A History of Iraq

Mesopotamia, the ancient site of modern-day Iraq, means "the land between the rivers," according to Wikipedia. Situated between the Tigris and Euphrates, it has also been called "the cradle of civilization," since the Sumerian civilization which developed there in the 4th millennium BC was the earliest civilization to leave a written record of itself.

Ancient Sumeria existed for 3,000 years, before being supplanted by the Akkadian Dynasty in the 24th century B.C. In the 17th century B.C., the great leader Hammurabi established the Babylonian civilization, based in the city of Babylon. Hammurabi is most famous for having created the world's first known written set of laws, now known as Hammurabi's Code. Babylonia existed, in one form or another, until the 6th century B.C., when it was conquered by Cyrus the Great of Persia. This is how far back hostilities go between Iraq and Iran.

The region was then conquered by the Parthians, then by the Romans, and reclaimed by the Persians. In the seventh century A.D., Islamic armies from Arabia captured the territory, as the first beachhead in their eventual invasion of Persia. The religion they brought with them remains dominant in Iraq to this day.

In the 8th century, the Abbasid Caliphate built the city of Baghdad, which became the capital of their empire and the largest city in the Muslim world. Baghdad was an important center of learning during the Islamic Golden Age, which was roughly chronological with the Dark Ages in Europe. Tragically, the city was sacked by the Mongols in 1257. More than half a million people were massacred, and the Grand Library of Baghdad was burned to the ground, an irreperable cultural loss to the city and to the region.

In 1533, the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople (in modern-day Turkey) began governing Iraq. The Ottomans, who reigned for nearly four hundred years, brought relative prosperity to their Iraqi subjects, but the country never again played the central role in world affairs that it had during the Golden Age. Ottoman rule ended with the conclusion of World War I. The Ottomans, who were on the losing side of that war, had their empire dismantled by the British and French. The British won control of Iraq, and carved out a state with little regard to the ethnic groups in the area, such as the Kurds in the north.

In 1932, the British granted independence to the new state of Iraq. For the time being, Iraq was finally free from rule by outsiders, but its future remained uncertain.