Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Chronology
- Glossary
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 Iraq: principal towns
- Map 2 Basra, Kuwait and the Shatt al-ʿArab
- Map 3 Iraq and the Middle East
- Map 4 Kurdish Iraq
- Introduction
- 1 The Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul
- 2 The British Mandate
- 3 The Hashemite monarchy 1932–41
- 4 The Hashemite monarchy 1941–58
- 5 The republic 1958–68
- 6 The Baʿth and the rule of Saddam Husain 1968–2003
- 7 The American occupation and the parliamentary republic
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Further reading and research
- Index
1 - The Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Chronology
- Glossary
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 Iraq: principal towns
- Map 2 Basra, Kuwait and the Shatt al-ʿArab
- Map 3 Iraq and the Middle East
- Map 4 Kurdish Iraq
- Introduction
- 1 The Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul
- 2 The British Mandate
- 3 The Hashemite monarchy 1932–41
- 4 The Hashemite monarchy 1941–58
- 5 The republic 1958–68
- 6 The Baʿth and the rule of Saddam Husain 1968–2003
- 7 The American occupation and the parliamentary republic
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Further reading and research
- Index
Summary
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the lands that were to become the territories of the modern state of Iraq were gradually incorporated into the Ottoman Empire as three provinces, based on the towns of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. The term al-ʿIraq (meaning the shore of a great river along its length, as well as the grazing land surrounding it) had been used since at least the eighth century by Arab geographers to refer to the great alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, a region known in Europe as Mesopotamia. It was here that the Ottoman sultans were extending their own domains during these years and trying to check the ambitions of the Safavid shahs of Persia. Imperial and doctrinal rivalries between the Sunni Ottomans and the Shiʿi Safavids touched the histories of the peoples of these frontier lands, requiring strategies of accommodation or evasion from their leaders and affecting them in a variety of ways. The political world that resulted was a complex and fragmented one. Centres of power existed in many cases autonomously, interacting under shifting circumstances that gave advantage now to one grouping, now to another, and in which the control of the central Ottoman government in Istanbul gradually diminished. Instead, initiative and power lay with those who could command the forces needed to defeat external and internal challengers alike.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Iraq , pp. 8 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007