Iraq
Iraq has been named as a region since at least the 10th Century. Prior to that, the Romans had named the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates Mesopotamia (literally: land between two rivers). Babylonia in the southern part and Assyria in the northern part are two other ancient names for parts of modern Iraq. The upper part which includes part of Turkey is still occasionally named the Jazira (the island) in Arabic. The north is generally mountainous and the upper reaches of the two rivers whose sources are in Turkey are in this part of Iraq.
Basically from Baghdad south, the land is a plain with many rivers. Iraq was the central province of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate that lasted from 750 to 1258 CE and Baghdad was built in the early part of this period. Links with neighbouring Persia have a long history pre-dating Islam and many Iraqi Arabs have also spoken Persian over this long period. The pre-Islamic Persian capital of Ctesiphon was actually virtually on the site chosen by the ‘Abbasids for the building of Baghdad. Today, Shi’ism also links the Shi’a Iraqi Arab majority with Shi’a Iranians. There have often been considered to be three distinctive parts of Iraq centred on, respectively, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. The north is the most ethnically mixed part of Iraq with the Kurds being the largest ethnic group there speaking a language similar to Persian with many Arabic and Turkish loanwords.
During the Ottoman period, Iraq was divided basically into the mainly Arab and mainly non-Arab parts and the late Ottoman reforms also had an impact there. The British occupied the area in the early 20th Century and permitted limited independence from around 1933. By the terms of treaties with the ‘independent’ government they really maintained actual control of Iraq. Following the First World War, the British had allowed Faisal (the son of the Sharif of Mecca and a First World War ally) to assume the role of Head of State as King after his ouster by the French from Syria. After his death in 1933, his son Ghazi ruled until his deposition in 1958 in the latest of several coups against him that occurred during his reign.
The resulting government claimed independence in that year partly by repudiating the formal Baghdad Pact alliance that had been agreed in 1955 between Britain, the old Iraq, the Shah’s Persia, Pakistan and Turkey. In this period, ethnic and sectarian divisions were not evidently major issues in Iraq. For example, the various coups tended to have broad support across these divisions and government leaders had included Kurds, for example. The Ba’ath Party formally assumed control of Iraq in 1963, was the sole legal party from 1968 and was led by Saddam Hussein from 1978 to 2003. Hanna Batatu wrote helpfully about the society and economics of the Iraq of this modern period in his The Old Social Classes & the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: a Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba’thists and Free Officers.
Jordan
Jordan was created as Transjordan after the First World War over the objections of the Wilson doctrine and in accordance with a secret wartime French/British agreement as part of a British mandate that also included Palestine and Iraq. The first emir and then king of Transjordan which became Jordan was ‘Abdullah, the brother of Faisal of Iraq and son of Sharif Hussein Ibn ‘Ali al-Hashemi of Mecca, the 'king' of the Hijaz and an Arab and Islamic political force. Hussein had become concerned about the pre-war outbreak of Turkish nationalism reflected in the policies of the Movement of Union and Progress government (the so-called Young Turks) set up in 1908 (Atatürk was then a junior member) that he considered deleterious to the position of Arabs within the Ottoman Empire and supported (along with the French authorities) the Arab Congress of 1913 in Paris. Faisal had taken a lead role in negotiations with Britain during the war years in the face of additional war-time Ottoman oppression that the French/British agreement set at nought. The Arab revolt began in 1916 guided by Faisal and T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), the local British operative. Ottoman garrisons in the Hijaz and other territories were captured. The British at this time also vaguely supported some kind of Jewish homeland. Faisal was elected to rule greater Syria but was not acceptable to the French and so he was allowed by Britain to rule Iraq after French arms had been applied and he had been forced to flee there.
While that was going on, his brother, ‘Abdullah, was permitted by the British to become the Emir of the region east of the Jordan they called Transjordan. Meanwhile, in 1924, the Sharif, his father, was replaced as ruler of the Hijaz militarily and his family was thus also denied a hoped-for expanded role in Arabia by the Saud family as they created Saudi Arabia. The British, who had supported both sides in the confrontation there, chose not to directly intervene on either side. They did, however, formally assert their control over ‘Abdullah by treaty in 1928. Emir ‘Abdullah was friendly with the British and worked for them during the Second World War especially to quell unrest in Iraq. He and his successors have generally supported a rather limited political liberalism.
In 1946, the Emirate formally became a Hashemite kingdom and (on paper) independent. The new capital became Amman, then still a small town (once called Philadelphia) and development proceeded apace. From the mid fifties, the British effectively relinquished their control of the kingdom retaining mostly British officers in the senior ranks of the Jordanian army until 1955 and a military base in Jordan until 1955. Ironically, these senior British officers had been forced (as Jordanian army personnel) to fight for the Jordanian army against Israel, a country that was otherwise supported by the UK in the 1948 war that followed Israel’s creation.
Two things tended to combine to define Jordanian politics of the 1950s in opposition to the British alliance and they were the nationalism of Nasser and the politics of the humiliated refugees from the new state of Israel just over the Jordan. Jordan had gained control of the West Bank of the Jordan (and a large population of refugees) following the 1948 war while Egypt took over the Gaza Strip (both areas were, of course, occupied by Israel in 1967 and are now agreed by Jordan and Egypt to be a separate national entity, Palestine).
King ‘Abdullah I died in 1951 leaving his throne in the capable hands of his grandson, Hussayn, in 1953, who ruled until his own death in 1999 (following the brief reign of ‘Abdullah’s son, Talal, forced to abdicate due to ill health). Hussayn had both an Egyptian and a British education and had absorbed both Nasserist and British as well as Palestinian influences. His first wife (of many) was an Egyptian. He was an astute politician like his grandfather often able to reconcile with former enemies and place them in his loyal governments. He knew he had to deal with the anti-British feeling that arose as a result of the creation of Israel decisively and did by asserting independence. The 1956 Suez debacle that did not flatter the British, proved to be one of the final straws. A failed coup that may have produced a Nasserist government opposed to Hussayn (and may have been engineered by Nasser) was narrowly averted.
The Palestinian issue has been important in Jordan for among other reasons the influx in 1948 of many of the 725,000 to 800,000 Palestinian refugees into its territories as a preference including the West Bank but also the east bank of the Jordan and other parts of Jordan. Most of the remainder also remained in the nearby territories of the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon. While Jordan has made citizenship available to many of them, many have become Jordanian citizens while retaining a distinct Palestinian identity. 'Jordanian' students at the University of Damascus in the early 1960s while good universities were in relatively short supply in Jordan apparently occasionally reflected this by their choice of Jordanian or Palestinian club membership at the university.
The PLO in Jordan in seeking their own state to the west was quite destabilising for Jordan’s government throughout the 1950s and 60s until a final confrontation and expulsion in what is known as Black September in 1970 finally resolved the issue to the satisfaction of Jordan’s government. This arguably shifted a problem to Lebanon than contributed to many of that country’s current and recent problems. Many Palestinians continue to live happily in Jordan, however, and even achieve senior positions in the Jordanian government with the support of Jordan (even the current queen of Jordan is a Palestinian).
The shifting of problems in the Fertile Crescent region is perhaps indicative of a clear shift in the region from mid 20th Century pan-Arabist and even pan-regionalist interests to narrow nationalist interests since the late 1960s, based on the current artificial borders.
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