC Cyrus the Great of Persia gained control of the region, which remained under Persian rule until the conquest by Alexander the Great in 331 bc. After his death the Greek Seleucid dynasty reigned in Mesopotamia for some 200 years from their capital at Seleucia on the Tigris, infusing it with Hellenistic culture.

A long period under new Persian dynasties (Arsacids, Sasanians) followed. During this time the area of modern Iraq was the richest province, called Khvarvaran, with a Persian ruling class, a Semitic peasantry who spoke the Aramaic language, plus some Arab, Greek, and Kurdish settlement. The Sasanian capital was at Ctesiphon, and the official religion was Persian Zoroastrianism, but most of the population followed Christian Nestorianism of the Syrian Jacobite Church or Monophysitism.

A

Arab Conquest and the Abbasid Caliphate

War between the Sasanian kings and the Byzantine Empire led in AD 627 to a Byzantine invasion and the sack of Ctesiphon. Devastated and leaderless, the region at once was faced with the threat of rising Islam. In 637 Muslim Arabs defeated the Sasanians, sacked Ctesiphon again, and within a year the entire region had been overrun. The Arab rulers garrisoned Al Başrah and Al Kūfah; the Christian population were allowed to keep their religion. Iraq became a province of the caliphate, and the base for Ali ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law of Muhammad and the chief saint of Shiism, who was martyred at Al Kūfah in 661. With his death, Iraq was subordinated to the Umayyad caliphs of Syria. Ali’s son Hussain arrived in Iraq in 680 hoping to rally support against the Umayyads, but was killed at Karbalā’. Three years later the Umayyad caliph Yazid I died and the region became unruly. A stern Umayyad governor, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, exacerbated difficulties and the ensuing revolt in 701 was crushed only by Syrian armies.

B

Baghdad’s Golden Age

In 747 a new Iraqi revolt began in the name of the Abbasid family, and by 750 the Umayyads were crushed and the first Abbasid caliph proclaimed in the mosque of Al Kūfah. Baghdad, founded in 762, became the new caliphate capital and the thriving centre of Islam’s golden age. Caliph Harun ar-Rashid commanded immense wealth and power, but his decision on his death in 809 to leave Iran and the eastern caliphate under the rule of his second son, al-Mamun, led to a destructive civil war and the sack of Baghdad.

Though victorious, al-Mamun was unable to govern away from Baghdad and returned there in 819. He restored the power and cultural vigour of the region, but used Turkish mercenaries to replenish his depleted armies. Local resentment of these Turks drove his successor, al-Mutasim, to found a new capital at Samarra north of Baghdad in 836. The Turks were paid off in farming concessions which turned them into short-sighted and rapacious landlords. In 861 disaffected troops assassinated the caliph, and by 865 Samarra and Baghdad were at war. Unity was restored by 870, but this civil strife, plus revolts in southern Iraq and the cecession of most of the caliphate’s outlying domains, permanently weakened the Abbasids.

Baghdad once more became the Abbasid capital in 892 and recovered its cultural vitality, but now Iraq alone was under its rule. The weak boy caliph, al-Muqtadir (reigned 908-932), became a tool for ambitious viziers and generals. In 935 Caliph ar-Radi surrendered political authority to his generals. In the same year the great Nahrawan canal, key to the irrigation system which had underpinned Iraq’s prosperity since Mesopotamian times, was breached to defeat an invasion and was subsequently never repaired, doing permanent economic damage.

C

Buyid and Seljuk Rule

In 945 Baghdad fell to the Buyids, a mountain people from south of the Caspian Sea who had already seized much of Iran. The Abbasid caliphs became puppet sovereigns, but the Shiite Buyids could not govern the old Abbasid realm: even Baghdad split into rival sectarian districts. Rival Buyid princes in the south controlled Basra. Mosul, which had become more or less an independent state, was seized in 977. However, this unity was short-lived, and both northern and southern Iraq became the domains of Shiite Bedouin sheikhs. By the early 11th century Baghdad was ruined, impoverished, and convulsed by feuds between partisans of the Shiite Buyids and the Sunni caliphs.

In 1055 Togrul Beg, leader of the Sunni Turkish Seljuks, overran central Iraq and imprisoned the last Buyid rule of Baghdad. After subjugating the northern Bedouin he was officially dubbed King by the reigning Abbasid caliph. After a brief Buyid resurgence in 1059-1060, Togrul established full Seljuk authority and was honoured as Sultan by the Caliph; he then began purging Iraq of Shiism. Seljuk rule proved highly successful, though both northern and southern Iraq tended to reassert their independence, and Iran, Syria, Anatolia, and Palestine fell under their sway. A separate Seljuk capital was established at Eşfahān in Iran. In 1135, however, the Abbasid caliphate, which had remained in Baghdad, rose against the Seljuk sultans and revived direct Abbasid rule in Iraq. Caliph an-Nasir (1180-1225) in particular fought to restore Abbasid prestige, the last Iraqi Seljuk Sultan dying in 1194. Abbasid authority endured until the arrival of Mongol armies from northern Iran. Baghdad beat off a Mongol attack in 1245, but after a series of disastrous floods, resistance collapsed in 1258. Baghdad was devastated and its citizens massacred, the last Abbasid caliph was executed, and Iraq was incorporated into the Mongol Empire.

D

Mongol and Turkish Rule

Mongol Iraq fragmented into provincial administrations subject to the Mongol Il-Khans based in Azerbaijan; Baghdad itself was now in decline. When Mongol unity collapsed, Iraq and Azerbaijan became after 1360 the power base for the Mongol Sheikh Uways and his successors. Their state fell in 1393 to the ferocious conqueror Tamerlane, who returned to sack Baghdad again in 1401, definitively terminating its glory. After Tamerlane’s death in 1405 Iraq fell to Turkmen from Anatolia who fought each other and local groups until their conquest by the Safavid dynasty of Iran in 1508. Iraq became a Safavid province until the Turkish sultan Suleiman I conquered it in 1533-1534 for the Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman rule initially brought peace, good government, and some resurgence of settled agriculture for Iraq, as well as entrenching Sunni dominance over local Shiites, who looked towards Iran. Iraq was subdivided into the three vilayets, or administrative districts, of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. From the 17th century Ottoman central authority weakened and power fell to local magnates, who brought British, Dutch, and Portuguese maritime traders into their rivalries. One renegade Janissary put Baghdad under Iranian Safavid sovereignty from 1623 until Murad IV restored Ottoman rule in 1638, massacring local Shiites.

The treaty which concluded this struggle in 1639 fixed the Ottoman-Iranian border, but Iraq was still disturbed by tribal risings and Iranian infiltration. Finally, Mamelukes (converted Christian slaves) were used in the 18th century to restore Ottoman authority. The Mamelukes became a local ruling dynasty, bringing some unity and prosperity, and inviting the British East India Company into Basra in 1763. The Iranians briefly held Basra from 1776 to 1779, then the last great Mameluke Governor, Suleiman Pasha (reigned 1780-1802) brought Mameluke power to its final peak.