CHAPTER 2 History The very first human settlements or societies began to grow in an area called the fertile crescent curving around from the Nile River valley of ancient Egypt into Mesopotamia or today’s Iraq Eight thousand years ago small settlements developed in the upper valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers Instead of moving on nomads started to settle down and irrigate the plains with ditches for agriculture Early history The most notable of Mesopotamia’s early settlers were the Sumerians whom experts generally 10 credit with inventing cuneiform the first form of writing The Sumerians wrote down the earliest surviving epic poems and invented the plow and probably the wheel too Babylon The famous ancient city of Babylon was established in modern-day Iraq nearly 62 mi 100 km south of Baghdad In the 1700s BCE a great warrior named Hammurabi took power in the region and founded the Babylonian empire Adopting the Sumerian form of writing King Hammurabi wrote down one of the earliest written collections of laws known as the Code of Hammurabi Babylon’s golden era occurred in the first half of the sixth century BCE during the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar II He built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World There is still controversy about their location but most experts believe they were in or near the royal palace in Babylon
Samarra on the Tigris River in central Iraq is one of the largest archaeological sites in the world The ninth-century Great Mosque and the famous al-Malwiyah a spiral minaret are remarkable monuments of the Abbasid caliphate Samarra is a center of pilgrimage for Shia Muslims one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Today very little remains of Nebuchadnezzar’s Summer Palace which is thought to have once contained the Hanging Gardens Foreign domination From the sixth century BCE the lands of Mesopotamia were conquered by a succession of different empire builders Persia today’s Iran invaded the country in 539 BCE Then in 331 BCE Greece under Alexander the Great defeated the Persians Two hundred years later the Persians once again ruled Babylon A new era in Iraq’s history began in 637 CE with the arrival of Arab armies from the Arabian Peninsula south of Mesopotamia The Muslim Arabs defeated the Persian rulers of Mesopotamia FOCUS DIVISION AMONG MUSLIMS The Muslim faith was founded by the prophet Mohammed c 570 632 CE After his death there was a dispute over the leadership of Islam One group believed that the caliph should come from Mohammed’s own family Ali Mohammed’s son-in-law and cousin thought he should be caliph and his group became known as the Shi’at Ali faction or party of Ali now called the Shias Although Ali was recognized in Mesopotamia and Persia a second and larger group centered on Damascus in Syria followed a different successor Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan These Sunni Muslims believed that the best spiritual leader should be chosen and that he did not necessarily need to descend directly from the Prophet at Qadisiyah on the Euphrates Baghdad was founded in the middle of the eighth century The city and its surrounding region were ruled by the caliph or leader al-Mansur from the Abbasid dynasty For the next 500 years Abbasid caliphs ruled Mesopotamia Under their rule Baghdad became one of the world’s most beautiful cities and a great center of learning and Arabic culture Al-Kufa 105 mi or 170 km south of Baghdad and Mosul in northern Iraq were also important Arab cities 11
IRAQ Ottoman Empire From the 13th century Mesopotamia fell to a series of conquerors In 1258 the Mongol chief Hulagu invaded Iraq and captured Baghdad killing the last Abbasid caliph The city was conquered again in 1405 by Tamerlane a warlord of Turco-Mongol descent Finally in 1534 Baghdad was taken by the Ottoman Turks The Ottoman state was founded by Osman I in the 14th century Like the Mongols the Ottoman Turks were great cavalrymen and by the middle of the 17th century they had built an empire that dominated the Middle East and southeastern Europe In the 19th century the Ottoman Turks finally conquered the whole region of Mesopotamia which they divided into the three provinces of Mosul Baghdad and Basra Mesopotamia remained part of the Ottoman Empire until the 20th century by which time the empire was in severe decline During World War I 1914 18 the Turkish Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany and Austria-Hungary against the United Kingdom UK France and Russia Britain encouraged the Arabs in Mesopotamia to fight against the Ottoman Turks promising them independence after the war Instead the victorious powers divided up the Ottoman empire and the British were given a mandate to rule Mesopotamia which became the new state of Iraq Independence In 1921 the British installed Faisal I as emir king of Iraq to give their mandate legitimacy He was a member of the Hashemites an important Arab dynasty and had been a key ally of the British during World War I Under Faisal a political elite of rich Sunni Muslims wielded 12 Murat IV sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1623 to 1640 was a feared warrior who recaptured Baghdad in 1638 following its loss to the Persians in 1623 considerable influence In 1927 significant quantities of oil were discovered Iraq officially gained its independence in 1932 but Britain retained significant political power in the country determined to keep control of Iraqi oil The monarchy lasted until July 14 1958 when it was overthrown in a bloody military coup by an army officer General Abdel Karim Kassem who established the Republic of Iraq Another coup in 1963 ended Kassem’s rule Then in 1968 a bloodless coup by the Baath meaning Renaissance Party put General Ahmad Hassan al Bakr in power
CASE STUDY SHATT AL-ARAB DISPUTE The strategically important Shatt al-Arab waterway with its outlet in the Persian Gulf had been a source of dispute between the Ottoman and Persian empires since a roughly drawn-up peace treaty in the 17th century In 1975 Iraq and Iran signed the Algiers Accord which recognized midstream as the border between the two countries Saddam Hussein tried to revoke this agreement in 1980 prior to invading Iran He claimed the whole waterway up to the Iranian shore for Iraq Reign of Saddam Hussein In January 1969 Saddam Hussein became vice president of the Baath Party but as President al Bakr’s health worsened Saddam assumed greater control During the 1970s Saddam became the effective ruler of the country using the political police to remove unwanted opponents or politicians In 1979 he formally assumed the presidency of Iraq and his reign of terror gained momentum That year he executed a quarter of HISTORY the Revolutionary Command Council RCC the body of senior officials that helped to govern Iraq Saddam was concerned by developments in neighboring Iran In February 1979 the Shia cleric Ayatollah Khomeini inspired the Islamic Revolution Saddam Hussein and his secular nonreligious Sunni-dominated government feared that Iraqi Shias who formed the majority in Iraq might be encouraged to attempt a Shia revolution in their own country There were other sources of tension between Iraq and Iran including a long-standing dispute over the boundary of the Shatt al-Arab waterway which Iran and Iraq shared Saddam also wished to annex the southern provinces of Iran where many of Iran’s oil fields were concentrated Vice President Saddam Hussein left is pictured here in 1976 with President al-Bakr Al-Bakr resigned in July 1979 when Saddam formally took over power Saddam’s brutal reign was to last over 20 years 13
