Safavid and Ottoman Turkish empires and was
often controlled by local clients of these powers.
Although Najaf and Karbala prospered as centers
of Shii learning and pilgrimage, the region as a
whole continued to stagnate until the Ottomans
initiated far-reaching administrative reforms in
the 19th century.
IrAQ IN ThE 19Th AND 20Th
CENTurIES
The Ottomans divided Iraq into three provinces—
Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center, and
Basra in the south; repaired and expanded the irri-
gation system; and legislated land tenure reforms
that promoted the settlement of Arab pastoral
tribes in the south. These changes fostered urban
growth and enhanced the status of Shii religious
authorities in their shrine cities. Ottoman rulers,
upholders of sUnnism, wished to placate Iraq’s Shii
Ulama and their supporters in order to keep rival
powers at bay, including Persians and Europeans.
The ulama seized the opportunity to win the con-
version of southern Iraq’s tribal population. Con-
sequently, the majority of Iraq’s population became
Shii by the early 1920s. Ottoman dominion over
Iraq ended because of their alliance with Germany
during World War I, which was defeated by the
Allied Powers, including Britain and France, in
- Britain ruled Iraq as a mandate territory
from 1918 to 1932 under the authority of the
secret Sykes-Picot Agreement it had made with
France during the war, later upheld at the postwar
international San Remo Conference (1920). The
Shia of southern Iraq led a tribal uprising (intifada)
that was decisively ended by the British the same
year. Attempting to legitimate their mandate, the
British installed Faysal ibn Husayn (d. 1933), the
son of the ruler of Hijaz, as monarch. In fact, they
only succeeded in creating a Sunni monarchy that
failed to win the loyalty of most Iraqis. It survived
a number of coup attempts and demonstrations
until 1958, when it was violently ended by a revolt
led by Iraqi Free Officers under the command of
Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim.
The baath party, which had established a
branch in Iraq in the 1950s, first came to power
in Iraq in 1963, when it deposed Qasim’s govern-
ment and executed him. It conducted a bloody
purge of Qasim’s supporters, particularly leftists
and communists. The first Baath regime lasted
only a few months before it was in turn over-
thrown by non-Baath Arab nationalist officers. In
1968, after the stunning defeat of Arab forces by
Israel in 1967, the Baath Party returned and was
quickly able to gain nearly absolute control of the
country. One of the most prominent figures in the
new regime was saddam hUsayn (d. 2006), who
had risen through the ranks of the party, often
by violent means. He became Iraq’s president in- The Baath government, composed mostly
of Sunnis, espoused a secular Arab identity. With
growing revenues from oil exports, it was able to
modernize and expand Iraq’s infrastructure and
educational system as well as its military. The cost
of this was dear, however, as the Shii majority was
denied full political participation, leftist move-
ments were eradicated, Jews were persecuted,
and Kurds were repressed. Shii political move-
ments, such as the daaWa party (founded in the
late 1950s) and the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, founded in the early
1980s), arose, but their leaders were imprisoned,
assassinated, or driven into exile. Iran’s Ayatollah
rUhollah khomeini was granted asylum from the
shah’s security forces in 1964, but he was forced
to leave Iraq by Saddam Husayn in 1978.
Beginning in 1980, Iraq became involved in
a continuous series of gUlF Wars of national,
regional, and global scope that have continued to
afflict it in the first decades of the 21st century. In
1980, it went to war with Khomeini’s newly estab-
lished Islamic Republic of Iran to gain control of
the Shatt al-Arab and Iran’s oil fields nearby. That
conflict ended only after more than eight years
with a truce when Khomeini died in 1989. Dur-
ing the war, Iraqi forces used chemical weapons
against Iranians and against their own Kurdish
population in the north. It was a very costly
K 370 Iraq