Iraq – A History

Title: Iraq – A History

Author: John Robertson

Publisher: One World, 2016 (First published 2015)

ISBN: 9781780749495

Pages: 386

The decade after the end of Cold War in 1990 was dominated by events unfolding in the oil rich Kuwait and Iraq region of the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, who was Iraq’s dictator-president invaded and annexed Kuwait. The rest of the world indignantly rose up in unity against Saddam and his forces were routed in a war that lasted only a few weeks. However, he clung on to power while being a thorn in the flesh of the US. Finally in 2003, America moved in decisively with concocted evidence of the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. Saddam was dethroned quickly, but the effort to hoist a stable alternate administration on Iraq has still not borne fruit. The occupation forces were at the receiving end of deadly terrorist attacks that was staged as part of local resistance. In the end, most of the ordinary people lost sight of Iraq as the cradle of civilization itself, instead viewing it as a lawless country mired in sectarian clashes and religious bigotry. This book is an attempt to dress up Iraq as a major contributor to the development of Western Civilization. One must stop and show respect to the legacy of many an ancient civilization that flowered and later withered in the rolling landscape of Mesopotamia, by which name Iraq was known in the ancient world. John Robertson is Professor of Ancient and Middle Eastern Studies at Central Michigan University and his research interests centre on the social and economic history of the Middle East, with a particular focus on ancient Mesopotamian systems of social and economic organization.

A noteworthy fact of Iraq’s legacy is that it’s pioneering spirit and greatness lies only in the ancient past. The fertile floodplains of Tigris and Euphrates rivers attracted sedentary societies even from the dawn of history. The state’s name itself was derived from the Persian word ‘eragh’, meaning low land which characterizes the flood plain and marshes of the lower Tigris-Euphrates basin. Evolution of the first cities of the world came about in southern Iraq around 4000 BCE. For a time, people belonging to all four steps in the civilizational ladder – hunter-gatherers, farmers, pastoral nomads and city dwellers made Iraq their home. The country was ripe for the development of monarchy with its great agricultural and commercial potential, constrained by the lack or uneven distribution of resources like minerals, wood, and precipitation. Magnificent civilizations of the ancient era took root on Mesopotamian soil – The Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Chaldean are only a few among them. Even now, the Iraqi landscape is replete with thousands of tells (ruined mounds of ancient settlement). The artefacts lay buried undisturbed till 1840 when the English adventurer and diplomat Austen Henry Layard and French diplomat Paul-Emile Botta discovered the ancient cities of Calah and Nineveh. It is unfortunate that the local people didn’t take much interest in investigating the remains before the Europeans swooped down and took them overseas to private collections and museums in London and Paris. Robertson makes a guess that the local populace viewed the pre-Islamic past as the era of jahiliyya, or ignorance of the true religion of Islam, and therefore not worthy of a believer’s serious attention.

Iraq is considered the cradle of religions as well. Judaism assimilated many features and concepts of Babylonian religions when its adherents remained under the captivity of the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar. Garden of Eden was set somewhere in southern Mesopotamia, as ‘Edin’ was the Sumerian word for ‘grasslands’. The Jewish patriarch Abraham came from ‘Ur of the Chaldeans’. Noah and the Biblical flood story owe its origin to the character of Utnapishtim in the Sumerian epic ‘Gilgamesh’. Moral laws listed out in the Old Testament derive its source from the Code of Hammurabi. No wonder then that the New Testament is so contrasting in empathy and kindness from the Old! The author makes a neat comparison of the borrowings which can be extended to prophets and prophecy in general, concepts of heaven and hell, genres of psalms and lamentations, the Day of Atonement and rituals involving a scapegoat. Notions of one Supreme God, messiah, of spirituality and morally directed way of life, a code of behavior that entailed strict laws and framing unbelievers as presenting a threat of pollution came from Zoroastrianism of the Achaemenids who released the Jews from bondage in Babylon. Robertson makes a stinging analysis of Iraqi religious life in modern times. Islam is the dominant religion in Iraq since the seventh century CE, but the Sunni minority politically dominated the Shi’ite majority most of the time since then. They could forget the internal dissensions and fight as one unit in times of war, but sectarian strife is ever so rampant. Iraq once hosted the largest communities of Nestorian Christians and Jews in the Middle East. Ever since the foundation of Israel, Jews were being discriminated against and oppressed in the Arab world – a fate shared by Christians after Saddam’s downfall and American occupation in 2003. Obviously, religious tolerance is in short supply in the Middle East and Iraq is no exception.

The last glorious phase of Iraqi grandeur came about during the Abbasid caliphate after the arrival of Islam. Abu Jaffar ‘al Mansur’ founded the city of Baghdad in 762 CE. The city was the pride of its inhabitants, but the bitterest envy of their rivals. In the 1250 years after its establishment, Baghdad was conquered no fewer than fifteen times! The Abbasid era stands apart from typical Islamic empires. One gruesome event that readily comes to mind which differentiates it from peers is that of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 642 CE by the Muslim army of Amr bin al Aas by the order of Caliph Omar, the second in the series of four ‘rightly guided caliphs’. When confronted with the question of what to do with the books stored in the conquered library – the largest of its kind in the ancient world – al Aas was said to have remarked that ‘if those books are in agreement with the Koran, they are superfluous and we don’t need them. And if they are inconsistent with the Holy Writ, they are heretical’. This meant that in both instances, they were to be destroyed and his army duly burnt all the books along with its precious knowledge that spanned several millennia of human endeavour. But the Abbasid caliphs were entirely different. They collected manuscripts from all corners of the known world and had them translated into Arabic. The works of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy and of others dealing with mathematics, natural philosophy, science and medicine were thus preserved. However, books of historians like Herodotus and Thucydides or playwrights such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were ignored on the basis that such information is ‘not useful’ for society. Europe owed its renaissance to the preserving work of the Abbasids. The Canon of Medicine of ibn Sina (Avicenna) and ibn Rushd’s (Averroes) commentaries on Aristotle was much popular in the intellectual circles of medieval Europe. The knowledge provided by these two helped European culture begin its slow turn to secular rationalism as the foundation of knowledge. Later rulers of the Abbasid lineage were mere puppets in the hands of local strongmen, but the charade of the supremacy of the caliph was played on till 1258 when the Mongol Hulegu Khan sacked Baghdad and extinguished the royal line. In order to honor a Mongol taboo not to spill royal blood on the floor, Caliph al Mustasim was wrapped in a carpet and kicked to death!

The book’s depiction of the modern era of Iraq is noted for the wealth of information on the happenings in the political front. With the discovery of abundant yet easily recoverable oil beneath its surface, Iraq turned out to be a battleground of imperial powers during the period between the two Great Wars. Eventually, US’ strategic interests shaped and reshaped the policies of the Middle Eastern states. Saddam Hussein is still the most widely known Iraqi in the world, but his reign offered nothing but unmitigated disaster to its people. Saddam’s war with Iran (1980-88) brought Iraq to the brink of catastrophe, while his foolishly adventurous occupation of Kuwait (1990) pushed it over the precipice. Mercilessly pounded by American jets and under the crippling economic sanctions, Iraq quickly degenerated into a third-world country. Saddam’s ouster in 2003 and American occupation has still not put the country back on rails on account of the devastating civil war between all three major factions – Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurd. Arab nationalism and a perceived Iraqi identity are still not strong enough to hold the country together and Robertson ends the book with the fervent hope that a solution may finally evolve in the near future.

The presentation of ideas in the book are quite matter of fact. No witty comments or asides to pull the reader close are seen and this very fact makes it a bit tiring. It is an excellent primer for Westerners to get familiar with the country ruined by decades of warfare and siege in the form of sanctions by Western powers. Robertson assigns the credit of inventing the place value notation of counting to Babylonians, whereas the consensus among scholars is that the honour should rightfully be given to India. The author makes a mollifying comment that it was adopted by Indians and spread from there (p.109). This is not a plausible argument and should be categorized as an inaccuracy. A few monochrome plates are attached with the main text, which don’t do justice to the primacy or majesty of the subjects they represent.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star