Download or read book Three Kings in Baghdad written by Gerald De Gaury and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2008-03-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first king of Iraq, Faisal I, was installed by the British in 1921 - he was pro-British, and was thus deemed 'suitable' to lead an independent Iraq. But his successors - his son Ghazi and Faisal II - both met their demise in suspicious and bloody manners. This book is a unique and timely account of Iraqi history.
Download or read book Gertrude Bell and Iraq written by Paul Thomas Collins and published by Proceedings of the British Aca. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a major re-evaluation of the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868-1926), the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist, and British civil servant. The book examines Gertrude Bell's role in shaping British policy in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century, her views of the cultures and peoples of the region, and her unusual position as a woman occupying a senior position in the British imperial administration. It focuses particularly on her involvement in Iraq and the part she played in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy and the Iraqi state. In addition, the book examines her interests in Iraq's ancient past. She was instrumental in drawing up Iraq's first Antiquities Law in 1922 and in the foundation of the Iraq Museum in 1923. Gertrude Bell refused to be constrained by the expectations of the day, and was able to succeed in a man's world of high politics and diplomacy. She remains a controversial figure, however, especially in the context of the founding of the modern state of Iraq. Does she represent a more innocent age when the country was born out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, or does she personify the attitudes and decisions that have created today's divided Middle East? The volume's authors bring new insights to these questions.
Download or read book Rivers of the Sultan written by Faisal H. Husain and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-05 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tigris and Euphrates rivers run through the heart of the Middle East and merge in the area of Mesopotamia known as the "cradle of civilization." In their long and volatile political history, the sixteenth century ushered in a rare era of stability and integration. A series of military campaigns between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf brought the entirety of their flow under the institutional control of the Ottoman Empire, then at the peak of its power and wealth. Rivers of the Sultan tells the history of the Tigris and Euphrates during the early modern period. Under the leadership of Sultan Süleyman I, the rivers became Ottoman from mountain to ocean, managed by a political elite that pledged allegiance to a single household, professed a common religion, spoke a lingua franca, and received orders from a central administration based in Istanbul. Faisal Husain details how Ottoman unification institutionalized cooperation among the rivers' dominant users and improved the exploitation of their waters for navigation and food production. Istanbul harnessed the energy and resources of the rivers for its security and economic needs through a complex network of forts, canals, bridges, and shipyards. Above all, the imperial approach to river management rebalanced the natural resource disparity within the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Istanbul regularly organized shipments of grain, metal, and timber from upstream areas of surplus in Anatolia to downstream areas of need in Iraq. Through this policy of natural resource redistribution, the Ottoman Empire strengthened its presence in the eastern borderland region with the Safavid Empire and fended off challenges to its authority. Placing these world historic bodies of water at its center, Rivers of the Sultan reveals intimate bonds between state and society, metropole and periphery, and nature and culture in the early modern world.
Download or read book A History of Iraq written by Charles Tripp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition of Charles Tripp's A History of Iraq covers events since 1998, and looks at present-day developments right up to mid-2002. Since its establishment by the British in the 1920s Iraq has witnessed the rise and fall of successive regimes, culminating in the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Tripp traces Iraq's political history from its nineteenth-century roots in the Ottoman empire, to the development of the state, its transformation from monarchy to republic and the rise of the Ba'th party and the ascendancy of Saddam Hussein.
Download or read book When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East written by Matthieu Rey and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2022-02-02 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential study of parliamentary politics in postwar Iraq and Syria, before the consolidation of authoritarian rule under the Ba’th Party When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East explores three main interrelated issues to clarify what happened between 1946 and 1963 in Iraq and Syria: how and why a parliamentary system prevailed in both countries in the aftermath of the Second World War; what social effects this system triggered, and, in turn, how these changes affected the system; and finally, why the elites in both countries were unable to overcome the unrest that brought an end to both a liberal era and to a certain kind of political game. Drawing on a vast array of sources and rich archival research in French, English, and Arabic, Matthieu Rey highlights the processes of the parliamentary system in the modern era, which are very common to post-independence countries and to any representative regime. He tackles the intersection of multifaceted political phenomena that were present in that moment in Iraq and Syria, including regular elections, the implementation of emergency law, the freedom of the press, the open expression of opinions, the formation of new political parties, frequent military coups, and the joint exercise of power by members of the old classes and reformist newcomers. Treating this period as neither an epilogue of the liberal order nor a prelude to authoritarianism, and stressing the contingent, improvisatory aspects of political history, Rey fundamentally questions the transitional nature of the period and in doing so proposes new ways and tools of examining it.
Download or read book A Soldier s Story written by Jaʻfar ʻAskarī and published by Arabian Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2003 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1919, Faisal appointed Jafar Military Governor of Aleppo. He became one of the first members of the new Iraqi government under the British Mandate, and spent the remainder of his life serving his King and country as Prime Minister (twice), Minister of Defence (five times), and Iraqi Minister in London, where he also found time to be called to the Bar (at Gray's Inn)." "Jafar Pasha was assassinated outside Baghdad in 1936, on a doomed quest to forestall Iraq's first military coup." "He had not by then completed his Memoirs, which break off in 1919 at Aleppo. Material describing the remainder of his career is given in the Epilogue and Appendices. Jafar's Memoirs, published here in English for the first time, give a colourful demonstration of how much one gifted individual can achieve in a single lifetime, even one so tragically cut short."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Late for Tea at the Deer Palace written by Tamara Chalabi and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-01-18 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Tamara Chalabi, Iraq is more than a country of war and controversy; it is a place of poignant memory. For much of the twentieth century, the Chalabis were among the most influential families in Iraq. In the 1920s they were at the forefront of their country's awakening to modernity, and they played an integral part in the establishment of its monarchy. As courtiers, politicians, businessmen, rebels, merchants, and scholars, the Chalabis enjoyed vast privilege until the end of the 1950s, when they were forced to flee to the land of exile, myth, and imagination, where their beloved homeland took on the quality of a phantom country. In between came rebellions, foreign interventions, and the transformative development of oil wealth. But in 2003, after a lifetime of exile, Tamara arrived in Baghdad just ten days after the city's fall, in the company of her father, Ahmad Chalabi, a leading opposition figure against the Saddam regime. Late for Tea at the Deer Palace chronicles a daughter's return to a homeland she'd known only through stories and her own imagination. As she investigates four generations of her family's history, Tamara offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern family life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. The story is populated by an array of unforgettable characters, among them Tamara's great-grandfather Abdul Hussein Chalabi, who as a member of the Ottoman parliament witnessed the end of the empire in Baghdad and the birth of the modern Iraqi state at the hands of the British; her grandfather Abdul Hadi Chalabi, who became one of the wealthiest men in Iraq and had strong ties with the British during World War II; and her grandmother Bibi, a grande dame who presided over Iraq's social and political life during Baghdad's 1920s and '30s heyday as the Paris of the Middle East. At once intimate and magisterial, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace vividly captures the rich, overlooked history of a country that has been uprooted by war and a family that has persevered by never forgetting its dreams or its past.
Download or read book Racing Against History written by Rick Richman and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racing Against History is the stunning story of three powerful personalities who sought in 1940 to turn the tide of history. David Ben-Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann—the leaders of the left, right, and center of Zionism—undertook separate missions that year to America, then frozen in isolationism, to seek support for a Jewish army to fight Hitler. Their efforts were at once heroic and tragic. The book presents a portrait of three historic figures and the American Jewish community—at the beginning of the most consequential decade in modern Jewish history—and a cautionary tale about divisions within the Jewish community at a time of American isolationism. Based on previously unpublished materials, the book sheds new light on Zionism in America and the history of World War II, and it aims to stimulate discussion about the evolving relationship between Israel and American Jews, as the Jewish State approaches its 70th anniversary under the continuing threat of annihilation. A book for general readers, history buffs and academics alike, it includes 75 pages of End Notes that enable readers to pursue the stunning story in further depth.
Download or read book Churchill s Folly written by Christopher Catherwood and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Britain's colonial secretary in the 1920s, Winston Churchill made a mistake with calamitous consequences. Scholar and adviser to Tony Blair's government, Christopher Catherwood chronicles and analyzes how Churchill created the artificial monarchy of Iraq after World War I, thereby forcing together unfriendly peoples under a single ruler. The map of the Middle East that Churchill created led to the rise of Saddam Hussein and the wars in which American troops fought in 1991 and 2003. Defying a global wave of nationalistic sentiment, and the desire of subject peoples to rule themselves, Winston Churchill put together the broken pieces of the Ottoman Empire and created a Middle Eastern powder keg. Inducing Arabs under the rule of the Ottoman Turks to rebel against their oppressors, the British and French during World War I convinced the Hashemite clan that they would rule over Syria. In fact, Britain had promised the territory to the French. To make amends, Churchill created the nation of Iraq and made the Hashemite leader, Feisel, king of a land to which he had no connections at all. Eight pages of photographs add to this fascinating history on Churchill's decision and the terrible legacy of the Ottoman Empire's collapse.
Download or read book Landscapes of the Jihad written by Faisal Devji and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the motives behind Osama bin Laden's and Al-Qaeda's jihad against America and the West? Innumerable attempts have been made in recent years to explain that mysterious worldview. In Landscapes of the Jihad, Faisal Devji focuses on the ethical content of this jihad as opposed to its purported political intent. Al-Qaeda differs radically from such groups as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, which aim to establish fundamentalist Islamic states. In fact, Devji contends, Al-Qaeda, with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action, actually has more in common with multinational corporations, antiglobalization activists, and environmentalist and social justice organizations. Bin Laden and his lieutenants view their cause as a response to the oppressive conditions faced by the Muslim world rather than an Islamist attempt to build states.Al-Qaeda culls diverse symbols and fragments from Islam's past in order to legitimize its global war against the "metaphysical evil" emanating from the West. The most salient example of this assemblage, Devji argues, is the concept of jihad itself, which Al-Qaeda defines as an "individual duty" incumbent on all Muslims, like prayer. Although medieval Islamic thought provides precedent for this interpretation, Al-Qaeda has deftly separated the stipulation from its institutional moorings and turned jihad into a weapon of spiritual conflict. Al-Qaeda and its jihad, Devji suggests, are only the most visible manifestations of wider changes in the Muslim world. Such changes include the fragmentation of traditional as well as fundamentalist forms of authority. In the author's view, Al-Qaeda represents a new way of organizing Muslim belief and practice within a global landscape and does not require ideological or institutional unity.Offering a compelling explanation for the central purpose of Al-Qaeda's jihad against the West, the meaning of its strategies and tactics, and its moral and aesthetic dimensions, Landscapes of the Jihad is at once a sophisticated work of historical and cultural analysis and an invaluable guide to the world's most prominent terrorist movement.
Download or read book My Memoirs written by Tawfīq Suwaydī and published by Lynne Rienner Pub. This book was released on 2013 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These memoirs of the distinguished Iraqi statesman Tawfiq al-Suwaydi (1892-1968) evocatively recapture a now largely vanished Arab world¿and are an eloquent reminder that Iraq was once a far more open and tolerant society than it is today. Al-Suwaydi served as Iraq¿s prime minister (1929, 1946, 1950) three times, as foreign minister on numerous occasions, and as ambassador to Iran, the League of Nations, and the United Nations. He frequently undertook sensitive diplomatic missions on behalf of the Iraqi monarchy. Among the major world figures with whom he interacted personally were Kemal Ataturk, Adnan Menderes, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, John Foster Dulles, Anthony Eden, George Curzon, Benito Mussolini, George Antonius, and Kings Abdullah, Faisal, Hussein, and Ibn Saud. From this vantage point, he wrote with an insider¿s detail about the diplomatic, political, and geostrategic issues that vexed Iraq and the entire Arab world from the early twentieth century through the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. A comprehensive essay by Antony T. Sullivan, senior associate for Middle East affairs at TerraBuilt Corporation International, introduces this first English-language edition of the memoirs.
Download or read book How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs written by Elizabeth F. Thompson and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a pivotal moment in modern world history, when representative democracy became a political option for Arabs - and how the West denied the opportunity.
Download or read book Reconstructing Iraq written by Conrad C. Crane and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Beirut 1958 written by Bruce Riedel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2019-10-19 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find out about the 1958 U.S. intervention that succeeded and apply those lessons to today's conflicts in the Middle East In July 1958, U.S. Marines stormed the beach in Beirut, Lebanon, ready for combat. They were greeted by vendors and sunbathers. Fortunately, the rest of their mission—helping to end Lebanon's first civil war—went nearly as smoothly and successfully, thanks in large part to the skillful work of American diplomats who helped arrange a compromise solution. Future American interventions in the region would not work out quite as well. Bruce Riedel's new book tells the now-forgotten story (forgotten, that is, in the United States) of the first U.S. combat operation in the Middle East. President Eisenhower sent the Marines in the wake of a bloody coup in Iraq, a seismic event that altered politics not only of that country but eventually of the entire region. Eisenhower feared that the coup, along with other conspiracies and events that seemed mysterious back in Washington, threatened American interests in the Middle East. His action, and those of others, were driven in large part by a cast of fascinating characters whose espionage and covert actions could be grist for a movie. Although Eisenhower's intervention in Lebanon was unique, certainly in its relatively benign outcome, it does hold important lessons for today's policymakers as they seek to deal with the always unexpected challenges in the Middle East. Veteran analyst Bruce Reidel describes the scene as it emerged six decades ago, and he suggests that some of the lessons learned then are still valid today. A key lesson? Not to rush to judgment when surprised by the unexpected. And don't assume the worst.
Download or read book Faysal written by Joseph A. Kechichian and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "King Faysal (1906-1975) ruled Saudi Arabia from 1964 until his assassination eleven years later. Within his brief reign, Faysal secured a legacy as one of the most instrumental actors in the development of the modern Middle East. By the time he ascended to the throne, Faysal understood how dependent many nations were on his country's oil, an understanding that led to the oil embargo of 1973. Wisely, Faysal sought to channel the power of religion for the benefit of the public good, in opposition to Islamic fundamentalists, while his policy initiatives - a balanced budget, the expansion and modernization of higher education, strengthening labor laws and social policies ultimately helped stabilize the entire Gulf region and solidified Saudi Arabian leadership, wealth, and power." "King Faysal aspired to a reign guided by an unwavering belief in God, the courage to conquer evil, the patience to persevere regardless of costs or consequences, submission to the will of God against hardships, and due exuberance in response to the burdens of rule. Four decades after his assassination by one of his nephews, Faysal bin Musa'id, his memory lives on in impact of his steady hand on Saudi Arabia's modernization."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Saddam written by Con Coughlin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insightful, penetrating, and shocking, the defining biography of Iraq's deposed tyrant Drawing on an unparalleled network of sources, contacts, and firsthand testimonies, Con Coughlin takes us to the center of Saddam Hussein's complex, bewildering regime -- and beyond. Fully updated and revised, Saddam: His Rise and Fall meticulously describes how Hussein took power and immediately set about controlling every aspect of Iraqi life. Coughlin examines Hussein's regime both before and after its fall, exploring the contradictions of Saddam's private life: his sponsoring of Islamic fundamentalism while whiskey drinking and womanizing as well as his reliance on and celebration of family negated by his violent and temperamental treatment of them. With evidence from family members, servants, and staff, Saddam: His Rise and Fall is unique in its close-up representation of this elusive and secretive world. In all-new chapters and an epilogue, and with shocking new disclosures, Coughlin also vividly recounts the last few months of Saddam's reign and his eventual capture by American forces.
Download or read book Zubaida s Window written by Iqbāl Qazwīnī and published by Feminist Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted Iraqi journalist's fictional narrative of an Iraqi exile watching her country destroyed on television.
