Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2013
From 1891 to 1911, a disenfranchised shaykh of the Muntafiq tribe, Saʿdun al-Mansur, led a large uprising against Ottoman rule in southern Iraq. Feeling that he had been disinherited from properties that were his birthright, he fought battle after battle against rival family claimants, shaykhs in Arabia and the Gulf, and reformist Ottoman governors in Baghdad and Basra. This article analyzes Saʿdun's insurgency both within the context of his life and against the background of shifting socioeconomic and political events in Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf at the turn of the 20th century. One of the last rebellions against Ottoman central authority in southern Iraq, the insurgency was also notable for the indirect but intriguing links between the rebel shaykh and his nominal overlord Sultan ʿAbd al-Hamid II, who paid special attention to the rebel's fate.
Authors’ note: The authors express their great thanks to the Mary Ann and Lawrence Tucker Foundation, and in particular to Larry Tucker, for making available Mahmud Ramiz Effendi's report for our research. We are also grateful for the assistance of Mr. Nasir Tawfiq Abdul-Karim al-Saʿdun, great-grand nephew of Saʿdun Pasha. Last but not least, we are deeply appreciative of the excellent comments on earlier drafts by the editors of IJMES and the four anonymous reviewers. All errors and omissions are the authors’ alone.
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9 Ibid., 135.
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21 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 89.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
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31 Ibid., 227–29.
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33 Al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 228–29.
34 Al-Saʿdun, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq, 216.
35 Al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 230.
36 Ibid., 230–31.
37 Ibid., 231–32.
38 Ibid., 234.
39 Çetinsaya, “Ottoman–British Relations,” 138–39.
40 Ibid., 141.
41 Ibid., 156–65.
42 Al-Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis, 212.
43 Visser, Basra, the Failed Gulf State, 73–109. See also Al-Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis, 210–14; and Bell, Gertrude, Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia (London: H.M.'s Stationery Office, 1920), 26Google Scholar.
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45 Bidwell, Robin, ed., Foreign Office Confidential Print: The Affairs of Kuwait, 1896–1905, vol. 2 (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., 1971), 62Google Scholar.
46 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 91.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter BOA), BEO 2766/207433.
50 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 91.
51 Ibid., 92.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Mahmud Ramiz Efendi, “Müntefik sancağı merkezi bulunan Nasiriye kasabasına dört saat mesafede Bataih nahiyesi dahilinde Mayia mevkiinde rüesa-i aşairden Sadun Paşa'nın ikametgahı bulunan kalenin cinayat silsilesi” [The chain of murders committed at the fortress of Saʿdun Pasha of the tribal chiefs, situated in Mayiʿa within the nāḥiya of Bataih, at a distance of four hours to the town of Nasiriyya, center of the sanjak of Muntafiq], a 53-page manuscript written in Ottoman Turkish, dated August 1911. This unpaginated report forms part of the private library of the Mary Ann and Lawrence Tucker Foundation and was graciously offered to us by the foundation for our research. This section of the article will rely only on this report.
55 BOA.TFR.1. ŞKT. 163/162115.
56 BOA.DH.SYS.66/6–14 lef1–3. See also BOA.BEO 3916/293649, lef2.
57 BOA.DH.SYS.66/6–14 lef1–3. See also BOA.BEO 3916/293649, lef2.
58 BOA.BEO 3958/296799 lef 11.
59 Ömer Umar, “Basra ile Müntefik'te Aşiretlerin,” 36–37.
60 See al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 244; and al-Saʿdun, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq, 227–30.
61 See Marufoğlu, al-ʿIraq fi al-Wathaʾiq al-ʿUthmaniyya, 205–11.
62 BOA.BEO 4109/308152.
63 BOA.BEO 4050/303700, 11 June 1912.
64 Marufoğlu, al-ʿIraq fi al-Wathaʾiq al-ʿUthmaniyya, 205–206.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., 217–19.
68 Al-ʿAzzawi, Tarikh al-ʿIraq, 279.
69 Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 87Google Scholar.
70 Ibid., 87.
