Review Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, The Assyrian Tragedy, Mar Shimun Memorial Foundation, 2010

  

Mar Shimun was the spiritual leader of the Assyrian community from 1920 to 1975. He wrote this short pamphlet to raise awareness about the 1933 massacre of Assyrians in northern Iraq. This was an early stain on the new country that would mark a trend of political violence. The book mostly consists of excerpts from people discussing the event.

Review Assyrians in Modern Iraq, Negotiating Political and Cultural Space

Benjamen, Alda, Assyrians in Modern Iraq, Negotiating Political and Cultural Space, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, New Delhi, Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 2022

 

Iraq is one of the most diverse countries in the Middle East and yet there are very few books about the different groups outside of the Kurds that make up the population. That means that Alda Benjamen’s Assyrians in Modern Iraq, Negotiating Political and Cultural Space is a welcomed addition to the canon. She focuses upon the struggle by Assyrians to achieve their rights within the country from the Ottoman period up to modern Iraq with most of the book focusing upon the 1950s-80s.

Review The Greatness That Was Babylon

Saggs, H.W.F., The Greatness That Was Babylon, New York and Scarborough: A Mentor Book, 1962

 

The Greatness That Was Babylon by H.W.F. Saggs is a dense volume that reads like a college textbook for all the good and bad that implies. It has chapters on all different aspects of ancient Mesopotamia to the Babylonian period from history to culture to religion to literature to even mathematics. It goes into great depth into each, but all may not be of interest.

Review The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies, New Edition

Kedourie, Elie, The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies, New Edition, Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1984

Professor Eli Kedourie of the London School of Economics was an iconoclast in Middle East studies. He was born in Baghdad in 1926 and went to university in England. He went on to criticize not only British policy in the Middle East, but western liberals and leftists, Pan-Arabism, and the Arab states. The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies was a collection of journal articles he published in the 1950s and 1960s with some new material added. The thesis of the book was that not only did London make a series of blunders in the region from World War I to its aftermath but that conventional history of the Middle East in England was wrong as well.

Review Christianity in Iraq

Review Rassam, Suha, Christianity in Iraq, Herefordshire: Gracewing 2006

Author Suha Rassam was born and raised a Christian in the Iraqi city of Mosul. When she went to school in London she started researching her roots, which led to a Master’s of Arts in Eastern Christianity. That eventually resulted in Christianity in Iraq, an attempt to document all the different Christian communities that emerged in Iraq over the centuries.

Review The Tragedy of the Assyrian Minority in Iraq

Stafford, R.S., The Tragedy of the Assyrian Minority in Iraq, London and New York: Routledge, 2016

The Tragedy of the Assyrian Minority in Iraq was originally published in 1935 and covers the history of Assyrians in Iraq after World War I, and their massacre at the hands of the Iraqi army in 1933. It was written by R.S. Stafford who was a British officer stationed in Mosul province during that time period. It is a good source that documents those tragic events.

Review State and Society in Iraq, Citizenship under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratisation

Edited by Isakhan, Benjamin, Mako, Shamiran and Dawood, Fadi, Stateand Society in Iraq, Citizenship under Occupation, Dictatorship andDemocratisation, London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017

State and Society in Iraq is an academic anthology that attempts to take a new perspective on Iraq. Most histories focus upon elites, political parties, structures and institutions. This book takes a bottom up view to find historical currents that help explain the current situation in the country. The chapters cover a variety of topics from Assyrian refugees who settled in Iraq after World War I to the development of urban society in Baghdad and Kirkuk to the education system under the monarchy to how the Baath Party dealt with Islam up to the post-2003 elections and the Maliki government and the return of the insurgency. Like any anthology not all of the readings hold the same amount of interest, but there’s enough there to keep the reader going and the conclusions are interesting.