Davis 395movement that were fundamental to the development of an Iraqi public
sphere: cross-ethnic cooperation; the commitment to associational behav-
ior; national forms of political communication; and artistic innovation that
both valorized local culture and challenged political authority.
Cross-ethnic cooperation
The political praxis of Iraqis from the early twentieth century onward
underscores, over and over again, a commitment to cross-ethnic coopera-
tion. The numerous empirical examples of such political and social coop-
eration belie the essentialist notion of Iraq as an “artificial” nation-state
torn by ethnic and confessional divisions.^22 Iraqi nationalist discourse
assumed an inclusive quality from its inception, from efforts by Sunni and
Shi‘i notables in Baghdad to develop an Arabic language education system
after the turn of the twentieth century, to the unified chorus of Sunni and
Shi‘i poets in their criticism of the Ottomans for their inability to stop
European encroachment on the Empire’s Arab provinces.
uring World War I, Iraq’s Shi‘a population bore the brunt of the D
British invasion of the country, which began in Basra in the south. Issuing
religious decrees [fatwas] condemning the British invasion, Shi‘i clerics
[al-mujtahidūn] were careful to emphasize that they represented all of
Iraq and not just its Shi‘i population, indicating a desire for cross-eth-
nic cooperation. It is important to note that the religious decrees were
intended to defend not some vaguely defined Islamic community [al-
umma al-islāmiyya], but rather the notion of Iraq as a nation-state with
geographically defined boundaries, an inherently modern concept. The
self-rule that the shrine city of al-Najaf enjoyed once the Ottomans had
withdrawn between 1916 and 1918 was characterized by a tolerance
reflected in the promulgation of a proto-constitution that established the
rights of the inhabitants of the cities’ different quarters.^23 Similar tolerance
characterized the neighboring shrine city of Karbala’ as well.
ose who initiated the June–October 1920 Revolution—what Th
Iraqis call “the Great Iraqi Revolution” [al-thawra al-‘irāqiyya al-kubrā]—
self-consciously organized nationalist demonstrations that included all
Iraq’s ethnic groups, even going to the homes of Jews and Christians and
asking them to join, asserting that they were full Iraqi citizens. Sunnis