1638 Ottoman Sultan Murad IV began siege of Baghdad Captured it by end of year
Massacred Shiites
1956 Communist uprising in Al-Hay put down and leaders executed
(Musings On Iraq review The Modern History of Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review Red Star Over Iraq, Iraqi Communism Before Saddam)
(Musings On Iraq A History Of The Iraqi Communist Party Interview With Univ of East Anglia’s Johan Franzen)
Garrels, Anne, Naked in Baghdad, The Iraq War as seen by NPR’s correspondent, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003
Anne Garrels was a reporter for National Public Radio who went to Baghdad in 2002 to witness the U.S. invasion and how it impacted Iraqis. Naked in Baghdad, The Iraq War as seen by NPR’s correspondent is a series of journal entries about her day to day activities joined by emails that her husband sent out to update her friends and family about what was happening. Garrels was able to capture the feelings of everyday Iraqis and a little slice of life in the Iraqi capital during this tumultuous time.
1974 Govt secretly tried 25 Shiite leaders and executed 5 of them after religious pilgrimage
turned into protest against Pres Bakr
869 Abbasid Caliph Muhtadi had to flee capital Samarra as Turkish troops looted palace Muhtadi
confronted troops calling for their loyalty and received it
(Musings On Iraq review when baghdad ruled the muslim world, the rise and fall of islam’s greatest dynasty)
1959 Gen Qasim called Ahwaz and Mohammareh in Iran Arab Started supporting Arabs in
Khuzistan province
1917 US consulate report Since British took Baghdad all trade cut off Businesses closed People out
of work
1915 German Gen von der Goltz and 30 German officers arrived in Baghdad to take charge of
Mesopotamia campaign vs British
1932 League of Nations Mandate Comm rejected Assyrian petition for autonomy Said Iraqi
govt would settle Assyrians within country or outside of it
(Musings On Iraq review The Tragedy of the Assyrian Minority in Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review State and Society in Iraq)
1927 PM Askari and Foreign Office agreed on new Anglo-Iraq Treaty Had to be passed by Iraqi
parliament
(Musings On Iraq review Supremacy And Oil, Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918-1930)
Engel, Richard, War Journal, My Five Years In Iraq, Simon & Schuster, 2008
NBC News correspondent Richard Engel’s War Journal My Five Years In Iraq gives a different perspective from other books on the Iraq War. It’s not a history full of details. It’s not a soldier’s story about combat. It gives a Western journalist’s view of the conflict mixed in with the experiences of the Iraqis that he worked with. It reads like a journal and has some very interesting parts to it especially about the everyday brutality journalists and Iraqis had to live through during the civil war years.
1916 British made diversionary attack at Sannaiyat and took Hai in offensive to retake Kut from
Ottomans
1916 Gen Maude began new campaign to defeat Ottomans in Mesopotamia British now had numerical
advantage in troops and new supplies
1922 UK Colonial Office wrote only reason King Faisal accepted in Iraq was because he was
backed by British
phase of Mesopotamian campaign
1914 UK made 2nd attack on Qurna, Basra forcing Ottomans to retreat Lost around 200 killed
130 taken prisoner UK lost 10 killed 118 wounded
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
Murray, Williamson, Woods, Kevin, The Iran-Iraq War, A Military and Strategic History, Cambridge University Press, 2014
The Iran-Iraq War, A Military and Strategic History was the third in the Iraqi Perspectives Project that used captured Baathist documents to try to explain major events in recent Iraqi history. The book portrays the Iran-Iraq War as one between two leaders with expansionist visions who had no idea about military affairs. The result was an eight year bloody war of attrition that ended in a tie. That was only possible because Iraq was able to acquire far more weapons on the international market than the numerically superior Iran that had burned its bridges with most of the world. The Iraqi military also improved at the tactical level and relied upon its armor and artillery against lightly armed Iranian infantry.
to feed Believed relief coming from Basra
1927 Draft of Anglo-Iraq Treaty written by UK Colonial Office Said Iraq independent state to
appease Iraqis when under British control
1534 Ottoman Sultan Suleiman entered Baghdad and visited Sunni and Shiite shrines trying to
win over city
1915 Retreating UK forces reached Kut after loss at Battle of Ctesiphon/Salman Pak UK
suffered 5,187 casualties over last 10 days Started Turkish siege of Kut
1920 US Consul in Baghdad said England hadn’t taken any serious steps to create an independent
Iraqi govt
1915 Retreating British force attacked by pursuing Ottomans at Um at Tubul after loss at Battle of
Ctesiphon/Salman Pak
Pritchard, Tim, Ambush Alley, The Most Extraordinary Battle of The Iraq War, Ballantine Books, 2005
Tim Pritchard’s Ambush Alley, The Most Extraordinary Battle Of The Iraq War is one of those books that you can’t put down once it gets going. It covers a battalion of Marines who attacked Nasiriya during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Americans weren’t expecting any resistance but found themselves in one of the most intense battles of the entire conflict. The author does a fantastic job describing the drama that ensued.
1914 Gen Barrett and Sir Percy Cox asked that UK occupation of Basra be announced as
permanent believing it would sway Arabs to UK side Request turned down
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
1623 Safavids took Baghdad after son of governor betrayed him Tortured and killed Sunnis and
destroyed Sunni mosques and shrines
1914 London told Gen Barrett wasn’t time to seize Baghdad vilayet but that Qurna, Basra
should be taken
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
1914 Gen Barrow in India was against further advances by British in Mesopotamia Did want to
seize Qurna, Basra
1914 Sir Percy Cox issued statement in Arabic that British had occupied Basra and UK was
at war with Ottomans and had no ill will towards locals
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
Black, Edwin, Banking On Baghdad, Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004
Edwin Black’s Banking On Baghdad, Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict joins his later The Farhud, Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust as two horrible books on Iraq. That’s because in both volumes Iraqis disappear from their own history. The first third of Banking is fine covering ancient Iraqi history. When it gets to the later Ottoman times to almost the end the narrative is dominated by Western desires to exploit Iraq’s oil. It then gets sidetracked by the Mufti of Jerusalem making an alliance with the Nazis. Most of the story is dominated by Western governments, oil companies and the Mufti of Jerusalem rather than Iraqis.
1914 UK troops entered Basra after Ottomans abandoned city
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
1914 Arab tribes told British forces Ottomans had abandoned Basra British forces set out to
take city
1638 Ottoman Sultan Murad IV began siege of Baghdad Captured it by end of year Massacred Shiites