‘The ancient and medieval records of the ‘Iraq have long since received and still receive from archaeologists and historians the care due to a very cradle of man’s civilization, to a centre of the earliest great Empires, to lands trodden by great captains of Greece and Rome, to the scene, for many generations, of the glories of ‘Abbasid Islam’.
In 1925, when this book was originally published, no adequate resource on the recent history of Iraq existed; while the author acknowledges the work of historians on the period before the early sixteenth century, here he focuses on the least studied period, after that time and up to the early twentieth century.
Following the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, Iraq entered a long period of decline as its land was plundered and destroyed. Later, it was a neglected part of the Ottoman Empire, by which it was ruled from the seventeenth until the nineteenth century. The author uses oriental sources, the knowledge of local scholars and the experience of his long residence in Iraq to discuss the country’s turbulent history. He concludes that at the time of writing – the early twentieth century – Iraq had made little progress since the sixteenth century. It was still not ready for self-government and had low standards of material life. It did not make use of its resources and the government provided little liberty and rights for the governed. We are left with a picture of a country that had once been great, but whose occupation by other forces had left its growth sadly stunted and squandered: a fascinating portrait of a country better known for its more recent history.